Progress!

Monday (Canada Day) was *hot*. Bursts of gardening were interspersed with relaxing under my new patio umbrella, watching the birds:


A sampling of the birds I saw (photos cropped quite a bit):

Lady Goldfinch:


Mr Goldfinch:

Yes, they all like the side farthest away from me. It could be because it's closer to the branch perches, more private, and out of the sun... but I still say they're hiding from my camera. Mr Goldfinch is particularly skittish... I suppose he has to be, being that brightly coloured. It would be like having an "eat me" sign.

Goofy sparrow:

(I missed a funny shot later, where a sparrow was sliding around on Mr Hoot's head... Mr Goldfinch was also, amazingly, on the side of the feeder facing me... but, of course, my camera wasn't within reach that time.)

Lady sparrow?

(It turns out the sparrows enjoy the finch feeder too.)

Crow passing through:


There was a nuthatch, but I wasn't able to get a photo of him. Little red squirrel yelled at me occasionally too.

Here's a "before" shot of the garden under the spruce:

And here's a (mostly) "after" (I planted a few more creeping thyme plants after this):

Changes: I sawed off two dead limbs, removed the ugly bit of chain link fence, potted up an impatient cutting a neighbour gave me last fall (I didn't kill it! Yay!), planted more hostas, a blue monkshood, and my impulse-buy marigolds (filler while I wait for the perennials to fill in). I also did a bit of weeding, and thinned out some of the volunteer sunflowers, but I need to thin the main patch as well. The trash can lid is acting as a bird bath until I get something nicer. (I'm thinking of making a concrete rhubarb leaf one!) I tried to get some diatomaceous earth for the mosquito larvae, but no one in Canadian Tire and Home Depot had a clue what I was talking about. I'll have to go to a real garden center.

But the big story... are you ready?!? I dug the vegetable garden!!! It was... uh... kind of dark by the time I finished:

And I only dug it once (except for where I put the watermelon seedling, that got a quick second dig to mix in some peat moss), so I'll have to do another digging of it next weekend... but *finally*! Of course, the part by the fence acting as a perennial holding pen also needs proper digging, given that I just did barely enough to plop the plants in last fall before the snow hit... but I can't do that until I've moved the perennials. Here's the same photo taken today when the sun was up:


Oh... and closing the back gate knocked my snail out of the flower pot again, and this time he flew to pieces:

Since it's kind of hard to glue and assemble at the same time, and he's hollow, I decided to try an experiment: I taped the pieces together, making sure to cover any holes, then drizzled epoxy down the main drainage hole. If it doesn't stick together when I take the tape off, I'll glue it again. Once Humpty Dumpty is together again, I'll *tie* him to the basket with some invisible thread. (He doesn't hook on very securely.)