Mushroom, Blueberry, Pepper, & Rabbit

Which one of these four doesn't belong with the rest? heehee

I need new batteries again, so there will be no pictures in this post. Sorry about that.

A robin has made a nest in the elbow of my gutter spout under the eave of the roof. I noticed it yesterday and tried to take pictures of it when my batteries gave out. The daffs and tuilips are almost done flowering and I'm wondering what to put in the beds next. Working on that.

Yesterday Matt and I went mushroom hunting in the woods behind his parent’s house. I found 10 woodsmans but only one morel, several old bottles, two snakes –a black snake (which Matt discovered by nearly stepping on) and a copperhead coiled up in the sun, and two ticks on my body (eeeeek!). My mother-in-law found several morel that were about 6 inches tall in the woods around her work. Today though, we took the dogs on a walk to the almost secret neighborhood park. It’s almost secret because only the neighbors know about it and go there. It’s very nice to be 2 blocks from real nature.

We got the blueberry plant planted today. The mix contains various sized pine bark, peat moss, some potting mix ‘plus’, and I also mixed in a handful of soil sulphur. From the packaging, I thought the plant was already about a foot tall, but when I opened it, it was mostly mulch mix. The plant itself has 2 small branches, but they were split about an eighth of an inch from I guess being roughed up during the packaging process. I propped them together using a piece of pine bark and hopefully that won’t make a difference to its progress. Anyway, it’s done.

The weather took a turn, or is taking a turn, and won’t be going back up until after Wednesday at the earliest, so I had to bring the plants in and back under the fake light. I’m not pleased with that because 3 hot peppers have blossomed and need the real light for flowering. Also, the catchflies bloomed 3 new flowers – all carmine pink this time. They’re very pretty after all. Another interesting thing is that being outside made their stems turn from green to purple. They look better now, like they have a tan.

As far as the peas go, I guess I may have been hasty in assigning blame to the ants of that bed. I admit that I used circumstantial evidence to convict them, even though I had not actually seen them in the act of being on the plants. After some investigating in the yard, I found some tiny black pellets. Rabbit? Really? With my dogs constantly around? That’s crazy. If this is true, and there are critters making their way under our wooden fence, they are playing a dangerous game. Tomorrow I think I’ll go around the perimeter ‘plugging holes’. I really don’t want to have my dog hand me a dead rabbit as a prize one morning.

High: 64 Low: 47, partly cloudy; Lunar Phase: Waning Gibbous, 65% of full.