The Goings On Over Here

What's been going on? A whole lotta nothin'...Weather is pretty good today so I got out and took some photos:

A couple of weeks ago, we noticed some noise under our deck...what was going on? This was in the making:

It's a little hard to tell, but this is a baby bird beak. Here's a shot from under the deck:

There are two babies in the nest and the parents are not happy to have us bothering their young. See?

Especially when breakfast is ready:

She may look small, but she is mighty. They (the parents) make a lot of noise and dive-bomb our heads. We had a nest earlier this year and were happy when the kids had finally left the nest. Only to be replaced by this one.

We've enlisted the help of our two fearless and furry troops, but they just enjoy playtime by trying the catch the birds when they get dive-bombed (note: the doggies aren't even CLOSE to hurting the birds - they think it's all a big game.)

Then, we noticed all of our trees had leaves that started looking like this:

And then we found the cause:

Yuck! Japanese Beetles. So, we've resorted to a Beetle catcher. It had been up only a couple of hours and had ATLEAST 30 beetles. Again, YUCK, I say.

All of the dark color at the bottom of the bag are beetles - just a solid layer. Yuck.

Here are some of my other plants that are thriving, inspite of the beetle attack.

Have a great Sunday!