Butter Side Down

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!

Our property has been filled with visitors during the last week. All of our visitors have been of the furred or feathered type, with the exception of this rather adorable little jumping spider which is no larger across than the eraser on a mechanical pencil.

I tried to get a good shot of her, but she never stopped moving! She’s rather bristly, instead of furry, and hops across various surfaces (including artwork, floors, walls, even window glass) at random intervals, in bounds that are startlingly large for a creature so tiny.

With the constant snow, and our sometimes intense cold (tonight we have wind chills of -45F, with an actual temperature expected to bottom out around -15F), I am amazed at the hardiness of the wild creatures around us.

At times we have entire flocks of finches, pine siskins, sparrows and juncos in the yard, zipping to and fro between our spruce and our bird feeders, so many that the airspace around our house resembles a miniature version of O’Hare on the day before Thanksgiving.

Individual birds often perch on the rain gutter by my kitchen window. This junco flew back and forth between a spot on the ground underneath a feeder and this vantage point where he could eye me while I watched him for almost ten minutes, enjoying how neat and trim he appeared, as if he were wearing formal attire.

This female cardinal is a daily visitor, along with her brightly colored mate. She drives all other birds from whichever feeder she chooses to alight on, although she will share the space with the male cardinal if he chooses to join her on ‘her’ feeder.

This finch (or is she a pine siskin? Hmm - nope. That beak says ‘Finch!’) likes the same spot the junco uses. I’ve never seen the juncos and finches squabble over any particular roosting spot or site, unlike the cardinals and many of the other birds we see.

When the activity at the feeders suddenly stops, I know that a hawk like this one perching in the back trees has arrived. This particular hawk stayed for almost an hour, but left hungry, to the immense relieve of the songbirds.

While travelling between our house and his little backyard workshop, Michael has almost stepped on Stewart, our yard bunny, several times this past week. I haven’t seen Stewart myself, since I’m unable to be out in the yard when the footing is the least bit snowy or slippery, but Michael assures me that Stewart is as bouncy and self-assured as ever. From looking at his tracks, Stewart likes to hop along the pathway that Michael keeps shoveled between our house and Michael’s shop, which makes imminent sense to me. Why struggle hopping through the deep snow when the homeowner will shovel you a nice path?

Of course, we have squirrels all year round. This rascal looks cute and innocent and completely oblivious to our bird feeders, but rest assured - he’s not. When I took this shot (which is a tad blurry - sorry about that!) he was sitting on top of our old clothesline pole, calculating if he could jump from the pole to a nearby bird feeder.

He couldn’t… but that didn’t stop him from trying!

This week marks Butter Side Down’s first anniversary.

Since last December, over 20,000 folks have stopped by to visit, meet Stewart and the rest of the bunnies, walk through the gardens, listen to the owls and read my nattering.

It’s an honor to share this little corner of cyberspace space with you, Oh Best Beloved.

May the coming year be filled with good times, good friends and of course…

Baby bunnies!

(mouse candle photo courtesy of Wikipedia commons)