Elderberries ripening...

Thats nice...if you give the wine a few years, we might be over to sample it lol!

Oooo ...promise? I hope I get enough to make wine...the birds and squirrels are plentiful around here and now it makes sense...there are so many food plants here, nuts and berries etc. There are lots of wild strawberries to the left of these elder bushes. So many wild flowers that I've stopped mowing part of what was lawn and just let the flowers develop...there are pink new england asters, Yellow and firey red devil's paintbrushes...wild geranium, the pretty blue flower that looks like an echium (but it's not) sundrops, even found a wild clematis..(I think it's called Virgin's Bower) growing beside the stream. It was being consumed by some insect (you wouldn't believe how many different insects I see in a day!) so I put one of my small trellises behind it. looks funny...but it keeps it out of the grass.

We call wild clematis Old Man's Beard over here. If there is lots of seedheads supposed to herald a harsh winter. Like the sound of red devil's paintbrushes!
Insects are necessary, I just dont like too many! I go nuts if we have too many flying things in the house..dont like them around my face.

I'm with you there, I loathe house flies and I'm a fanatic about keeping the window screens in good repair because I love wide open windows! There are beetles eating my clems...chewing the blossom to rags...Will have to post a picture of a vine which grows in the stream and seems to love water...it's flower looks like a solanum...purple with yellow centre...it is tenacious and it grows everywhere. The leaves look like nightshade but is nightshade a vine?
will have to keep an eye on the"old man's beard"...he he...all the winters around here are pretty harsh. (and long)

Long winters not for me..I fairly went cuckoo this year cos ours was so long..

To be honest, they aren't for me either, M. but I use the winter to catch up on my painting. Last winter was a complete loss ...with the move and all...but next winter things will be different. Will hatch the plans for the cabin/studio I've been dreaming about. Maybe do some knitting and quilting and I've told T. that I need a snow blower this year...

Good heavens Lori, what with the chain saw, you will have a shedload of girls toys soon hey lol?

Oh yes! I already have two lawn mowers...one electric one gas; a weed eater; a chainsaw...loppers, pruners, saws, trowels, ...as a matter of fact I'm thinking that I really need a tiller and a lawn tractor.

Way to go, girl! Life of Brian!!

"Yer lupins or yer life!"

Lol!

Among the birds who frequent the elder is a young pileated woodpecker... Terry related his observations of said woodpecker and we think he might be enjoying a little tipple! hee hee.... Just as the berries were ripening we had a week of wet weather..and I'm wondering if perhaps some of the berries had started to ferment right on the plant! We think this because of the antics of the young fellow...according to hubby he has the same modus operandi every time he approaches the bush...he lands on the trunk of the large spruce, goes up about three feet...comes back down ...hops onto the elder and has a few berries....then hops back onto the spruce and flies off in the same direction every time! T. said he watched him do this repeatedly...but yesterday he just couldn't seem to find his footing on the elder..kept flopping onto the ground ...then trying to get back up..with the same result...T. was puzzled and worried that perhaps he was ill. Do you suppose he was sozzled? lol... I've heard of drunken robins doing loup-de-loups and flying into walls when enjoying wild cherries...! And we think bird life is all about survival!

We have black elderberries in our garden and if our berries ferment, lord help us. It will be like air traffic control has gone on strike as we have as many as 50 birds in our garden at any one time..our wild bird cherry is congregation point for 20plus sparrows after the two tubes of seed and a tube of peanuts. The lilac is home to mainly blue tits, great tits, longtailed tits, the odd bullfinch, many goldfinches a few greenfinch and chaffinch..the odd robin, blackbird and dunnock..all these birds need quick reactions while flying around the garden..I just hope we dont get collisions!!!

Roger that, sparrow 1niner...cleared to land on runway cherry tree, begin approach now...:" Terry constantly marvels at the antics of the birds, squirrels and chipmunks....he says it's more entertaining than telly. (which we don't watch btw) We have had cable but for our internet...now that we're out here in the boondocks we have a satellite dish for i'net....and only watch DVD's. haven't watched an evening of tv in a decade or more! Now that the sun is going down and it's cooler out we sit on the deck "and watch the hawks..making lazy circles in the sky...we belong to the land..and the land we belong to is grand..." ooops... for a minute there I was in Oklahoma! It's a different life and no mistake...I love it. Sounds like you're into fostering bird populations too. It doesn't take them long to go thro a lot of seeds! I bought a huge 40kg. bag of black sunflower seeds last winter, and this spring, on the way to storage in the basement...I left it outdoors overnight! We have the sleekest healthiest squirrels and chipmunks for miles around...and the bluejays know our names! lol...I decided that I might as well put it all out there. So they come and help themselves and get snitty with one another about who has rights and we just sit and watch the drama unfold! It's a good life!

