Teeny Tiny Bird’s Nest

While I was visiting my mom the other day she told me about a tiny bird’s nest in one of her butterfly bushes. It really is a tiny nest, you can’t really tell by the photo, but the eggs are about the size of marbles. We’re not sure what kind of bird it is, I’ll have to see if I can figure it out? The little bird was chirping at us from a tree while we took a few photos of it’s little treasures.
A few sites to help identify birds & their nests:
All About Birds – a great general website to help identify birds.
Sialis – has photos of many eggs and how to identify birds by the eggs in the nests.
Nest Watch– helps identify birds by the sizes of their nests and the eggs inside. You can also sign up and enter the information about the nests located in your yard. This would be a great thing to do with kids!

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Mushrooms a Plenty

I found these this morning growing on my pile of Sweet Peet. They’re very pretty.

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Here come the Hollyhocks

They say you can’t have a cottage garden without hollyhocks, which is good because I like cottage gardens and I really like hollyhocks. They are such tall stately flowers able to withstand so much weathering.

I have had trouble with the deer eating them in the spring, but this year I figured out a place where the deer won’t eat them and my hollyhocks are taller than I am. I have old-fashioned double hollyhocks, the blossoms look like small peony blossoms, I would like to get some single ones next year. They’re such intriguing flowers since they bloom from the bottom up. They are beautiful from the multiple buds on the top of the flower stalk to the partially opened buds down to the full flowers.

Here are a few photos from one of my hollyhocks (all from the same flower stalk from top to bottom).

I love how all the buds form at the top of the stalk and then as it grows the buds space themselves out on the stalk.

The buds are so neat when they begin to pop open. You can finally see what color the flowers will be.
Down a little more and the buds are a little more open, beginning to reveal the ruffled petals.

Going down even farther you start to see a little more of the flower.

And finally the full blossom at the very bottom.

Here’s a larger photo showing a foot or so of the bloom stalk.

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