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The young chickadees in the house above my kitchen window are chirping more loudly now, sounding more like adults and less like peepers. The two adults are deliving mosquitoes, delphinium defoliaters, and some long-legged flying thing, arriving with beaks full and bug parts sticking out all directions. A nuthatch family (two adults and a young one, I believe) have begun using the bird feeder like a McDonald's drive up, flitting back and forth between it and the birch/spruce thicket in the back, peeping their little horns frantically. At least two juncos are the silent users of yard, hopping through the vegetable garden.
When the chickadees sound the alarm with dee-dee-dee I go out and distract the neighbor's cat, who is more interested in getting picked up and petted than stalking birds, although I'm sure he'd kill all the birds he could catch.
First rhubarb harvest of the year. Same day as last year! I could have taken some a few days earlier, but I was waiting for an excuse to make fresh rhubarb crisp, and the visit of a friend made this the day. Sweet crisp fresh rhubarb!
This plant laughs at a late spring.
I still had rhubarb in the freezer from last year. Although it doesn't lose much in the freezer, it does lose a little something. So I made a big batch of rhubarb chutney. I thawed it first and drained the juice before adding the vinegar. It made for a great batch of chutney.
Today I took my three Tanichthys albonubes, white cloud mountain fish, from the indoor aquarium in which they overwinter, and put them in my outdoor fish pond. It's just a round rubber horse trough, probably only about 15 gallons, but they thrive in there all summer eating mosquito larvae. These three fish are the survivors of about a dozen that I bought about eight years ago. They much prefer life outdoors, getting fat and sassy from all that live food.. I won't see much of them until the fall, when I drain the tub to find them and bring them in.
There are many, many mosquitoes in the yard, so those fish will not go hungry.
I'm back from out of town. Today I planted carrots, lettuce and spinach. My transplants that I put in on May 22nd have survived being outside, although the Black Jack zucchini are suffering. But then zucchini never like transplanting anyway.
The plants inside still in pots inside are still ok, except that the tomatoes that I plan to put outside are really leggy. It's still too cold for them so they'll have to wait. The tomatoes in the greenhouse (bump windows) are in their permanent pots and look happy, from 1 to 3 feet tall.
There is no sign of aphids in the house yet. Last year they came in on some plants I bought, and they really hurt my greenhouse tomato production. So far, so good.
