As promised, I have lots of photos to poke through and then share. This one is a bit of me experimenting, as the monarch butterfly and flower were dangling over a really ratty looking chunk of concrete. I couldn’t get my camera to blur the background so that it didn’t look icky.

So… I took several versions of the shot anyways, and then played around a bit with my graphics package to delete the skuzzy concrete background.

And… Voila! Now I can share a shot of one lovely monarch butterfly visiting a Gallardia flower.

Technology. Gotta love it.

Ta Da! I’m back blogging. Didn’t mean to disappear since spring. The short explanation: the Universe has been viewing me thusly:

‘Nuff said about that.

The owls are fine, we have a very endearing bunny from this year’s gargantuan “crop” of bunnies that we’ve named Dandy, lots of new flowers to enjoy, a woodchuck (!), oodles of chipmunks and squirrels and, thanks to record rainfalls, an insanely huge population of mosquitoes.

Have I mentioned the bats? They are most welcome each evening as they swoop in to feast on the skeeters. We also have the most toads I’ve seen in thirty years, including one that is absolutely humongous who glares at me whenever I poke about in ‘his’ garden beds.

I’ve named him Bartholomew.

Pictures to come.

Here’s a peek at the daylilies that were blooming in my gardens today. You’ll also see, on the bottom left, the fuzzy little rump of a medium-sized bumblebee that buried itself in a golden-colored bloom just as I snapped the shot. And on the bottom petal of the lavendar and white daylily, if you look carefully you’ll find a tiny little native bee.

What you can’t see: two baby bunnies and a baby chipmunk that were hiding under the foliage. I tried my best to get photos of them, but boy, are they fast-moving little critters! So: close your eyes, look carefully past the flowers and down deep underneath the leaves and… there! There they are!

Adorable, aren’t they?

I can’t believe how tiny this baby bunny is!

And I can’t believe that I said it was OK for my neighbor, Dan, to put Little Baby Rabbit in my yard… because it’s not like we don’t have enough rabbits. In just one patch of our (rather small) front yard last night we had four adult rabbits happily chomping on clover.

How could I say no? He’s adorable. And he needed sanctuary. Who could resist? I mean – just take a look. See that heart-shaped leaf in the upper left hand side of the image? It’s a cloverleaf violet. Now, think about how big a cloverleaf violet’s leaf is. Not very big. So, compare the size of the cloverleaf violet to the size of the bunny, and you’ll get an idea of just how teeny tiny Little Baby Rabbit is! (update: major brain fart in original post – kept thinking violet and writing cloverleaf. At 94F, it’s obviously way too hot for a brain that’s accustomed to -10F to function reliably.)

I know, I know. Baby Bunny is going to grow up fat and sassy from eating my flowers. But it needed a new home, as this little cutie had been discovered by Rudy. A very fast-acting Dan literally pulled it from within Rudy’s jaws. Poor Rudy! You could see him going, “Wadda ya mean, drop it! Dad! I’m a dog! I’m supposed to catch rabbits, right? No way am I gonna drop it. Right? Right? Oh. Wrong. Dang.”

The bunny was fine when Dan got it, which is amazing because this is one little bunny and Rudy is one big dog. After it got over its fright, it was hopping around with nary a problem and… yes… inspecting the yummy flowers. So when Dan asked, what were my options? Give BB a home or… um, well, what options? I mean, just look at those tiny bitty ears! Is there anything cuter than a bitty bunny and its little bitty ears?

*sigh*

I’m a softie. I admit it. Next thing you know, I’ll be planting carrots. For them.

Then I started laughing. It was a young chipmunk, so small that it could perch on the top of the plant to survey the yard.

He is soooooooo cute! Yeah, I know, he won’t be cute two months from now when he’s mowing down my cherry tomatoes, but still…

I’ve dubbed him “Half-Pint.”