This first several days of May focused on continuing garden work: planting flowers, dressing existing beds, and creating a pollinator garden. The latter involved moving washed gravel (our “grass”) from the garden area, and replacing it with topsoil. Sounds easy. The gravel was moved shovelful by shovelful as neither of us were physically able to carry much more than that. We did move the topsoil from an existing bed on the north side of the house by loading it into a plastic box and “dragging” it to the new bed—a slow and arduous process resulting in our doing only about a third of the new garden. Back soreness from last week’s yard work limited both our ability and amount of work we were able to do. A shopping trip to the local nursery yielded purchase of several hanging baskets, potted plants, and dozens of pollinator flowers. In the new garden, I dug the holes and Kay planted the flowers. The flowers will be awesome when filled out. It should be noted that all of this occurred among almost daily rain showers.

Working outside provided extensive opportunities to observe butterflies, dragonflies, and damselflies flitting hither and yon in the back “yard”. On Wednesday, May 1, I ventured out to Middle Fork Barrens Natural Area for the first time in almost a year. It was a bit too early for many butterflies and dragonflies, though a few were captured by the camera. Of significance, at least to me, were photos of an Indigo Bunting and a Bell’s Roadside Skippers, the former being the first photo of the bunting, and the latter being a “life” butterfly.

On Monday, May 6, “our” Green Heron visited at a convenient time when the camera and big lens were ready. We’ve had a pair of Green Herons regularly visit the shoreline at the house since we moved in in 2015! 

Kay was busy Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday with social functions and a golf game sandwiched among them. Of course, the biggie among the social activities was the monthly meeting of The Book Club. 

I managed to snap a few photos in the back yard on Tuesday of a bird, a couple of dragonflies, and a snake.

And the back yard produced again on Thursday with a bird, a butterfly, and a dragonfly.

Another butterfly (perhaps the same as yesterday) and a bird posed for photographs on Friday morning.

During the course of the week, back problems persisted, limiting our participation in both golf and pickleball, though opportunities to play were limited anyway because of rain or wet conditions. We did get out to play the front nine at Cortez on Friday afternoon.

The remainder of gravel was finally moved and and on Saturday, May 11, grandson Ridge hauled and placed top soil in the butterfly garden, and hauled and placed mulch in one of the front beds. To be only 12+ years old, he has a great work ethic, and it was such a pleasure to spend time with him, though he didn’t talk much!

I snuck in a couple of photos while he was working.

Kay’s kids treated us to dinner Saturday evening to celebrate Mother’s Day. I’m sure they know it, but she is a super mom, and we’re fortunate that our daughters and daughter-in-law are super moms as well.

Mothers Day on Sunday was without fanfare, and we hung around the house relaxing.