CSI: Backyard

I was sitting on my back porch sipping a midori sour and reading an Elizabeth Peters novel, as one does on a Friday evening, when I was pulled out of 19th century Egypt back into my real world by a ruckus at the back of the driveway. A loud buzzing sound and the frantic flapping of red wings caught my attention. It took a minute for my eyes to change focus from my e-reader to the outdoors (the over-40 set will understand the struggle) but, when they did, I clearly saw that a cardinal had triumphed over some sort of insect. 

By the sound, I guessed it was a cicada. I haven't seen any yet this season, despite the major hatch-out that apparently has happened in other parts of the country. I wanted to know for sure but didn't want to disturb the feasting. After all, it sounded like it had taken some effort for the cardinal to slaughter the bug. I would have hated to scare him off his meal. Once he finished, however, I visited the scene of the crime looking for clues.

The first thing I saw was a shiny wing.

It was smaller than what I usually associate with cicadas but there are different sized cicadas and the green made me think my guess had been correct. Closer inspection yielded more clues, though some went against my cicada theory. (I know you shouldn't go into an investigation with a set conclusion in mind but I'm not actually a forensic investigator of any kind so I don't care.) There was a moth's wing and what appeared to be the shell of some variety of beetle - they kind of felt like acrylic fingernails, so that was interesting.

Then my investigation took a darker turn with a pair of legs, some distance from each other.

I continued scanning the area and then...oh my...is that a face?

Well, that could have fallen off at any time. Maybe it wasn't from the most recent slaughter I had witnessed. But then...oh...oh dear...that's certainly part of an insect. And it's still...um... squishy. Ewwwwww.

Okay, enough CSI for me. A cardinal had thrashed a bug that may or may not have been the first cicada of the season. Case closed. The ant crew was already on the scene to clean everything up. The wing had actually disappeared by the time I finished examining the rest of the bits. Nature is a wondrous thing!

An Update on the Birds

On July 4, I wrote about the multiple birds that were nesting in our hedge. I thought I’d share a little update about how they turned out.

The mourning doves had a particularly successful brood. They made very little noise until they outgrown the nest. Then, we could hear them crashing through the branches of the cedar as they were figuring out their wings. I don’t know how many eggs were laid in this clutch, but I was able to get a picture of three nearly-grown birds hanging out by the nest.

Three mourning doves

The robins, on the other hand, had a bad time of things. Well, perhaps not bad, but completely unsuccessful. The female robin sat the next for some time but nothing came of it. Anytime someone went near the next she would fly off making quite a racket. It makes sense that she would try to draw whatever intruder away. That was so different from the nearly-silent doves. By the end of July, it appears that the robins had abandoned the nest. I found a broken egg on the driveway under the lilac bush.

Broken robin egg

The real stars of our little bird show were the cardinals. While Mr. Tomato was continuing to take care of the chicks in the nest by the driveway, the Mrs. began sitting another nest across the yard. We watched a lot of comings and goings from both sides as the pair raised two broods. Just this week we’ve seen both sets of junior cardinals out exploring. Junior, a bird from the first nest, is almost entirely fledged out with adult colors while the Junior Juniors (I've seen three together at once) from the second nest is still has some baby down. They like to sing and play in the evenings just as the light is fading so I haven’t been able to get many photos but I did catch one of the Junior Juniors the other day.

Junior Junior cardinal

As a country girl, I never expected to get to enjoy so much wildlife in my suburban backyard.

Who's that checking out our garden?

It's one of the twins!

Sun Bunnies

Rabbits are notorious for letting the air out of tires.

Backyard Birds

We have a mixed hedge of cedar and laurel with some lilac mixed in that runs along the south side of our driveway. It is, apparently, a very attractive home to nesting birds. This spring a pair of grackles built a nest high in the cedars. Once hatched, the little birds made quite a racket, especially when one of the parents swooped in bringing food. It was really nice watching and listening to the little creatures, hoping that they would grow up healthy and strong.

Grackle with something yummy (maybe) for its chicks

On May 22, I saw a little gray bird hopping in the grass near the garden. My first thought was, “Oh no. The little guy fell out of the nest. I wonder if it can fly well enough to at least get off the ground and away from predators.” There are some neighborhood cats that I’m sure would have loved to pounce on the fledgling. But then I saw two more little birds on the fence nearby and knew that they were our little grackles on their first trip away from the nest. They all could fly (well enough) and seemed to be having a nice time exploring in and around the garden.

