Around The Farm In July

The white fantail pigeons get all excited when I refill their food and water each night. They crowd around the two feeders and one waterer as if they think I might have put vodka in the water and yummy bird seed in their feeders. Alas, it's always the same old chicken feed and water - but they are happy anyway:

And a number of pairs are nesting nicely:

A few (like this one) use the cake pans I provided for them, some use the shelves, and some insist on nesting on the floor, usually in a place which is inconvenient for me:

The hens all crowd into their favorite nest box to lay their eggs:

Luckily, they all get along well. There's never any fighting:

Orange Asiatic Lilies began to bloom next to the Blue Sea Holly:

Now that I'm keeping the little horses in the barn all night, the floor gets a thick layer of hay and poop in short order. I clean it out with the tractor, then throw down some hay from the loft, above:

I then spread the sweet smelling hay over the floor and close the door just enough to let the horses in, but not the cows:

This wildflower grows outside the barn door each year. My field guide calls them Cheeses but I find that name awkward (plural or not plural, flower or dairy product?) so I found current articles which call them Common Mallow. I'll use that name from now on:

My photo of the flowers wasn't very good, so I got a better one from the internet. You can see they are in the Mallow family:

The mysterious Blue Sea Holly was slowly turning blue and getting bluer each day:

So one Sunday I cut some and put them in a vase with yellow Asiatic Lilies to take to church. Do you see the problem? The Blue Sea Holly turned green when it came into the house. When I took it back out into the sun, it was blue again. Many blue birds, like Indigo Buntings, are not really blue and only look that way when the sunlight reflects off them the right way. Alas, it appears that Blue Sea Holly is the same way:

St. Regis Flow With The Dogs - Part 3

This is the final post on our hike along the St. Regis River in Santa Clara, New York (see also the previous two posts). The dogs were ecstatic about the cool, clean water. They splashed and played:

Seamus watched me as I climbed up on a rock:

When he felt assured I wasn't leaving yet, he went into the water and sat down in it. The day was hot, so it must have felt awfully good to him:

Little Clover waded out into a patch of Bullhead Lilies, though I think the scattering frogs were the real attraction:

But I took the opportunity to get a closeup of one of the Bullhead-Lily's somewhat lotus-like flowers:

We left the water and returned to the trail, where I did a bit of exploring. There was a loop and a side trail which I've taken before but don't like as much as this one. So we began retracing our steps, returning the way we came in:

Clover and Jack led the way:

We stopped at a clump of pines, where I contemplated going in for another adventure. In the end, we just continued on our way back toward the car:

But there is a lot of fun and adventure for dogs (and for me) on the main trail, and we continued to enjoy our walk:

By this time, all the dogs had slowed down considerably:

We cut back through the field toward our car, said hello to a couple unloading their canoe for their own adventure, then drove home. This is a short, simple hike but one of my favorites: