Natural Bird Houses

The chickens have been loving this wonderful weather...all but Cora Bell and Shakira! Shakira is still sitting on eggs that should have started to hatch last Saturday. Cora Bell is keeping her company. Skippy is out feasting on bugs, grubs and grass! I suspect the girls are glad to have him out of the house! I'm giving Shakira until Saturday. If no eggs hatch by then, I'll take the eggs from under her. Poor girl! A month of hope and faith!

My Siberian Irises are blooming! Valerie, these are the seeds I sent you. The photo has made them bluer than they really are. Regardless, they are beautiful!

I've been cleaning out gourds this week and preparing them to turn into birdhouses. These are bushel basket gourds. The can get much bigger than this. My friend, Beverly, makes the coolest bowls out of these! She grew the large one and gave it to me. I think the smaller one came from the Farmer's Market.

I think these are my favorite. They are Apple Gourds. Although, if these were apples, they would feed me for a week! These came from the Farmer's Market, too.

These are Amish Birdhouse Gourds. I grew these in the cemetery last summer. They have been piled in bowls and baskets on my front porch waiting to dry out. Once they were dry, I spent a morning scrubbing off the mold. And, viola! A birdhouse ready for a nest!

Now, I have so many seeds, I don't know what to do with them all! I plan to plant some more in the cemetery this summer, but if I plant all of them, I'm afraid it will look like Kudzu is taking over! So, if anyone would like some of the seeds, let me know which kind you want and I'll send them to you.

Happy Spring!

Flowers, Cleaning and Gatlin Cannons...What Do They Have in Common?

My yard!

Last month, Rick had to make something from the Civil War. My devotees to the history channel were all over that assignment. Rick and Tony built a life-size Gatlin Cannon. But, once the grades were in, we had this huge cannon and nowhere to put it. What's a Mom to do? Flip the barrels into the air, drill a hole in the front and turn it into a bird house! Bet nobody else in the world has one of these!

Next week, these will be wide open ferns!

May Apple and Little Brown Jugs

Bleeding hearts!

My Lady Banks rose is in full bloom on the front fence.

Close up!

I'm not sure what these are called. The blooms remind me of hydrangeas.

My uncle, Larry, rooted these and most of the other azaleas in my yard. I think they are called spider bloom azaleas.

My favorite orange azalea in front of my kitchen window. They smell so sweet.

Wanna look closer?

I found this little fellow in a puddle of water under the porch. He was looking a little stressed. I scooped him up and let him catch his breath. Look at the pollen on his back leg.



Then I helped him over to a flower. Happy bee!

Wasn't the word CLEANING in the title? This is the side of our garage...

Before Tony came along with the cherry picker and the power washer!



He took the day off to get this WWWAAAAYYY overdue chore done!

Doesn't this look so much better? He managed to get the whole house done today. The poor guy was in the bed before 9:00 and even took an Aleve without being told to.