Such sweet little things!

I thought that was it for our little rookery. The babies had flown and it was now getting into late June. But then about a week ago, I saw a robin with its beak filled with twigs and bits of dried grass. It kept flying into one of the lilac bushes among the laurels so I decided to check it out. Sure enough, the robin was building a nest just high enough to be above my reach. Not that I wanted to reach the nest. We just always joke that robins are not the best at picking safe spots for nests. I remember as a child looking down into a nest of peeping mouths when a pair of robins had built their nest in the bucket of my father’s backhoe.

Robins' nest in a lilac just above my head

The robin had a problem, though, beyond the relative low height of the nest. A pair of cardinals had also chosen that section of the hedge in which to build a nest. There were a couple of bird fights in the driveway and it appeared that the cardinals were victorious. Three days ago we started to hear very small voices coming from the hedge. Today, those voices are much louder. We hear them frequently as Mr. and Mrs. Tomato-head dart in and out of the hedge to feed their babies. I wanted to get some pictures of the pair but they are always on the move. It sounds like there are at least two, if not three or more, chicks to feed so they have been kept very busy.

Mr. Tomato-head earlier in the summer before the responsibilities of parenthood

When I first heard the tiny peeping voices, I decided to try to locate the nest. I ducked my head into the hedge and took a look around. Lo and behold, there it was, on the left up in the cedars. I took a couple of photos and bragged to my husband about how I had found the cardinals’ nest. There was one problem, though. When I took a closer look at the photos, I discovered it was not the cardinals’ nest. It was that of a dove.

Surprise, its a doves' nest

Closeup of the nest - someone's looking at me!

What a delightful surprise! Of course, it should not have been that big of a surprise. A couple weeks earlier we had the opportunity to witness a pair of doves having fun sexy time on the roof of our garage. I managed to get a few photos as they were basking in post-coital bliss.

Mrs. Dove

Mr. Dove

I was still curious about the location of the cardinals’ nest, however. So, I ducked back into the hedge and looked around again when the Mrs. was visiting the nest. I was able to pinpoint the nest that time, though it was really difficult to get a good picture of it. I did get another surprise, though. A robin went flying off of its nest (the one I thought had been abandoned) and proceeded to chirp me a new one for disturbing it. So, it looks as though we have three pairs of birds sharing a fairly small space in our hedge. It’s like we’re running an avian maternity ward.

There is a cardinal nest in there, I swear!

Robin's just a little grumpy after I disturbed it.

General locations of the birds' nests in our hedge

Putting Up Our Harvest

Years ago, when we lived on the mountain, we had to buy a chest freezer to store all the extra produce from our garden. We have no plans on plugging that freezer in this year but we still have more vegetables from the garden than we can eat fresh. So, here are some of the things we did with the extra veggies.

So many tomatoes!

I intended to make a big batch of cucumber pickles when it wasn’t too hot out. Unfortunately, we had a very dry spell after a very wet spell and that stressed out the plants enough that the cucumbers went bitter. I felt really bad throwing dozens of cucumbers into the compost but they just weren’t edible. I did have a small heap of cucumbers from before the plants turned. There weren’t enough to warrant pulling out the water-bath canner so I made a small batch of freezer pickles instead.

I used the recipe for Freezer Dills in the book Farm Anatomy by Julia Rothman. (This is a great little book, by the way, with lots of basic information and beautiful illustrations.) The recipe is also available on Grit magazine’s website.  I have yet to try them but I’m sure they will be a wonderful treat when the snow starts flying.

Pickles in the freezer

I also decided to pickle turnips. I had not heard of pickled turnips before but the power of Google showed me that they were, indeed, a thing. So, I decided to give them a try. There are a bunch of recipes available online. I ended up using one from Eating Well. I filled two quart jars and look forward to trying them.

Turnip pickles

Back in June I made two jars of pak choi refrigerator pickles. We got into them last week. They are very vinegary (maybe a bit too vinegary for some people’s tastes) but they are really good on hotdogs. The white stem parts are nice and crunchy. I’m definitely going to plant more pak choi next year.

