Category: Yard

Yard Progress

The last couple weekends I’ve been working on finishing the landscaping for another section of my yard.

Before (look along the fence by the gate):
Before

When I started the weekend before last I was only planning to remove some gravel so I could work on the flowerbed edging and retaining wall along the fence. Since I wasn’t planning to do anything major I didn’t think to take a good before picture. Then once I’d removed some gravel I got to looking at it and decided I had enough space to start adding things, and eventually it got too dark to work and I had to stop. This was taken the next day:
After round 1

I was pretty proud of the progress I made, but having loosely retained gravel holding up a few paving stones made it hard to get to the fence-side of the flowerbed. After having to work my way along that side several times assisting Talore in hunting grasshoppers (bonus pictures of this later) I figured I should work on that this past weekend.

I didn’t start with big plans, I was just going to move some dirt/gravel out of the way (again). This was taken when I realized I’d cleared a whole ‘nother segment-worth of space (segments being the width of the weedblock fabric I’m putting down under the gravel):
Before 2

And the after picture from Sunday:
After 2

I tried to line up the pictures so they’d be from the same angle, but it was hard to flip back and forth between them (several other pictures between) so I figured this was good enough. I’m really happy with how it’s progressing, but to do more I’m going to have to decide how I want the end of that flowerbed to be done. I also need to go get more landscaping blocks to go along the fence since I only started with a single row and the wall I’m building with them is two-blocks tall. Hopefully I’ll do more on it this weekend (long weekend for the win), but I’ve got another couple projects I really need to get to that probably should come first.

As promised, a picture of the ferocious hunter and her catch:
Talore with prey
Admittedly she wouldn’t have eaten it (happened shortly after the picture, and boy did it crunch) without my help, but by the time she lost it in the grass it was maimed enough it couldn’t jump and was leaving a trail of goo. I didn’t see any reason to leave it to die and feed the ants, so I dug it out for her.

With how much Talore seems to crave the hunt she sure doesn’t prolong it. Most of the bugs she catches get eaten as soon as she’s managed to stun them so they don’t jump when she lets go with her paws. This one apparently was rather more resilient and led her on a merry chase around my yard in circles (I kept having to untangle the leash from the taller plants).

Hummingbirds and Cats

I’ve been told that hummingbirds are really attracted to red and that if I wore something red I might be able to get them to fly closer to me. This was the best I got last weekend:
Hummingbird from outside
The fact that my neighbor was also outside and was using a hedge trimmer may have made them skittish, but they wouldn’t come near me and of the very few I saw I think the one in the picture was the only one that went to the feeder while I was outside.

I was working in my yard some yesterday and had the cats outside with me. It took a while for me to stop accidentally scaring them away (hummingbirds sound similar to bumblebees, but much louder, so at first when they’d fly over the fence next to me I’d duck and they’d flee at the sudden motion), but eventually they’d stick around briefly. It’s hard to get good pictures with how fast they move, but some of the pictures actually have hummingbirds in them and came out well.

Talore with bird

This one blends in very well against the hollyhocks: the hummingbird is just above the top of the arch of the stand for the feeder.
Dash with bird

Hummingbirds are quite fearless. If there were two hummingbirds in my yard at the same time they’d ignore both me and the cats to attempt to chase each other off. With only one hummingbird it would always be focused on me, but sometimes would still eat from the feeder. I’m not sure if it was just that I was literally the biggest threat or because the way the cats would go completely motionless was effective, but the cats got surprisingly close to them a couple times (never pounced). A couple times after a bird left Talore looked at me and meowed like she was scolding me for scaring it off before it got closer.

Hummingbird Pictures

Apparently the new sugar-water is better: they’re sticking around long enough I was able to get pictures. Despite the occasional bit of rain I saw probably half a dozen hummingbirds come through my yard in an hour or two this afternoon. All but one got to eat – it got chased off by a different hummingbird (I think it was a rufous since the picture looks about right and they’re supposed to be aggressive).

The light wasn’t great so I took this picture so the bird would be silhouetted against the brighter sky.
Hummingbird feeding

The bird is kind of hard to make out (left side of the feeder), but Dash sure was captivated for a bit.
Dash discovering entertainment

Talore came over to see why Dash was making noises at the window. The bird is along the top edge of the fence left of the feeder.
Multiple observers