Beauty and the Beasty

Alliums, any member of the onion family, are such worthwhile plants.  These are garlic chives.  The leaves are a wonderful culinary addition to many dishes and a reason alone to grow these plants.  They become quite spectacular in bloom.  Each cluster is made up of many tiny, white, star-shaped flowers and remind me of a burst of fireworks on display.  Warning:  if there is one garlic chive plant this year, there will be many next year.  Each of those white flowers will put out a fairly large black seed that the breeze will blow everywhere.  There are chives in the strawberry pots, in amongst the roses, decorating the forsythia, and each year there are more.  They are so pretty, who cares?

Finished with morning barn chores, I stopped to top off the water trough.  There on the post by the tap was this gravid (pregnant) praying mantis.  Females are easy to identify by their leaf-shaped body.  The abdomen of males is barely wider than the thorax.  I'm always glad to see the mantises as they are terrific bug catchers.  However, I'm worried about this gal's choice of hunting ground.  Sheila, in the background, may see only that leaf shape as a tempting morsel.  If the mama mantis lays her egg case near the ground, all those baby lizards may look at the hundred or so hatchlings as mantis manna.

Yet another sunset.  I never tire of walking out at dusk to see such glory.  The sky takes my breath away.  I share the photos because they are my way of saying, "Oh, come see this!"  Morning chores are just that, work.  Putting the animals to bed is simply satisfying.  The chickens go up the ramps into their coops on their own, knowing they will get their nighttime snack inside.  Some are already nestled on their roost.  They gossip quietly about the doings of the day.  In the goat pen, the girls are clustered by the gate and we all walk down to the barn together.  The morning lineup is catch as catch can, but the bedtime routine rarely varies, everyone knowing exactly where and when to go inside.  The sky will have changed, darkened and dull, by the time I stop to fill the trough once more, the last task before going back to the house.  There is a sense of peace, knowing the animals in my care are tucked in and safe for the night.  Not a bad way to end the day.