"Ooh, look! A lollipop tree!"

I've come to the conclusion that deer aren't always of the Disney variety. Instead of simply smelling the roses, or getting their antlers caught up in them in that most picturesque, 'oh-isn't-that-just-like-something-out-of-a-children's-storybook' way... the reality is they eat those beautiful blooms like they're M&M's, and then just walk away.

Gathering from what little is left of our two rose trees - which have been nurtured and brought back from the dead since we got them - to the deer they're like candy. They didn't leave even ONE bloom on any of those trees, not to mention the fact that they pruned them to death.

And only the day before my mother and I were commenting on how beautiful and full they've become. They had even finally starting blooming in sync with each other.



Bad Deer!



"Diana" the cottontail and "Sebastian" the tortoise:




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Sebastian is the first tortoise we've seen here at Crick Hollow. I thought he was heading towards the neighbors pond, but I was mistaken about that because 1). he tried squeezing through the holes in our fence and 2). the darn thing headed towards either the road or the other neighbor's next to us.

I hope he wasn't heading towards the road. I almost started to turn him around, but I was reminded that that doesn't work. They know where they want to go, and even if you turn them around towards safety they circle back to their original course.



I've learned that on summer nights in the country, nature can be deafening!

They're so noisy that they even 'outsing' the whip-poor-will that I used to hear every night.







New Calves!

Our neighbors, "the Joneses," - (yeah, I'm not kidding. That's their last name) - told us that two more calves were born. One of them is reddish colored for a change. It's so much fun to watch them run and play across the fields. They're a lot like dogs in that respect. They're so cute!


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Here are our sunflowers. We're going to plant some next to the barn next.

We had a crazy storm the other night, which lasted all night, and now the sunflowers are beginning to bloom like mad.


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I wish I could say the same for the rest of our flowers. The heat has completely destroyed our main garden already. (The heat index was 102 the other day). It's really upsetting because it was becoming quite beautiful.



Sorry, but it's time for a sad tale.
(Even sadder than the rose tree debacle).

We lost one of our doves yesterday afternoon. The poor thing flew into the back glass door. What's sad to me is that doves mate for life, and now one of them is gone.

I named them "Romeo" and "Juliet." (Seemed appropriate, right?)



Ending on a happy note, we finally got our gazebo/tea house!

Our resident cottontail, "Diana," has been curious about it from the very beginning. Every night she stops by it to investigate and eat the rest of her dinner. And one day, when returning home from the store, she was there again!



We also have a bluebird that's pretty fond of it.


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And speaking of the bluebirds, we have two of them that are always perching on the screens to the kitchen windows. I don't know what that's all about.