Snuggly Cat Belly #2

A sweet puzzle, this--
skittish wild kitty sleeps with
such wild abandon

Yardlong Bean

A variety of Yardlong bean [3 feet plus, white bean? Can't remember]

Do they get to be a yard long? Pretty close. I often see them at 30 inches or so.
Love the Florida summer. Maybe 60 days to flowering? I started these in March.

Prolific as hell. Two plants, about one week.
That's a regular sized dinner plate, sports fans.

***
Yardlong beans for dinner
Yardlong beans for lunch
Covered in roast onion and tarragon pesto
I'll even have them for brunch

***
Yardlong beans on the grill
Yardlong beans with tofu
Yardlong beans in stir fry
A lot of yardlong beans to go thru

***

Florida. Summer.
Watching the yardlong beans grow
a sweet recompense

You can get seeds at Evergreen Seeds.
That's a lot of beans for $4.50 worth of seeds.

Spring Blanket

thickly-coated cat
any downwind petting mom
wears his shedded hair

Sons & Daughters

It's May and the blue jays
are learning to fly
still partly gray
awkward adolescent heads
they make flying leaps of
10 feet, then 15, then 30
hopping and cheeping around the yard
somebody's blue jay daughters
somebody's blue jay sons.

Photo courtesy of Ralph Deeds

Morning

faint light and birdsong

killer Haley finds fortress

behind my curved legs

Great Egret

So I'm taking a shovel back to the tool corral [where Stephen is supposed to keep his mes, um tools corraled] and I notice something new to the yard....


It's a great egret! It's big! It's after the fish in our fish pond! It does not want to go away! We finally had to build a mesh cage to put over the pond. It remains optimistic about its chances though. We see it all the time.



Awfully pretty though. And kind of wonderous to have in your yard in downtown Snorasota. Florida is amazingly fecund.

glowing in sunlight
thinly bound by gravity
hope stands on stilt legs

Common Yellowthroat Warbler

So I'm on my front porch reading and I hear this 'tchat.' [srsly, that's what they sound like, you can listen here. an added advantage is if you have cats, they'll run around like crazy looking for the bird. Haley was convinced it was inside the printer.] Tchat, tchat. I look around and see this teensy bird hopping from bush to tree, perching on the plant stakes, looking at the peppers and broccoli. Cute!



He flies over to the bird bath [which hardly anyone uses as a bath, it's mostly too deep but lots of them drink from it] and hops around on the edges. Hop, tchat, hop, tchat. It starts to jump inside the bath-whoa I think--it's actually going swimming? Jumps in, jumps out.

Jumps in, jumps out. Does not want to go swimming. That's when I realize the water is too low for it to reach, and it's thirsty! I fill it up of course, but fully expect that I've scared it off. But no! It only waits until I'm back on the porch and comes and drinks and drinks and drinks. Yeah teensy bird!


It hangs around and sings a bit. wich-i-ty, wich-i-ty, wich-i-ty. wich-i-ty, wich-i-ty, wich-i-ty. then leaves.


I love my front porch.I'm so happy, I sing too. wich-i-ty, wich-i-ty, wich-i-ty. wich-i-ty, wich-i-ty, wich-i-ty.

I think I'll call him Sparky

The cats bring in lots of anoles [nope, the lizards you see for the most part in South Florida aren't geckos].

screen clinging lizard
is no match for my technique
of catch and release.