may doings

We hosted my parents last week, the first time we'd seen them since Christmas, and the first time they've driven out to see us on the East Coast in the nearly twenty years we've lived here.  With them they brought all of the odds and ends I'd stored in boxes in my childhood bedroom closet, elementary school report cards to wedding gown.  Most of the paper "treasures" wound up in the trash; I only saved a very few of the most important things.  The wedding gown did not get pitched, and currently lives in its special box in the basement of our house.   The kids have begged me to try it on.  Maybe that'll be a rainy day event.  

May in our neck of the woods is ever-so-much-more-so.  The weather is absolutely perfect.  Like perfectly perfect: sixties and seventies, dry, with a slight breeze, mostly sunny.  We were outdoors as much as we could be, just sitting.  Flowers all shout, "Look at me!" and there are so many it's hard to know where to look first.  Even my indoor orchids chose last week to bloom, just in time for my mother to sigh over them.   My parents usually visit in the fall and winter, when the leaves are all spent, and trees stretch their dark, bare limbs into the lowering gray sky.  It's not a pleasant time to be outdoors.  Last week our neighborhood seemed to be saying, "See?!  I can be lovely if you see me in the right season."

My dad brought his spiffy new birding camera, and the birds knew it.  May is a big month for migrating warblers, and although we didn't make it to two of our favorite spots, we saw lots of birds just in our own backyard. My dad added a few to his life-list: Northern Parula, Common Yellowthroat, and Black-throated Green Warbler.  I added a couple more to mine: Yellow Warbler and American Redstart.  Did you know that the Yellow Warbler has figured out a way to foil the Cowbird?  The female will build a nest, lay her eggs, and then build a false bottom over them.  If a Cowbird lays an egg on the false bottom, she'll tip the egg and bottom out, and then rebuild the false bottom.  

While my parents were here, we visited a nearby pleasure garden for the first time, where forget-me-nots bordered many of the beds.  I think they're my current favorite.  That tiny yellow center against creamy blue petals is just...yep.  For sure my favorite.  There were also chairs and benches on which to sit and enjoy the gardens.  My husband and I need to make a date to visit, just the two of us.

We bid farewell to my parents on Friday, and on Saturday morning we had about fifty more houseguests arrive! As I was buckling my seatbelt to drive to Aldi for the weekly marketing, the little boys burst out of the house shouting, "They're out! They're out!"  At first I thought they were pulling a prank on me, but no, they were simply thrilled that our praying mantis nymphs had emerged.  So many nymphs!  We immediately released all but two of them into our garden.  I saw a couple on our milkweed this morning, but the rest have struck out on their own.  The two we kept are being fed a steady diet of the aphids that are attacking my bleeding heart flowers.  Earlier, I watched a mantis grab an aphid and eat it like a banana.  We'll keep these two until they're a little larger and then we'll release them into our garden, too.