Springtime flowers and birds

I found some pictures from spring I hadn't posted.

I enjoy puttering in the yard and planting things.

Some of my flowers haven't survived.  I'm not the best gardener.  I try.  These pretty flowers are currently not flowering.  I fertilize but who knows.


The birds really like the post that this is hanging on.

The orioles have migrated on.  

The barn swallows are persistently trying to make a nest above our front door 

but my husband keeps discouraging that.  

It is not too pleasant for guests to be greeting by swooping swallows

 or the front porch littered with bird doodoo.

I will have a post or two about the robins later.

Sometimes the oriole would come try the hummingbird's sweet nectar.

 The hummingbirds have also moved on but they will be back in the fall.

We won't see the orioles until next spring.  Someone reminded me that it still is spring officially.  With children out of school and muggy, hot weather, it feels like summer.  It is just a couple of days away!

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;

And give us not to think so far away

As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh. give us pleasure in the orchard white,

Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;

And make us happy in the happy bees,

That swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird

That suddenly above the bees is heard;

The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,

And off a blossom in mid-air stands still.

For this is love, and nothing else is love,

The which it is reserved for God above

To sanctify to what ends He will,

But which it only needs that we fulfill.

Robert Frost