I don’t believe I have informed you of the fact that we have three bird nests in the yard this spring.  Starling in the chimney, eurasian doves in the blue spruce and magpies in the Austrian pine.  It’s been a thing to endure, at times.  Well, not the doves, I like doves very much and they make pretty noises.  I have neutral feelings about the starling.  However, the magpies are making me nutty.  Allow me to dwell on the magpie situation for a little while.  First of all, their nest is a hideous, pseudo-spherical smathering of sticks that constantly loosen themselves and rain down on the Airstream and one of my gardens.  Secondly, they make generally awful noises and begin their scratchy, dissonant yodeling in the early hours of the morning.  Thirdly, the adults tried to kill the cat on a regular basis until the cat ate one of them (it was a miracle, I rejoiced).  Revenge was very sweet for Rhubarb who had enough of  being bullied and having his tail pulled multiple times a day while sunbathing on the lawn.

So you get the general idea that I have not been delighted by the magpie nest in the yard, however, the chicks have been emerging this week and they really are the cutest little tender and fluffy things with enormous raven-esque beaks on their faces and I squeak a little each time I get a good view of one so I suppose the magpie situation hasn’t been all bad.  I’ve even sat up on the roof with binoculars in order to get a closer look at their antics.  Boy howdy they’re cuties, to be sure.

I do look forward to the time when their handsome little family disperses into the sagebrush higher up the mountain, later this summer.  In the meanwhile I keep ear plugs on the bedside table as a peaceful response to all the early morning racket.

Now, about the garden, isn’t this a magnificent rose?  Robert and I have been planting, digging, tearing down, building up, weeding, soil pepping and frolicking about the yard like we are made of ten green thumbs each.  I love this time of year!  The raspberry canes already look full.  The grapevines are about to pop open into broad leafiness.  The roses are coming on strong.  The peach tree and plum trees look very promising.  We have grand hopes for the peonies.  My numerous clematis vines are zooming for the sky.  It’s sheer magnificence no matter where you look here.  We have plants growing out of every nook and cranny.  We need more space which is, I suppose, why we are casually shopping for a ranch.

Today we’ll buy our tomatoes and I might pick up a few peppers, to boot, though I never have great luck with them.

How does your garden grow?