poplar road

Here is what the grassy half of our back yard looks like these days. Last week the temperature hit 35 several days in a row and things dried up fast, but we've now had cooler weather and two days of rain, so the grass desperately needs mowing again. At the left of this picture is the giant patch of weeds which never got mown over and grew into yellow flowering stalks three feet tall. They're all over our garden. Once you start pulling them up, they reveal quite the network underneath, one pocket gopher hole after another.

We haven't yet seen a pocket gopher (just a bunch of Stoney Flats marmots), but you won't believe what we saw last week. Richard was building an extension to our deck, to house the new barbecue. I was watching a hummingbird dive through the air over and over, checking out the tall posts we'd put in on either side of the new bit of deck. Just as I was pointing out the bird to Richard, a movement over in the patch of weeds caught his eye. Shhh, he says, look at that. One of the three foot high stalks was wiggling. He and I got closer and called Allyson over. This was no wind, it was just the one stalk. It shook as it slowly disappeared into the ground. A yank or two, more wiggling and the sound of determined chewing, and it went in another foot. We watched that thing quivver and shake straight into the ground with only a couple of inches of flower heads showing in less than five minutes. So the next time you're watching cartoons, believe it, those rascally rodents really DO pull things under just like that!

I've now managed to pull up two thirds of the yellow weeds in that plot, and anywhere I found them in the side garden. Here is a shot of the side garden if you were to turn around from the gate where the above photo was taken, and look in the opposite direction (south and a bit west). We didn't have time to roto-till this patch this spring, and I'm glad, because in addition to the berry bushes, irises and daffodils along the wall at the back, we've discovered the whole plot is full of poppies. Red, scarlet, orange, pale pink and almost white. (Allyson says I could start a new career.) And in amongst them, something like daisies, though we're not sure as they haven't opened up.

This view looks northeast towards the back yard (note the white of the garden shed beyond the apple tree) from the lower edge of the same side garden, across the tops of the irises with one of the gooseberry bushes at right. Turns out only the smallest of the three bushes is currant, the others have fat green berries with faint stripes and a pointed tip, just like my grandmother's gooseberries at the cabin in Pointe du Bois. Now if I could just remember what Mummi did with them. There's a website called HistoricFood that has many old English recipes like "gooseberry fool", but most of the recipes listed there are too finnicky for me. Suggestions, anyone? These small photos show the gooseberries (left) and the currants, which have just started to turn red since the hot weather.

Against the house itself the lupins are blooming, with those gorgeous palm-like leaves, quite striking with the purple chives, bearded iris, the last few lilacs and deep pink wild rose. And there's something growing in next to the label "purple alum", which started out with purple stalks, but now it's a gigantic pale green thing with 1" thick spiny stalks and leaves the size of rhubarb. It's looking almost jungly, and last year's dried husks were over six feet high so I'm beginning to worry it's going to choke everything else out. We'll see if that has to come out. The rule so far is, if it looks unusual or it's getting flower buds, let's let it grow and see if we like it.

One thing I didn't recognize soon enough was a nasty choking vine suspiciously like morning glory. I think it's wrapped itself around the grape vine out front, but there's so much other tall bushy stuff around the base – not to mention more of that ultra-prickly rose – that I can't get at it without ripping the grape vine to shreds in the process. It's literally what you see is what you get for now. The obvious weeds are coming out - like the one that develops small, very effective burrs - but otherwise it's just keeping up with the grass and the watering. With the new, properly sized pump in our well working the way it should (without filling the pipes with sand and silt), we can leave the sprinklers on overnight without tripping the breaker, or run the hose and the washing machine at the same time. (And with the filter Richard added for the house, our water tastes even better. It was a bit of a trial at first, though, clogging the filter and then the pipes with sand every 48 hours. New plumbing is luckily on the list when we redo the bathrooms.)

Now here is something I did attempt to get rid of, noticing there was a lot of it and assuming it was a weed. Wild, yes. Weed, not really: it's Canadian columbine, and it's stunning. As mentioned above, the flowers look a bit like the heads of dragons with those spurs coming out the backs. They start out red and fade to purple, but they've lasted a long time and despite the number I ripped out in March, there's quite a patch of them in the border beneath the deck. They move in the slightest breeze, though, so I haven't been able to get a good closeup - same goes for the poppies. Both these plants have seeded themselves, but I still expect it will be a challenge to save them to move elsewhere when we do get around to digging up these beds. So I'm enjoying them now as much as possible.

