Daffydills

Even in the Chicago area spring comes, although signs of it can be slow to appear. The first flowers we get around the house are the daffodills (sp?) out front. There also has been a pair of robins hanging around the front yard. For some reason they don't frequent the feeders, guess we don't have the right food there for them. I would suppose they are after worms or insects but I never see them around back and pretty sure we have worms and insects there. We did in the past have grubs in the front which attracted skunks who showed up at night and dug many, many holes to get at them. I didn't know what grub infestation looked like until one year I dug around a tree and uncovered them. There were hundreds of the little grubby buggers all around this crabapple tree in front. I could see why the skunks were digging, plenty to eat for them. Since then we get this yard treatment stuff that has something for grubs in it but haven't done it this year yet. I did get some mothballs and spread them around the backyard (supposedly keeps the skunks away) I bought some exspensive stuff a couple years back that was supposedly "fox urine) which would scare the skunks and after using it didn't see any skunks. Reading the label though it said the contents were like .0001 % fox urine and 99% mothballs. I priced em and the mothballs are much cheaper then fox pee so since then I use just the mothballs from Walgreens.

Sunflowers

I was looking a pics on PBase the other day and saw some nice ones of sunflowers which started me thinking about them. The rough sketch here is a result of that.

I think it was two years ago now we had near the bird feeders two way large sunflowers, like twenty one feet high large. I checked to see and it was like two or three feet short of the record although that's just from the book, sure there are larger all the time but those were the tallest I had ever seen. The wierd part was that they were grown all by nature, seeds fell from the feeders and sprouted all on thier own, never watered by us or shown any care at all, just luck they were in a spot where I missed them with the mower when they were small.

Every year we grow flowers, sunflowers included, nurture them, get the right soil and water them, pull the weeds that get close and most come up ok but never anything like these were. Just goes to show that mother nature does it best.

Last night my wifes dog got skunked. They live under the neighbors shed we think and the mutt is so dumb that this is like the fifth or sixth time he's been sprayed. I pound on the door before I let him out at night and wait a bit but if you've ever seen skunks move they aren't the fastest things. They just aren't afraid of anything, so non-chalant it's funny.

Anyway this dog when he gets sprayed always comes in the house, heads straight for the bathroom and hops in the tub without being told, can't say I blame him. Usually we have some shampoo for those occasions but last night we found out we were out. My wife gave him a shower, did the best she could but he still was rank. He sleeps in the hall right outside my room and I woke up like six times gagging from it, nothing like that odor. I can't figure why he keeps chasing the things, even a dumb dog should have learned by now.