Pests, Swans, Mother’s Day

The after a little Web research, examination of the sick birch tree in the yard, and watching one of the remaining live branches start to wither almost before our eyes (truly – fine Friday, not so fine on Saturday), we have recognized that we have a bad infestation of bronze birch borer.

Yuck.

The tree has to come down. We need to burn the wood, and soon. Guess we’ll be having some late spring fires in the next bit of time.

While yes, this does mean, I have a place for one of the lovely coral bark Japanese maples I’ve fallen in love with, I’d rather it not be for this reason.

When we cleared the front yard three years ago, I saved this and the other two recently downed birch trees from the bulldozer. I thought the trio at the end of the house was a nice visual framing element. Unfortunately, our clear cutting of the surrounding trees contributed to the circumstance that let the borers to infest so badly. Dang it.

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We have many ponds, from small to large, in town. Some are supply ponds for the cranberry bogs while some just are.

In one pond near the highway, a pair of swans has set up housekeeping. Their large nest, fairly near the road (kind of them) is well cared for. Seven baby swans hatched last week – Wednesday, I think. The cygnets are fluffy and light gray and cute as a button.

Last week, while they were just emerging from their shells, they had quite an audience and the police station kept an officer on guard near the nest so be sure they wouldn’t be harassed. (Hey, it’s a small town. At least the officers were doing something!)

After getting S to school this morning, I stopped off and took a couple of pictures. I’ll upload them later. The parents were doing a wonderful job of guarding the babes from curious humans. I didn’t dare get too close. It was an adorable scene.

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Mother’s Day was lovely for me. I hope yours was, too. Per my request, the boys cleaned out and vacuumed my car and my husband took it to be washed. We had a nice brunch and spent the afternoon working in the yard. I also asked for a bicker-free day from the boys, and almost got it.

The vegetable garden is mostly in place. We built a trellis for peas and plants probably hundreds of seeds, both in the vegetable garden and around. I planted probably a hundred sunflower seeds of various types in various places. They are always good for a late summer smile. I have much to do in terms of gardening and yard work, but overall things look good. The creeping phlox looks especially nice now that it’s in full bloom.

While putting in one of the tree that we picked up on Friday, we noticed a hairy woodpecker up in the tree. As long as we didn’t make too much noise, it kept pecking away. The tree it was on needs to come down at some point – it’s one of two old dead oak trees along that edge of the property, and the bark is peeling off is sheets (but plenty of bugs underneath). Unfortunately, it’s also one of the few remaining trees serving as any kind of a screen to the neighbor on that side (the wife over there doesn’t like the clearing we did in the first place – too much light, she says…one of the local real estate agents says we upped the value of their house, however, because there is more light on their property now.). If we could be sure the tree wouldn’t move in a big wind, we’d leave it. But of course we can’t be sure, and were it to fall, it would fall on said neighbor’s house, and since the tree is on our property line, we’d be liable for any damage. Great. Time for some neighborly diplomacy, I suppose.