Surprise!

Surprise lilies are not so surprising around here, but it's always fun to see them pop up in the middle of summer.  The pink ones are botanically known as Lycoris squamigera and are hardy to zone 5.  We also call them naked (or in these parts, nekkid) ladies because they have no foliage to go with their blooms - the strappy leaves springs up earlier in the season, then dies back before the bloom stalks appear.

Their red-blooming cousins, Lycoris radiata, should put in their annual appear soon - they're barely hardy in this area, but I think I saw their foliage this spring, so I'm hopeful they'll be along shortly.

I've had these bulbs in place for several years, but it's only been in the last few summers that they've bloomed.  I paid penance for transplanting them at the wrong time (they can sulk for a long time if you move them too much or at the wrong time.)

The bulbs are planted beneath a [expletives deleted] silver maple, amid a swath of hardy plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, which is a mouthful!)  Unfortunately, the hardy plumbago usually waits until after the ladies have come and gone before it puts on its full flush of electric-blue blooms.  So much for my attempts to orchestrate mother nature.

The fish are growing - I think they've at least doubled their size since we brought them home.  Of course, they should be growing, as much food as they devour each day!  I could be wrong, but I think one of the shubunkins is preggers.  Guess we'll know soon enough.  There's also a tiny frog that lives somewhere close to the pond.  I hope he finds himself a good place to hang out for the season - we could use his help controlling the mosquito population.  The toad hut went unrented this season...maybe next year we'll have tenants.

One fish, two fish...

I see YOU, fish! 

(I love Dr. Seuss and I firmly believe no one can ever outgrow "One Fish, Two Fish.")

I got the urge this week to restock the pond with heron snacks.  Err, I mean fish.  Cheap fish this time.  (I'm not paying for your $15 entrees anymore, Mr. Heron.)  Five fish: two shubunkins, three goldfish, $5 total.  They're small, but they're agile and fast.  Maybe they won't attract the attention of the heron like the big fat ones did last year.  This is not the best shot of one of them (did I say they were fast?)  They are starting to come up when I feed them already, so that's good.  (Never could get the last batch to do that...I think they hid better from me than from the heron.)


The pond is battling string algae again this year (like most years), so every few days, I get to clean it out - again.  Oh well, at least it's not the big pond of our past, so the cleanout is much easier.  (Originally we had this small pond in another location, and a larger pond occupied the space where this one now resides.  I'm downsizing as I get older.)

Old Time Pottery is having a sale on their red clay pots...I may have to swing by there and see if I can find some new pots to replace the   pots in the pond, which did not fare so well with last winter's snow-and-more-snow routine.   I perused the daylily bed today and just had to snap a photo of my favorite cherry red daylily; it's a no-name variety, and is among those bringing up the rear of the annual daylily parade, which was pretty impressive this year.  Lost a few, but those that survived are doing much better with the sprinkler system delivering regular moisture.  (The spring fertilizing and weeding didn't hurt anything either.)  Gemini Garden is having a buy 2, get 1 free sale on their daylilies, so I've ordered some replacements for the no-shows and to replace a few no-names that I've still got too many of.

As I headed to the vegetable garden for some overdue weeding duties, I heard the squawk of some blackbirds.  Harsh and critical words like raucous and cacophony immediately sprang to mind.  And then I wondered why we characterize the chatter of the the bluebirds, whippoorwills, even the morning doves' calls as lovely and melodic, but we scorn the banter of the crows, bluejays and blackbirds? They're all just trying to talk.  Are we guilty of doing the same thing to people around us?  We love to hear the voice of a friend, while a question or greeting from  others are sometimes met with thinly veiled derision or merely dutiful replies, or even tuned out and ignored if we think we can get away with it.


I wonder how our voices sound to God?  Are some of us His songbirds and others His blackbirds?  I sure hope not...