Another plant, growing haphazardly in the front courtyard and beneath the fir at the far end of our deck, has turned out to be a fragrant flowering shrub that I am guessing might be "mock orange" although that's a name that gets used incorrectly a lot. Whatever it is, it smells heavenly. So I was leaning around some cuttings and junk to try to get a whiff of the flowers on the bush near the deck. I looked down to see if I could balance in a clear spot on the rock wall, when I noticed it wasn't so clear... this stripy little fella was sunning himself and I nearly stepped on him. Garter snake, Allyson decided, although the ones I remember playing with as a kid weren't nearly this gorgeous in colouring. Deep chocolate brown like the earth in the shade, golden yellow like the dry grass, and stripes of bright scarlet like the cones and weed stalks. He both blends in, and stands out. At least I'll notice him the next time I'm wandering around in sandals in the long grass. I'm not opposed to snakes, but bright colours in nature generally mean trouble of the poisonous variety, so until I get confirmation that he's harmless, I'm watching my step.

And now, onto the mugshots we can't get enough of on Poplar Road, starting with my new buddy, Billy the Kid. He was the first of the ten kids to join the flock of goats, and a loner where the rest are twins. He's the largest, the friendliest (all those cuddles with Bev!) and has little horns coming in that he likes to test against our legs and get scratched. The other little ones run away, but he heads straight for us. Cheeky little thing. Hopefully he'll be a little less aggressive than his dad, Neru, whose horns have caused more than a few bruises. (And less stinky.) For now, the Kid is cute.

Here's another cutie who likes a good scratch round the ears. Daisy's two lambs are very skittish, but she was a 4H sheep and can be very friendly when she's had a few carrots. When she starts calling her twins with that low baaa, it gets all the goats started until they're all running down the hill like a pack of streakers, making a racket.

baaaaaaaa...

meeeeeehh...

maamaaaaa!

And as of a couple of days ago, Jonathan let his new herd join Daisy and the goats - the Barbies. These short brown Barbados sheep get curly horns on them like mountain goats, and can jump just about any fence if they put their collective minds to it, but they won't get much bigger than this. Allyson caught them mowing Jonathan's front lawn. Note the chicken wire protecting his fruit trees, otherwise the goats would strip the bark off them and eat all the leaves they could reach. Sheep aren't as fussy eaters as goats, being satisfied with grass or straw when the goats would rather eat the tender stuff, but they will eat grass right down to the roots, so Jonathan rotates all his animals to keep the grass cropped but healthy. When he saw the lawn tractor come home in our truck, he called up to tease us about unfair competition for his sheep. I still can't get over them eating our tree after Christmas. Blech.

Got carrots? Couldn't resist posting this shot of Scorpio with a carrot dangling from his mouth, looking like he's got it stuck up his nose. His teeth (of which they only have a bottom row, it's just a plate on top) aren't very big yet so this quarter-section was too much for him. Cam, his mom, was only too happy to eat it for him. She responds well to the nickname "greedy guts", and can spot a carrot from a mile away. Unlike Scorpio, she can crunch an entire carrot down in seconds, sucking them back much like that pocket gopher in the weed patch. She'll get very close in pursuit of carrot sticks, but still won't let anyone pat her or scratch her under the chin. Scorpio allows it if he's distracted - or maybe his fur is so thick he doesn't notice.

We haven't been down to visit the llamas yet this week - they're holed up in their favourite summer spot now, beneath a spreading fir at the bottom of the hill. They've got the right idea: shade. Allyson and I both got a bit sunburnt last week, and Richard was wilting in the heat putting the extension on the deck. It hit 35 in the shade outside, and 30 inside. I'm going to take a look at the trees out back and see where I might be able to hang up Richard's Guatemalan hammock. We've got clouds and rain in the forecast for this weekend still, but by the time his sister gets here next weekend it should be perfect weather to swing in the shade with a good book. And lots of bugspray - these mosquito bites are driving me crazy. The rest of those weeds have got to go, it's an insect breeding ground. Perhaps I need to ask Jonathan if his Barbies can come over and play. Hah. Richard gets back Saturday, and promises to teach me how to run the lawn tractor. We saw Dorothy, our seventy-something neighbour on the east side of us, riding around her entire yard today, so it can't be all that difficult. With the grass cut, it starts to look positively suburban out there (if you ignore the barn). Anyway, time to hit the hay. Or count sheep? (Sorry.) Good night.