During the winter, I bring soup to work every day for lunch. During the summer, it feels odd to make soup but with all the wonderful fresh vegetables coming out of the garden I had to make a batch of minestrone soup. There are a lot of recipes out there for summer minestrone. The August issue of Cooking Light magazine has a good recipe and it happened into my mailbox just as I was wondering what to do with all my veggies. Homegrown carrots, green onions, tomatoes, squash, green beans and chard all went into my massive soup pot along with cannellini beans and ditalini pasta to make a wonderfully hearty soup. We ate some for dinner and I put the rest (three quart-bags full) into the freezer for later.

Bags of summer minestrone in the freezer

We are currently being inundated with tomatoes. I love fresh tomatoes on sandwiches and salads but it’s beginning to get out of hand. I don’t want to throw out any because I didn’t get to use them in time. So, today I made some tomato juice. I was going for tomato sauce but we didn’t grow sauce tomatoes so it was a bit more watery. No problem. The juice will be a great base for soups and sauces. All I did was cut up the tomatoes and simmer then for about 45 minutes. Then I pushed them through a sieve with a wooden spoon to get rid of the skins and seeds. (This is one time when I really miss my mom’s old food mill.) I then put the juice into zip-top sandwich bags in 1-cup servings. I laid them flat on a cookie sheet and put them in the freezer. Once they are frozen, I will transfer them to a gallon size freezer bag.

From tomatoes...

...to tomato juice ready for the freezer.

And since I was heating up the house to process the tomatoes anyway, I decided to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. And yes, I did put two dozen of them up in the freezer so we wouldn’t just eat them all!

Mmm...cookies!

And a cardinal, just because.

So Much Veg!

Now that we’re deep into the summer, it seems like everything is coming ripe in the garden. This evening I picked tomatoes, cucumbers, garden peas, beans, zucchini and some chives. It had been two whole days since I picked anything so of course we had a pair of Moby Dills (aka overgrown cucumbers.)

Thar she blows!

Every day I can come from the garden with a handful of beans. I’ve started to plan meals around what is ready to pick. Tonight’s dinner was tuna sandwiches with fresh early girl tomato slices and green beans and pear tomatoes on the side. The other day I picked beans, tomatoes and tarragon for a nicoise salad. Lunches have been random mixtures of whatever veggies are on hand on top of lettuce or rice depending on if I feel like a hot or cold lunch. Snacks are snap peas and cucumber slices with hummus.

At the moment we are hovering on the edge of having more veg than I know what to do with. There are five zucchini in the fridge along with a quart bag of beans, another of snap peas, a bowl of shelled peas, large sacks of cucumbers, turnips and beets and a small bag of chard. The chard still in the garden is actually bouncing back from the fungal infection. I had to trim out a lot of infected leaves but those that are still standing look good. I would cut some more but there is still so much other greenery already picked that needs to be eaten.

The colors are so lovely!

I am hesitant to start freezing things for a couple of reasons. First of all it is in the high 80s this week. It doesn’t take that long to blanch some veggies but I cannot bring myself to heating up the house any more than I have to. Second, I really like the taste of fresh vegetables. Things like zucchini and snap peas freeze well enough but they are never quite the same when thawed. Green beans and greens like chard are just as good after freezing but, again, I don’t want to heat up the house getting them prepped for storage. And, of course, cucumbers can’t be frozen at all. I plan on making some pickles eventually when it cools down a bit. So, for the foreseeable future, every meal and snack will be filled with fresh veggies. That’s not so bad.

Other garden updates: the corn is tasseling out and the ground around the potatoes is pushing up and cracking. We pulled out all the kale. I tempted fate and didn’t bother with row covers so the cabbage worms got their fill. The fennel is starting to put on a good show. I don’t know if it’ll have time to bulk up though. The rattlesnake beans are going crazy. We’re going to use them as shell beans. The eggplant and peppers are finally starting to put on flowers and the strawberries are doing their best to fill their entire bed. So far, so good. I think my garden’s first year is well on its way to be called a success.

Rattlesnake beans

Tiny pepper

Tiny spider

Beefsteak tomatoes

Robins!

Strawberries ready to take over the world

Huh?

Rabbit family out for an evening bask