I've enjoyed reading about your Winter Hummer and offer this thought. If it happens that your Anna's should stay for the summer and into next winter and beyond, I won't be surprised. Looking thru my journal going back to 2001, all we ever had was the summer Rufous, but for the first time in 2008 and then every winter since, we've also now had the Anna's stay year-around, including seeing the female collect nesting cotton and actually finding her nest and nestlings in 2010. Records show that Anna's have been expanding their range for many years. It is the Female Anna's that establishes the nesting territory and nesting should begin in another month or so here near North Bend, WA. If your Anna's should stick around through the summer, you might just be having your husband get used to the early morning winter feeder duty!!! Enjoy and Good Luck

Last year the day after we groomed our two dogs outside, I saw a ton of birds taking the fur scraps/clippings! They were making repeated trips, I was surprised. So if you have a dog, you could put a bit of that in your cage. They also like thread or thins strips of cloth. It sounds like you have a good idea of what to put in for them. A little OT-we found a squirrel nest that fell last week, and it was full of strips of black landscape cloth (the squirrel must've torn it himself?), feathers, and some pillow-stuffing looking material. And leaves, lots & lots of leaves. The link has some great suggestions towards the bottom of the page. Here is a link that might be useful: attracting birds article

I started out taking wildlife (or any) photos with my parents little home digital camera. I would go out and get pictures of waterfowl at the local park with it. They are large, tame, and common and therefore easy targets: They also live in water and one fateful day the little pocket camera got left in my pocket when I decided to get a little too familiar with the habitat. I didn't pick up another camera for several years afterwards. They were expensive and I kind of moved on to other things. Then when I was stationed in Hawaii I went to the PX (which is the military version of a Wal-Mart) and bought a Canon PowerShot, which is a high end point and shoot. First off it was more technologically advanced than the first edition 4 megapixel digital camera my parents had for taking snapshots at Christmas and vacations and it had features that allowed more user control like manual mode where I could set aperture and shutter speed: This was my main camera for a couple years until I left it in my brothers car which got towed and the impound lot stole it. At the same time I had the PowerShot is when I bought the full DSLR Eos Rebel that I use now. But I was so used to the PowerShot I never really used the Rebel until after the other one was stolen. I got away from nature/wildlife photography while I was in Hawaii (which I now kick myself for). But not long after moving back to Colorado I went on Amazon and got a 150$ 75-200mm zoom lense that was all I used for years and I have some actually not horrible shots from it: I am still 100% an amateur myself. But I will say that learning to overcome the limitations of your equipment rather than going out and dumping your life savings on the biggest and best right out of the chute probably makes for better photographs. So does learning the fundementals of what makes good pictures. Things like composition and lighting. A big fancy lense or the newest top of the line camera can't compensate for those things no matter how expensive they are. The one thing I have always believed is that the most important thing is the person behind the camera rather than the camera itself. These lessons are probably true for just about anything we do in life.

