Speaking of corn

It was this big on Tuesday!

Bees' wings & corn

For a description and an up-close look at bees' wings, see this post.

Poll Results

The results of the poll "Do you miss the polls?" are as follows:

• Yes (5 votes)
• No (0 votes)

Hmmm.... only 5 voters. Now I KNOW I have more viewers than that. I guess either nobody wanted to disappoint me by voting "no", or else they've gotten so used to there being no poll that they didn't even notice this one.

Well, thanks to those of you who did vote! I'll try to come up with new polls a little more often. I'd sure appreciate your suggestions for topics, though. (Hint, hint!) ;-)

C'mon, the rest of you. Now that you've seen this post, you know the polls are back, so let's have a little more participation, okay? It's just all in fun... my fun, at least. :-)

Morning glory

When I went out to check the garden yesterday morning, I just couldn't resist going back to the house for the camera. The wildflower bed is full of these plains coreopsis.

And look at the buds below. Potential for tons more!

So pretty!

There are still plenty of bachelor buttons, too.

And just a few coneflowers that appeared mysteriously last summer.

Kind of an odd-looking flower, aren't they?

(Click any photo to enlarge.)

I tossed out some new seeds in a couple of bare spots this spring, but despite plenty of rain, they only produced a couple of zinnias and marigolds. And they're not blooming yet.

Who is this masked man???

Haven't we seen that "CAT" somewhere before?

Courtney seems to look up to him.

Eeuww... but look what he "made" her do! (Watch for video evidence on that at a later date.) All that white stuff (corn dust) on her shirt is what the masked man would've been breathing in if he hadn't had the mask on when he was cleaning out the bin.

She seems to have an assistant on the side, too. (And a jar of bubble stuff in her hand that may have made her shirt a little sticky in the first place.)

Here he is again... with the mask in a different place. Well, by gosh it's Daddy! And now he's "teaching" her how to wash her hands like farmers do.

Which of course Courtney loved.

What I didn't get a photo of is when she, with her newly clean and wet hands, reached down and rubbed at some black dirt... and then decided to take a big lick from her hand. Eeeeeuuuwww! Her whole tongue was black... and she discovered it didn't taste so good. ;-) So then we went back to the house to a hose and rinsed off the black stuff. More on that later.

My new tool

It's a CobraHead Weeder and Cultivator.

It's like a little mini hoe. It's awesome! You can weed in the rows and get right up next to the veggie plants to get the weeds. And for big weeds it's great because you can hook it down in the dirt behind the weed and pull while you tug on the weed with your other hand, and it really helps get those weeds and roots out of there instead of breaking the weed off and leaving the roots behind. I finally completed weeding my entire (30 ft.?) row of asparagus, thanks to this great tool, and that was no little job, considering the weeds were solid in there and some of them were over a foot tall. Yay to the CobraHead!!

Sometimes ya just gotta pretend

Grandma bought Courtney a little wading pool. Unfortunately, the weather was not the best for trying it out last Tuesday. But Courtney saw it when she was in the garage, so of course she had to check it out. We decided that we'd bring it into the house to play in. Hey, it was almost as much fun as if it had water in it! ;-)

(Click to enlarge.)

Willow tried to get into the act, too. Courtney tried to get Willow into the pool, but she wasn't too agreeable to that. Courtney's daycare babies did come in and play later, though.

All three

Here they are.

They're getting tamer. They will play with me if I tease them with a piece of straw, and a couple of them will even come right up to my feet. But the second I reach a hand out to touch them, they take off. I'll get 'em yet. ;-)

The two orange ones are toms. The black is yet to be determined.

New view

I had to cut back the dianthus outside my sewing room window because they'd gotten all seedy. (Hopefully they'll come back and bloom again yet this summer.) Doing that did let me have a better view of the miniature hollyhocks on either side of the window. They're a new perennial for me... I just planted them last year. The plants are about 4 feet tall, and the flowers are an inch or so across. Rather pretty, huh?

(Click to enlarge.)

At the finch feeder

There are goldfinches a LOT of the time, but occasionally I get a glimpse of a pair of house finches.

Grandma's extra helper

Niece Alexandra from Pennsylvania stopped by for a while on Tuesday to play with Courtney. They had fun with the toys, the sandbox, "squiggles" (although Courtney decided it was great fun to crush them... argh), checking out the kittens, etc. The best part (for Grandma, anyway) was story time. While they enjoyed the book, Grandma was able to get supper ready for Courtney without interruption. :-) Thanks, Alexandra!

Did Courtney enjoy story time? Yep! See below.

I think there was some extra "CHEESE!" there. ;-D

Just playing

I made these last weekend. Gee, I just this minute realized how appropriate they were for the holiday... the fabric is named "Fireworks". :-)

They're business card holders. Yes, very small. And fun. One for Jess and one for me.

Daycare assistant

Grandma had her finger over the microphone again... sorry. :-(

(Don't tell Grandpa, but he put the shirt on backwards. Courtney knew that. It's hard to find good help nowadays.) :-)

Back to the hackberry tree

Do you see what I see?

Look again.

How 'bout from the other side?

Surprises revealed

Remember this cat? (Ignore the piece of straw or whatever that is on her "eyebrow".)

I was right... she's a female. And look what she gifted me with!

What's more, she even brought them into the machine shed to live (maybe because of the pan of cat food in there, ya think?), after hiding them for the first few weeks in the impossible-to-find-them haystack. Aren't they sweet? There's another orange one, but it was not available at the time of the photo session. ;-)

Are they wild? OH, YES! But I'm working on that. A couple of them have come as close as sniffing my fingers, so I have great hopes of their being tame someday. Their mother is much less frightened of me, too, and she will come within a few feet of me now. Progress. :-)

Courtney even got to see one of the babies last Tuesday. Every time we came near, it would hide, but then pop back out as soon as we walked away. I think it was lonesome, because Mama apparently had the other two out for a hunting lesson or something.

Courtney wanted so bad to "touch it", but that was not to be. At least for now.

(And thank goodness for a zoom lens on the camera.) ;-)

SMILE ! !

You're on Courtney's camera!

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY ! !

With Love...

Bubble fun with Daddy

(Click to enlarge.)