Wild Wild Woods

My gardens are surrounded by neighbors' flowery landscaped yards, one of which probably threw seeds to the wind for this result. Many ...

The birds love the "bubbler" that continuously moves water in the crockery bowl that serves as one of our bird watering sites. Thi...

The kitchen garden at the edge of the wild woods produces a precarious harvest of veggies when the grazing deer stay outside the rabbit fenc...

With four nectar feeders at different places around the yard, we often see the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) as they ma...

We've seen toads of all sizes this year. But this one, shown in my hand at the base of my fingers, is the smallest so far.

The young bluebirds fledged out of their nest today. We watched for hours as the adults fed them sparingly in the morning, then teased them ...

The new row of raspberry brambles we put in last year are bearing fruit -- delicious red, black, and golden raspberries. The three are a won...

The shady front corner is finally established with astilbes and hostas. In past years I tried a few other plants here but they did not li...

The bluebird hatchlings are nearly as big as their parents, and showing off their feathers. The adults are now bringing larger and more int...

Butterflies love the dwarf Speedwell, Veronica x. Giles van Hees . It is happily situated near the rhubarbs and bee balm. The f...

Feeding time is ever amazing in the bluebird nest box. We were watching while the female was in the box with 4 hatchlings; the male brought...

There is sumac growing outside my window that turns to burnished red and gold shades in the autumn. These shrubs seem to be leftovers from b...

The four bluebird eggs have become helpless little hatchlings. I watched today as the female brought some food, then the male brought in a m...

Coreopsis and scabiosa bloom happily together at the edge of the veggie garden.

In the wild woods we placed two PVC-tube nest boxes that simulate the tree snags which birds use for nesting sites. We packed sawdust in th...

This year, with video cams in several positions, we are able to verify much more bird nesting activity. We've watched as a pair of blueb...

Weeding the vegetable garden today was a pleasure -- what a delightful hour. The sky was partly sunny with clouds floating by to cool me whe...

This 3" American toad Bufo Americanus was hopping around today while I was working in the garden. There are plenty of frogs and toads...

Last year, I learned that borage ( Borago officinalis L .) is not only a pretty flowering edible herb, but it also improves the flavor of to...

House sparrows harrassed the bluebirds that were trying for a second brood in the bluebird box. We had tried a "sparrow spooker" w...

The first brave little Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapilla) left the nest on Friday, day 17 after hatching. The other 5 launched th...

This spring the tamarack tree must finally be established and happy; it has set hundreds of cones. They first appeared in the shape and c...

Watching the 6 chickadee hatchlings on the video cam is addictive. Amazing how fast they are growing. Expect them to fledge out of the nes...

We've been watching the bluebird nestbox for weeks as they brooded 5 eggs. The resulting 4 hatchlings are 17 days old. Today the parents...

This year I am participating in NestWatch, a continent-wide nest-monitoring program that aims to provide a unified scheme to track reproduct...