Rebecca, I think the potatoes would be okay either way. The fact that yours aren't dying back tells me they likely haven't made very many tubers yet, because the tubers would signal a degree of maturity that would cause the plants to die back. Normally. It is just that nothing is normal this year, so I don't know what the heck is going on with your potatoes. I have had potatoes in the ground last into July some years without dying back, and I got tired of waiting for them, had succession crops I wanted to plant and I just went and dug them up anyway and had a fine crop. I do think those also were very hot years, and I remember the potatoes were in the ground and not in the newish raised beds where I grow them now, so it had to be before voles found the front garden. I hope you have a nice time in Fort Worth, and yes, the heat likely will drive you into the pool daily...there's nothing wrong with that either. Amy, I thought you gave fine advice when I read that thread yesterday and really had nothing to add, so I didn't comment. One day there was good rain south of us. I think the very next day there was good rain north of us. Another day it was east of us. I feel like the rain never is going to actually hit us....it just skirts around us all the time. So frustrating. At least for the next 7 days I don't have to get my hopes up because the 7-day QPF shows us getting nothing. Jersey always tore the stuffing out of everything. Now she's down to only tearing it out of stuffed toys she gets in a stocking at Christmas. She had torn the stuffing out of her bed repeatedly and I would unzip the cover, stuff all the stuffing back in, sew up the little holes she pulled stuff through, etc. She had a lumpy dog bed but it was all her fault. Then we bought new dog beds for her and Jet a couple of years ago and she got to sleep on a non-lumpy dog bed again. She liked it. She hasn't torn any of the stuffing out of this new dog bed, so either she finally grew up (she's 11.5 years old now) or she discovered that an intact dog bed was more comfortable than a shredded one. Nancy, I bought a cheap $4 or $5 mini-blind at Wal-Mart the last time I needed new plant labels too because we no longer have mini-blinds in our house. We replaced them with wood blinds with 2" slats several years ago and I guess I finally ran out of all the old ones I saved to cut up for blinds. Or, someday I'll find a pile of old mini-blinds in the garage stashed away in some out of the way spot. Even buying a new blind is a lot cheaper than buying real plastic plant labels in those little packages sold near the seed racks. You get a ton more plant labels for about the same amount of money. Things are frying. The heat is so awful. Sometimes I look at the plants and say to myself 'why do y'all look so bad'. Then I realize they have had above-average heat and below average rainfall for 2 months now, and it all makes sense to me. I probably should be surprised that they don't look worse. There's lot of caterpillars hitting flowering plants hard right now. The ones you're seeing could be the larvae of silvery checkerspot or bordered patch butterflies. Sharon, I'm sorry about your squirrel troubles. It seems like so very many people are having squirrel trouble the last 2 or 3 years. I bet there was a huge squirrel population explosion during the wet years of 2015-1026 and the relatively wet year (for much of OK) of 2017, and now everyone is saddled with those squirrrels, their children and their children's children. I'm not sure what it takes for their population to cycle down again. Out here in the rural areas it cycles up and down because there are predators to help control them. There in town where so many of y'all live, I doubt you have enough predators, except perhaps for people who have an energetic dog out in the yard, so once the squirrel population goes up, I expect it takes it a long time and a couple of consecutive drought years to help the population cycle back down again. I hope you get something edible out of your garden than the squirrels do not steal and devour. I keep looking at our dry cracking ground and wondering why I try to keep the garden green and in bloom. I guess it is because I can. Not just for us, but for all the bees, butterflies, moths, hummingbirds, wild birds, turtles, skinks, frogs, etc. At least as long as the garden is green, all these little creatures and many more have a habitat that is green and producing food for them. There's cardinals in the garden all the time. If I sit still they come pretty close to me. I think they are eating grasshoppers and other pests. There's also hummingbirds all the time. There's many flowers in there for them, plus a hummingbird feeder, and tons of little insects for them to eat. I have greatly upset Mr. Turtle by removing the squash plants. The bumble bees weren't happy either, but there's tons of other flowers in there that they like, including catip and comfrey. Mr. Turtle liked to live under the squash plants and eat squash bugs. Now that I've removed the squash plants, he headed over to the area with southern peas, zinnias and sunflowers, but he comes back every few hours to check the former squash bed for squash bugs. Perhaps he is living in the shade beneath the sunflowers while he searches for other kinds of insects to eat. So, for the sake of all those creatures, I'll keep watering the garden at least once a week for as long as I can keep it alive. Sometimes the early August weather defeats me anyhow. The point where I usually give up and stop watering is when