No Shortage of Critters

Hello, friends!  It's turned hot here, with temps in the mid to upper 90's over the weekend.  On days like these, I do as many outdoor chores as possible early in the day, then move indoors.  The garden is growing well.  There are tiny tomatoes on two of our plants.  Our peanut experiment seems to be working very well so far, though the deer have already been munching them.  J did a lot of work in the heat, hoeing weeds and cleaning the garden perimeters with mower and tractor.  He grew up doing a lot of farm work in the heat, but it's still tough on a body.

There are no shortage of interesting critters around the homestead.  There are still lots of little toads jumping around, though instead of the hundreds I would see in a day, now there are a few dozen.  I've seen two leopard frogs the past week.  We were expecting chicks to hatch this coming Wednesday, but lo and behold, we found one that had hatched Sunday morning, & another later in the day.  Sorry for the not terribly clear photo.  It's quite dim in that area of the coop.

This weekend, I took part in a pre-Fathers Day show at a local microbrewery.  I thought it was fitting to add a few sprigs of hop vine when cutting a bouquet for the event.

hoppy bouquet

I've been doing all the usual frugal activities... composting, cooking mostly from the garden and pantry, hanging laundry on the line, making yogurt, kefir & suet.  I'm enjoying these long days of almost summer, and hope you are too.