Tag: Backyard Wildlife

Hannah and the CoalBear: Return to the Catio

Hi. I’m Mateo.

Mateo: Do I look like a bunny murderer to you?

The Mother of Cats has been really busy outside, and after days and days of messing around on the catio WITHOUT LETTING ME OUT!!! she finally put away her little pink tool bag, opened the door, and let us out onto the catio. My long, long period of suffering was over. Bunny, here I come!!!

Hannah and I took to the table to get a really good view of all the new things.

Wow. She was really busy out here. There are plants, and a new wall of netting that keeps me in the catio (which is also absolutely unnecessary) so I can’t play with my friends out in the yard. Gosh. There sure is a lot to report on!!

The Mother of Cats has been at work cleaning out the gardens and putting new plants everywhere. A lot of the plants from indoors have moved out here, and it really is kind of nice out here now. She bought a new rose bush!! There certainly is a lot of wildlife in the yard by the catio… maybe they like the flowers too.

There is lots and lots of action over by the birdfeeders in the yard. Birds of all different kinds have been visiting the feeder and hang out in the yard. There are robins, and blue jays, and doves, and BLACKBIRDS that make a nice sound, and lots of little finches. Hannah just LOVES watching the birds, and even though she asked the Mother of Cats really nicely to let her out of the catio to GO GET THEM she hasn’t relented. Why does the Mother of Cats do this? I tell you, someone needs to step in to keep all of this wildlife under control. The bunny in particular has become incorrigible.

The bunny sleeps in the Mother of Cats front flower bed and she ATE all of the plants down to the roots. She is harvesting grass from the lawn and comes right up to Hannah at the catio on her way to her little home under the deck. She has been really busy all day today, and the Mother of Cats thinks that means that there are more baby bunnies on the way. That would be kind of nice as there is only one baby now, and he might be a little lonely. I should go out and play with him, right? That would be a nice thing to do…

Doesn’t this baby look like he needs friends?

The Mother of Cats says it looks like the garden needs to be weeded, but she also says that she can only do so much at a time. She left us yesterday and came back with a new lawnmower which seems kind of mean because the bunny likes the grass long, and I DON’T LIKE LAWNMOWERS!!! Like, they are so much worse than vacuums, right? Why would she do such a thing. Forget the lawnmower and weed the garden, Mother of Cats!!

Well, that is everything that is going on here. I spend all of my spare time out on the catio, and the Mother of Cats keeps working out in the yard and reading books. Does the Mother of Cats knit? No, she does not. Hannah kind of misses the yarn, but maybe this is just a phase and the Mother of Cats will be get back to knitting soon. I do have to mention… some new yarn did come in the mail last week… someday soon she will knit again.

Oh, wait a minute… the baby bunny is out in the grass again… kind of busy here… gotta go…

This is Mateo, signing off.

>^..^<

Note from the Mother of Cats:

I have been making fingerless mitts on my Addi knitting machine and tomorrow I am going to a scleroderma conference and will take some to give away to other patients. My wrists are slowly getting better, and I am hopefully buying yarn to make a couple of sweaters… someday…

I did have to use some bunny deterrent to keep Little Miss out of the flower beds. Cinnamon. Cinnamon works great! The rabbit now sits sadly in the grass right next to the garden, watching me with a betrayed look whenever I go out front…

Wait until the lawn mower comes out, bunny!!

The BioGeek Memoirs: Swallowtail and Ash

September 1st. I woke up this morning to the sound of geese flying over the house, honking away as they crossed just above the treetops. It is a bright blue day here in Colorado where I live, and the garden and the lawn are recovering after the extreme heat of the last two months. The robins are now gone, and there is just one bunny left in my yard. The fall plants are getting ready to bloom, the first golden leaves are appearing on the locust trees, and the end of summer is upon me.

The stonecrop is starting to bloom, the viburnum berries are turning red, and the last columbine blooms of the season are appearing in the cooler weather.

Monday was an exciting day for the cats as I had the ash tree out front pruned. The tree was damaged in an early heavy snowfall, and I wanted to make sure it was given every opportunity to flourish in the aftermath of losing several limbs.

I love that ash tree! I have it treated for ash borers every year (the emerald ash borer just arrived in my area of Colorado… not good news for ash trees!), and last year I even had it deep watered during the winter to protect it from drought damage. It puts shade onto my house, is an essential component of squirrel route one over the house, and serves as food for one of my favorite butterflies…

Swallowtails! Here they are feeding on my butterfly bush’s blooms.

Swallowtails are big butterflies! They are so big (they don’t hold still long enough for me to measure, but they are like 3-4 inches…) you can sometimes hear them flapping as they head across the yard, darting to and fro as they check out the various blooms in the area. They are much faster and more robust than your usual butterfly, so they are hard to grab a shot of if they don’t settle down onto a flower to snack on some nectar. They love my butterfly bushes, so I planted more last year hoping to lure them to the yard. I also left the stump of an ash tree that I lost a few years ago in the back yard, too.

This is what is left over from my lost ash tree in the back yard.

Okay, I am a geek for sure. I didn’t cut back the suckers from the stump so it would grow into a shrub with enticing ash leaves for swallowtails to lay eggs on. The shrub is also important shade for baby bunnies, but that is another issue. All that lawn damage around the shrub is from the bunnies eating the grass down to the dirt, and then rolling around in the dirt, and then doing a little digging on the side, but… this is a post about butterflies so I will move on.

Bunny: you should just move on… by the way, do you notice how cute I am?

Several times this summer I saw swallowtails in the ash shrub. Yay! The ash tree isn’t food for the butterflies, but rather food for the developing larvae from the eggs that the butterfly lays on the leaves. It is my hope that there were some eggs laid in there that will lead to new swallowtails in the spring next year. I haven’t seen any of the caterpillars, but something has been munching on the leaves…

Quite a few of the leaves show the evidence of an insect snacking on them!

The caterpillars become pupae eventually and then hide themselves away in a sheltered location for the winter, emerging as butterflies in the spring. It is my hope that there are some pupae tucked away in a bunny-proof location near the ground and along the cut-off trunk of the old tree where they will gradually transform into the fabulous flyers of the summer.

The guys who pruned the ash tree out front also removed a struggling maple tree from my back yard. They gave the ash shrub some side eye and offered to take it away too, but I was like… NOOOOOO… I need that for my backyard wildlife…

Did they not notice my butterfly bushes? This backyard is a whole butterfly ecosystem that I have going…

Summer is on the wane, and the swallowtails are gone along with the robins and almost all of my bunnies. Soon the leaves will fall. Asleep, hidden in the debris of summer, the butterflies are secretly transforming and biding their time until May. Sleep well, little guys. I can’t wait to see you next year.