The new joint, though more suburban in feel, is also surrounded by many more trees and a more complicated topography, including a bog next door. So there's a lot more bird action. We have: robins, orioles, warblers, crows, mourning doves, red-winged blackbirds, catbirds, starlings, yellow-shafted flickers, blue jays, and cardinals. The robins have a nest on our back deck (told you it was suburban) which should produce this week. We get the beady eye from mama but she doesn't fly away if we keep to the north end, which I guess is the designated people end. Yesterday I put up a bird feeder at the far end of the lawn, away from the house. No customers yet, but I think they'll figure it out.

Farther afield there are egrets, ospreys, terns, gulls, geese, partidges, swans, ducks, sandpipers, and scoters, plus probably some other shore birds I haven't seen.

So the bird action is quite satisfactory. As far as the garden, I put in nasturtiums and lantana, and planted herbs (basil, sage, rosemary, lavender, marjoram, and thyme) in pots on the deck, plus a pot of morning glories to twine around the rail. I plan to put in moonflowers at that same rail (thanks, Cindy!) so the rail will be in bloom morning and evening. In the front the house has rhododendrons and azaleas, just passing prime, and spirea, dogwood, astilbes, peonies, and a couple of other things I'm not sure about, but I'll see if they bloom. The problem here is, what garden is already here is in the front, and the life of the house is in the back. My writing porch faces the front, which is nice; but when you sit and read, drink tea, etc., which is when you want to be looking at the garden, you do that in the back and it's not a garden, it's a back yard.

If we were to keep coming back here I might be able to convince the landladies (who are exceptionally nice) to let me tear up some lawn for a flower bed in the back. Meanwhile, I was over at the old house yesterday. The people who bought it aren't there this weekend. The remains of the garden are a disaster, because no one did any work in the fall or spring. I might lift some of the plants I put in and bring them over here to stick in the front (with the landladies' permission), because they'll just die if they stay there. More on that bit of larceny if it happens.