Swallowtail

Most mornings we walk past the house that is being built across the road from our field of dreams. We've been watching since work began on digging the well. We spoke to the contractor, now that we have a vested interest in such things, who said he would have liked to site the house farther away from the road and turn it a little more toward the view, but there was only one place on the large lot suitable for a septic system, which was where he would have liked to put the house. When you live in the country, life is governed by a new set of rules!

This morning, the walls were going up and a tractor was moving gravel. The table with an umbrella where they lay out the blueprints, which once stood on a pile of rubble, is now on a finished floor. At any given time, at least one guy has his tape measure out. Such important things rely on a simple tool which hasn't changed much over the years.

Before it got too hot, I sat under the arbor and enjoyed the morning activities of the garden. A group of turkey vultures wheeled overhead, zeroing in on a group of trees behind the neighbor's house. The crows were raucously convening their board meeting in a nearby oak tree. The woodpeckers are concentrating on the suet holder, most likely because they have a nest in a nearby telephone pole. The quail couple who used to walk up the back steps every morning are less in evidence, and then only the male. Perhaps his spouse is sitting on a nest.

Bees love the lavender, butterflies love verbena and the aphids love everything! Some plants, like the passionflower vine, grow so aggressively that they threaten to engulf the garden or grow into the house, others die without explanation and have to be pulled out.

I spent a couple of hours this afternoon doing battle with the vine,, and some euphorbia which appears to be dying. Once removed, the large pot it surrounded appears to be tilted toward the house, no doubt because some rodent has dug a hole underneath it! I'll leave that battle to OilMan and his infamous stink bombs, which he swears are working!

For such a peaceful looking place, the garden is surprisingly busy!