American Goldfinch and the Garden

There's a new friend at our birdfeeder!

the american goldfinch

Also, until I take pictures of the work in the garden, here are a few plants we've added.

peony- it looks just like this... i am not sure what color it will end up being.

i LOVE peonies. can't wait to cut our roses, some peonies, and a few other flowers for vases!

cosmos- all along the back fence.

we have a beautiful, established garden that the previous homeowners worked very hard on.

but it is all up against the house. when you look out the window, you look over the garden to the grass and fence. i want some colors to pop at the fence so i have something to look out to when i open the blinds in the morning. i just love cosmos, and i am hoping they will go bonkers. i bought a lot...

meanwhile, our porch needed some container plants, so here are the ones i chose.

these are (in order), sweet potato vine, kong coleus, euphorbia, redhead coleus, vinca vine, pink chaos coleus, rusty red ipomoea, asparagus fern, indian summer coleus, 3d silver osteospermum, and splish splash coleus.

the colors of our house are sage green and a rusty cranberry color. i have hung purple petunia baskets along our porch, with a bright pink/purple/white basket of impatiens near our chairs. so i was going for green, purple, and red plants. the bright pink touches were accidental and i love it. :)

Amazing! I just heard about this artist -Edgar Müller- on Yahoo! .... maybe you did too.

new sights and sounds

hello, out there...

it's been a VERY long absence on my part.

i've often had good intentions of getting back on this thing,

but life is so busy and i am not equipped with a camera that is charged very often, making documentation very difficult.

we've moved into our new house and been here now for more than six months. as spring unfolds, i have found myself very content in the backyard picking around and figuring this gardening thing out. we are SO excited about our backyard (thanks to the valiant and thorough efforts of the previous homeowners), and it has been so fun seeing what's been popping up.

i recently purchased a shepherd's hook and a few bird feeders (thanks to a very informed bird enthusiast at walmart.) i set up the bird feeder right outside of the kitchen nook so we could watch for birds as we eat breakfast... and so that levi could have a little 'kitty tv' as i like to call it.

this morning i woke up early and sat at the kitchen table, and to my surprise, saw over 7 different kinds of birds visit our feeder. (so far no hummingbirds to my hummingbird feeder, despite the bird enthusiast's emphatic assurance that they would come.) i found a great website that helps identify birds.

so, without further ado, here are the characters of the bird show now playing on kitty tv:

brewer's blackbird- our first visitor, a bit of a bully.

house wrench (male on left, female on right)- our most frequent visitors.

they always come in a pair... what love birds!

mourning dove- apparently a very common bird in the u.s.... is it just me or do doves seem kind of ditzy?

american robin... very, very, very early this spring they covered our aspen tree- maybe ten pairs of males and females?? all the males sat at the top (viewable from the second floor window) and the females at the bottom (from the main floor window). they only did this for one day.... what is that all about? anyone? anyone?

the red-winged blackbird... male.

the red-winged blackbird... female.

cassin's finch- my personal favorite.

there are still two i have not identified... a yellow bird we saw in the aspen tree while working in the backyard, and a black/gray/white bird i saw for only a second at the bird feeder this morning.

i feel kind of silly getting into all of this- like i need a pair of binoculars for my inner dork- but really, these birds- and the many more i saw while searching online- are absolutely beautiful, and so varied...

i will keep posting what else i see- first hand- and hope one day soon, it will be a hummingbird.