Around The Farm In June

There's lots of folks around here saying that we jumped directly from winter into summer. Indeed, most spring flowers bloomed halfheartedly and briefly - and then it became hot outside. My little bantams got into the habit of going outdoors at 9:00 every morning and going back in about 7:00 in the evening:

The rest of their day is spent pecking and scratching, looking for food:

The old fashioned Iris around the house bloomed in purple:

And in yellow:

I used my new sprayer, attached to the back of the tractor, to spray the weeds along the fence line which short out the fence. I steered with my left hand and held the sprayer nozzle with my right hand:

I stopped the tractor in the above photo because I'd seen masses of blue flowers along the fence line. They looked a bit like Forget-Me-Nots to me, but bigger and bolder:

So I looked them up when I got back into the house and decided that they were Birds-Eye Speedwell, an introduced species but an awfully pretty one:

A deer carcass along the county road drew both flies and vultures for several days. Only one vulture was brave enough to stay there while I snapped a photo. Several days later, I saw a mature Bald Eagle flying up into the trees from somewhere near the carcass. Was it eating there? I suspect that it was:

I put hinges on a window so the pigeons could get outside and enjoy the outdoors. To make it easier for them, I put a broad sill plate down for them to stand on and a raised tree limb for a perch. Did they use it? No, they did not. They refused to go near the open window or set foot on the sill plate. Yet I kept opening the window every morning, hoping they'd get brave and give it a try:

The window was raised and held open by means of a rope:

I built some shelves for the pigeons and, since they seemed so incompetent at nest building, nailed some kitchen stove plates to the shelves to help them get started:

Here's 30 seconds of fantail pigeon activity. Nothing special happens, they just go about their business: