Butter Side Down

Juan, the baby bunny!

This little rascal is very skittish, unlike his parents, Stewart and Petunia. It’s taken me three weeks to get any photos of him at all, as he’s (wisely) quite wary of us. He’s the boldest of his litter, however, which includes only one other bunny at this point. Petunia did have several other babies in this litter, but from what we can tell the female Cooper’s Hawk who has taken up residence nearby has taken quite a toll.

Juan is a flower mowing machine, the most destructive baby bunny we’ve had in years — which is saying a lot! He delights in reaching up as far as he can, whilst standing on his hind legs, to nibble off the tops of flowers. He’s perfectly happy mowing them down from the bottom, side and middle, too, and happily strips the leaves off of plants he doesn’t find tasty, just on general principle as far as I can tell.

I don’t have any photos of his little sister, Hay, yet. We usually see her just as a miniature bunny-colored streak racing from one hiding place to another!

Ferns aren’t supposed to sneeze. Given that little fact of nature, I was rather startled when I went past the bank of ferns that are behind our house this afternoon and heard a very distinct sneeze.

Then… I started to laugh.

*Judy stands with her hands behind her back and says in a very sing-song voice, “I know that you’re in there! That’s you, Missus Bunny! You’ve got baby bunnies!”*

To confirm my suspicions, I carefully studied the ferns from a prudent non-bunny-disturbing distance, and finally pinpointed a spot where I could see a set of bunny whiskers amidst the plants. Yep. Missus Bunny was hiding in the ferns. Michael and I have named her Petunia, by the way. We’re calling her Pet for short…

When I had the audacity to reach over and pluck a fern frond that was growing into the pathway several feet from her hiding spot, Petunia indignantly hopped out. She then skittered across the yard, radiating “I’m just a lone bunny, all by myself, you can just pay attention to me hopping over here. Nope, nothing under the ferns you need to bother looking at. Really. Move along.”

I wasn’t snookered.

She’s about half the size she was two weeks ago. Also, I’ve found tufts of bunny fur here and there buried in little rabbit scratches. Momma bunnies dig scratches like that and line them with tufts of their own fur when they’re testing out potential nursery sites.

I can’t wait to see this year’s little dandelion chompers!

It’s time to take you on a garden walk and share what’s blooming, chirping, squeaking and squawking.

I’d love to claim the grape hyacinths in this first photo as my own, but they really belong to our neighbors, Dan and Diana. I’d never seen this plant before Dan put a patch in two years ago. They’re gorgeous, carefree, and apparently the bunnies don’t think they taste good. How can you not love a flower with those qualities?

This robin has been singing daily from a perch in our birch tree. I haven’t found the nest yet, but I’ve found the remains of several robins’ eggshells, so somewhere, in one of the trees, there is a nest.

We have a huge bank of ferns, all originating from a single clump Michael’s grandmother gave us when we moved to Wisconsin. I am always intrigued by the way ferns ‘unroll’ in the spring before slowly turning into their familiar frond shape.

I am delighted to have this Blue Jay dive-bombing the feeders at regular intervals. West Nile virus decimated the jays, and they went from being common in our yard to completely absent for several years. Last summer was the first time I started to see and hear jays again. This one arrived about ten days ago. I hope it stays, as Blue Jays love snacking on nests of yellow jackets — and we’ve had an overabundance of those irritable little critters since the onset of West Nile caused the jay population to plummet.

I have several Bergenia plants, and they are among the first plants to bloom in the spring. The large flat leaves of this plant turn reddish-brown during the winter, and then turn quite green again in the spring, surviving even our -20F temperatures.

And of course I see Missus Bunny almost daily. Here she is sizing up the green grocery while waiting for the baby bunnies to arrive!

More to come…

Stewart is gonna be a daddy!

Meet Mrs. Stewart, who is very much “in the family way,” so to speak.

She’s as unafraid of me as Stewart is, although she is quite wary of other people, with the exception of Michael.

When she sees Michael about in the yard, she makes several fast token hops away from him to make sure that he knows she’s got her eye on him.

Me? I was able to snap this photo of her from less than eight feet away.

And then I went and checked to make sure that the fencing around any irresistibly yummy plants was firmly in place!

It’s finally stopped snowing here. For now, at least. Which of course means that it’s time for the temperatures to plummet back again well below zero. That means that Jack Frost was back, painting my window again, with a delicate pattern of ice ferns.

Using Michael (once again) as my measuring gauge, I snapped this shot so you can compare it to the photo in my the last entry. As he finished digging out the driveway, Michael told me, “We have to put this weather on a diet!”

I’ll second that.

We’ve had significant snowfalls some years as late as May, however, so we’re not counting on this winter ending any time soon.

Since mid-January, Michael’s been refilling feeders every week, although in past winters we’ve never had to put out seed more than once or twice a month. The snow is so deep that he’s kept a pathway shoveled out to the feeders. After this latest snowfall, he gave up on shoveling and instead fired up our little electric snow-broom to clear it out.

Stewart the Bunny is doing fine, even with the deep snow. He views it as his nightly duty to vacuum up all the seed that’s been spilled during the day from the feeders. He has kept himself safe by snuggling into the warmest, most protected place in “his” yard he can find. Lately, that’s been a little snow cave dug out underneath a drift that the weather and wind created next to our back door. I never would have discovered his hidey hole if he hadn’t left such a perfect set of paw prints that led to the spot!