Seriously Amissing

But then I get bored reading my own posts, so I expect everyone else must be absolutely stunned into unconsciousness by them!

But to list the last week or two's most exciting occurrences:

1) I added a new bird to my list - the yellow breasted chat. The book says this is a shy bird who is more often heard than seen. Apparently the one coming to gobble the seed I toss out morning and evening hasn't read the book. Or perhaps he is just the extrovert of the family.

One of the blackbird pairs is bringing their four or five noisy, begging youngsters to the seed pile. The kids follow the parents around with gaping beaks, shaking their wings and screaming like a banshee reunion. After poking seed down the kid's throats a time or two the parents start dealing out peckings and beatings instead of seed, and the kids get the message and begin to pick up their own food.

We have a pair of quail who come from across the road to eat seed. I get very tickled watching him trying to herd her back across the road if she hasn't yet eaten her fill. She runs a circle and ends up right back pecking seed while he dances and curses in frustration. (Women are not always easy to herd!) One morning I hadn't gotten out with the goodies yet and Mr. Quail marched up the walk and crowed his head off until I came out and served breakfast. Birds are very entertaining.

2) Our weather has been uncharacteristically cool and damp. Evening before last there was a double rainbow across the entire span of the sky. It went from the clay banks right across the lake to spill onto Naramata. I'm not sure I'd ever seen such a brilliant rainbow.

3) The garden is progressing at a satisfying pace. We've eaten a couple of salads out of the 4 x 4 behind us. That's the 4 x 4 where all the cherry-type tomatoes were planted last year and it is now chock full of two-inch high volunteer tomato plants. Although I have planted about two dozen tomato plants I cannot bear to pull these plucky little volunteers, so I'm not sure what will become of the chard, beets, leeks and onions I planted.

I'm going to pretend it's an experiment. If the volunteers do well I will seed my tomatoes directly in the garden this fall and let Mother Nature do the work next spring. To heck with greenhouses and trouble lights and packing flats in and out of the sun. It will be "Back to Nature" for me. I grew so many tomatoes I've been begging neighbours to take the extras and finally got desperate enough this afternoon to put the last 30 on Freecyle.

They are going like hotcakes, with people mailing to ask if they can pick up four or six. Yes, please. I'm tired of babysitting them and have no place to put them! I'm beginning to consider sneaking out in the dead of night to plant a tomato into each flower bed in the park.

And that is the extent of my exciting life. Practically comatose really. And loving every minute of it.