Visitors

Can you spot the visitor in each photo? You may need to zoom in on many!

For photos with a mushroom, that’s the visitor. They rarely hang around long, so I’ll call them visitors. I’m not a mycology expert, and I’ve never eaten any mushrooms from HAL. Someday I’ll learn to identify a few.

This is just a sampling of the friends who enjoy the plants at HAL. On some midsummer days, one could close their eyes, walk down the street, and audibly tell when they’re approaching HAL, just from the high concentration of humming and buzzing pollinators.

This year we have wrens, whom I adore, roosting nearby. They are just the cutest, and their song always cheers me up. The wrens and finches (my other favorite) are flighty and tough to capture with my slow phone cam.

I’ll just tell you with this next one; it’s nearly impossible. There’s a woodcock in the center of the photo, sheltering in the overwintered rain garden plant debris after an April snowfall. Poor guy! Glad he could find some warmth and cover here.

You can see bird’s eye, long beak (right in front of green garden stake), and red belly in center of pic.

Unlike many of my gardening friends and neighbors, I welcome bunnies into HAL. There are so many delicious wild offerings for them that they never bother any intentionally planted crops. Red clover is a favorite, and this particular spot is preferred by young ones just beginning to venture out. I appreciate that, because it’s right outside the kitchen window, and they’re just so darn cute to watch while washing dishes or preparing meals. I also appreciate the high-nitrogen fertilizer they deposit.

I’ll point this one out too. The female finch blends well with the browning anise hyssop seedheads. The finches are one of my favorite reasons to leave anise hyssop standing out all winter. They really enjoy it, and I really enjoy hearing their song.

These are ladybug larvae. Good guys.

This is a commercial mason bee home. If you zoom in, you can see they’ve been setting up shop in there.Look for sealed-off tubes.