Critters

There are a pair of finches making a nest in the Boston fern hanging on my porch.  The female is, of course, an unassuming shade of don't-notice-me brown.  The male has a lovely red head and breast.  They have been busily bringing bits of grass and twigs and plunging them down into the heart of this potted fern for the past several days.  When I come and go, I generally find them both perched on the string of Christmas lights that is still, shamefully, circling our carport - watching from a distance as I pass.

I call them Mister and Missus.  They are so small and sweet and adorable.  I'm glad to have them in my fern. 

I was concerned at first as to how I would manage to water the fern without dousing the nest, but a facebook friend of mine told me she had the same situation and had gotten one of those glass watering globes that you fill with water and then plunge into the soil.  Good idea!  So I'll do that next week.

I love backyard wildlife.  I'm such a kid.  At our old house on 40th street, my garden was the home of an enormous brown toad we called "Old Joe."  He had burrowed down into the soft earth of my raised squash bed, and came out at night, or when I watered enough to flood his burrow.  He was hug and fat and we loved seeing him.  I haven't had toads in my yard since then, which I think is a shame.

I have mice.  The dogs chase them around the woodpile (i.e. large, unsightly pile of limbs fallen from the sycamore tree that I have piled next to the shed) at night.  Sometimes they catch one.

When I lived in North Carolina, near the forest, there were hundreds of gabillions of frogs and toads.  Tree frogs filled the night air with their calls, and there were loud-mouthed frogs too tiny to see in the grass around the pond, and giant GaLUMPHing bullfrogs and lots of toads that came up on the patio at night to eat the june bugs.  A horrible little boy lived next door for awhile who used to kill them for fun.  I always gave him the evil eye when I caught him sneaking up on one of MY toads.  What kind of child kills a toad on purpose?  I future serial killer, I'm guessing. I'll be reading about that kid in the news one day. Mark my words.

One of our educators at the museum told me I can go catch toadlets in the spring and relocated them to my garden, as long as I provide them a water source, like a wide shallow dish, and a place to hide.  So I'll be making a trip to the stream alongside the railroad tracks in a few weeks, to pick up some new garden tenants.  They can eat the bugs on my broccoli.

I get these caterpillars on my broccoli that are wreaking havoc.  They are exactly the color of broccoli leaves, so you can be looking right at them and not see them at first.  but they're there... munching away.  I've taken to spraying the leaves vigorously with the hose when I water to blast the little buggers away.  I can't kill them.  They're kind of cute, in a fat green caterpillary sort of way. I just pick them of and toss them out of the garden.  It's probably worse for them than squishing, because they probably starve to death, but it's easier on my conscience.