We are the same, tho we do watch a tad more TV than you, but not a lot!
The first couple of years we lived here we didnt have many birds..but our feeders have increased from one a day to five a day (3 wild seed, one black and one sunflower hearts), one tube of peanuts a week and 50 fatballs dont last 2 weeks!!
We dont have cable cept for internet, why waste more money on more crappy programmes, especially the likes of our soaps and some American sitcoms! I watch Lewis (a british cop drama based in Oxford - I like the scenery lol), I did enjoy The Good Wife, an american law drama with Julianna Margoles, NCIS with Mark Harmon, nice touch of comedy and like him, and New Tricks, a geriatric band of british should be retired cops solving Cold Cases, very very funny! Hate reality shows and the news (tho I watch news occasionally) and we watch Gardening Programmes and Antiques Road Show. Sad isnt it lol!
I tend to buy travel dvds on places all over the world, including Natures Wonders, and architectural stuff on cathedrals, great houses and stuff like that.
There is nothing funnier than the antics of the squirrels, or the pompous magpies as they waddle around the garden, chatting away like old codgers tho..real live nature is fascinating.
Its a shame we have to take a lifetime to realise we dont need all those things we thought we did when we were young!

You're a wise woman, M. and no doubt about it! Yes, I agree with your sentiments entirely. I have a friend from Austria whose favourite saying was: "Too soon old...too late schmart!" lol...
I used to take DVD's out at the library and my favs were the Britcoms and mysteries that used to appear on public television over here...I have watched Lewis..that was a spin off of Inspector Morse wasn't it? I loved John Thaw thought he was a good character actor..And I've watched the first two (?) seasons of New Tricks too! I love it as well. We often watched Antiques Road Show on public television, and there was a North American spin off of it...and if you want a definition of crap, just look up American television! Yo, Homey!
We have yet to pay a visit to the Renfrew Library. We should do that soon as I've watched all the DVD's we own many times over. My fav movies are Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightley and Sense and Sensibility with Gemma Jones, Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet. Also "The Jane Austen Book Club", guess it would be classed as a chick flick...lol. Otherwise I have my nose in a book, but these days with the demise of libraries and book clubs...(you can read your books online on a special viewer) I'm feeling a little like a dinosaur....
Always loved the printed word and I hate that we are going so digital and visual...Just re-read Jane Eyre and was surprised that it is a much more religious book than I remember it being...(I guess I'm agnostic) but my favourite author would still be Jane Austen. For the contemporary authors I really like Sue Grafton. I like her snappy no nonsense heroine, Kinsey Milhone. It's not high falutin' literature but is sure is a good read.
All this when I need distraction...otherwise I'm on goY or have my nose stuck in a gardening tome! Btw...I bought a beardie today..I. "Double Your Fun":It's a rebloomer with yellow falls and white standards and it's supposed to be deer resistant...whatever that means...does it run away?! lol.....and I bought two Sedum, "Postman's Pride" PP16831....to the tune of 12$ a piece! bought a begonia planter at hugely reduced prices and still had to lay down a 50...whew! I sure hope they all survive! The sedum because I have a large area of the front garden that is very dry all summer and I want beds rather than lawn.

I, too, am an avid bookworm, have bought umpteen copies of Jane Austen cos they fall apart with much use! I prefer P & P with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle (all except the very end which is never good in any drama production of JA). also liked Amanda Root in Persuasion with Ciaran Hinds...I always felt Emma Thompson too...matronly..for Eleanor, tho the rest of the cast were superb, especially Alan Rickman. However, nothing comes within spitting distance of the books!! And these days, I often fall asleep when reading..when I think of the times Ive stayed up all night reading in my youth LOL!
Yes, I noticed that beardeds are deer and rabbit resistant..but never seen any with boxing gloves lol!

Do you have the same stringent import/export laws on plants that the USA have? Apparently they can be very arbitrary in tossing out orders being shipped from US..otherwise I wouldve bought some from there. I wonder if they keep them for their own gardens lol!

The regs in the States are very strange, at least I think so. They can mail cuttings, as long as they're dry. No soil...or bare root plants...again no soil. but a living potted plant is a no-no. I know this because a friend from Massachusetts sent me cuttings of a night blooming cereus. There was a customs declaration on which it was stated "cuttings"! From what I've read about our Canadian regs...they make even less sense. no plants sent overseas ...or to the US period! and none coming in, either, without proper declaration and export/import licence.. Not sure about seeds. Perhaps it's the same...but I've sent them and had no problems. But here again you don't know what kind of scans they are subjected to...