our Keetch Byram Drought Index hits around 600. While the KBDI applies to firefighting, I have tracked it for so long at the same time that I am trying to keep my garden happy in the hot, dry months that I know what it means for my garden when the KBDI hits different points. At 600 and higher, I can keep the garden alive, but it is very hard to keep it producing. At 700, forget the veggie garden....I'd better be watering all the trees and shrubs in the yard, no matter how well-established and old they are. But, when we are in the 600s, it is like the moisture from irrigation can only help the garden up to a certain point and I know that. I do, I do, I do, truly I do. So, often, I will stop watering once it hits 600. Now, this is where it gets complicated.....or it is the point where my brain spaced out and has been out to lunch for the last couple of weeks. Our KBDI was in the 500s and going up about 11 to 13 points daily before the rainfall in early July, and that rain knocked it back down into the upper 300s. So, every time I look at our KBDI number on the map now I sort of rejoice because it still is so much better than it was. Even though I know we got a lot less rain at our house than the mesonet station did and even though I know that our KBDI still would be a lot higher than the Mesonet station's official number for our county, I still feel better seeing that lower number (now back up to 492, I think). I guess I have been spaced out or in denial. Last night after dinner when I sat down to the computer and looked at the KBDI map, I abruptly awakened from whatever coma my brain has been in since the July 1st (or whenever it was) rainfall and realized that the KBDI map still shows color---so if your area of your county is at a different drought stage than your Mesonet station reflects, the color in your part of the county shows that by being the color of whatever KBDI stage your area is in. Where has my brain been? Was it on vacation? Out to lunch? Our part of the county is red, so our KBDI here, even if not defined by numbers, is in the 600-700 range. Well, crap, crap, crap. That explains why the zinnias wilt daily, even though there is some moisture in their soil. It explains why the pepper plants look like crap 24/7 even though they also aren't bone dry. It explains so much....the huge and sudden explosion in the population of spider mites (their reproductive cycle speeds up when it is hot and dry, and they become a huge problem on drought-stressed plants). It even explains why the watermelons look great---they love it hot and dry! Even though my garden gets watered and looks green compared to the rest of the surrounding area, it still is heat-stressed, drought-stressed and in an area with a KBDI above 600. I know that this means----it means I should just give up and stop watering. Let it go. Let the annuals die. Let the perennials get right to the edge of death, and then water them just enough to pull them back into the land of the living. I don't know what I am going to do. (sigh) I even told Tim that we are in the higher KBDI category and that I am not going to accomplish much with the irrigation except just sort of keep the plants barely hanging on. I don't want to stop watering. I don't. Even though I know it would be the sensible thing to do. A couple of times this week, the chairman of our county fire board has sent out communications about fires and how this year's second fire season is about to begin or perhaps already is underway. I tried to ignore their content, tried to push it out of my mind, tried to tell myself that things aren't that bad yet. Well, after looking at the KBDI map, I guess things are that bad, and it shows in my poor hot, tired, dry garden.....that isn't really dry because I water it well, but it is too dry, if you know what I mean. On the bright side, I don't have to blame myself or the plants for how bad they look. They look bad because the conditions are bad, not because I am not doing my best to give them water, mulch and weeding. (At least with fewer weeds, there's less competition for the moisture I give them.) I don't want to pull the trigger and stop watering. I want all the wee little wildlife to have a green sanctuary from the heat. So, I'll keep watering for another week or two. I'll shade the plants I can with shadecloth. I'll add more mulch to try to keep the ground cooler and more moist. And, I'll hope all those efforts aren't for naught. I keep telling myself we're midway through the summer months now. I've kept the garden going this far, and I can get it all the way through to autumn if I try, but even though I say those words to myself, I'm not even sure I believe them. I just hate this weather. Fun stuff is still happening. I've been seeing a doe with two fawns at the compost pile and adjacent deer feeding area every evening around 5 pm, so I put out sliced summer squash and zucchini for them along with some deer corn. The fawns are super tiny and so cute. It is like watching little puppies frolic, play and eat. Well, this morning she brought 3 tiny fawns. I thought she had twins because she's been bringing only 2. I doubt she had triplets because why would she have been bringing only 2 to eat? Maybe she is bringing another doe's fawn, or maybe she has picked up an orphan and is raising it with her two. Either way, seeing three tiny fawns eating is the best part of the day. This morning I gave them thinly sliced watermelon. It was like watching human children have watermelon---they were so delighted! That made me so happy. Dawn