More Deck Visitors and Others

Luna moth

Today was beautiful. Everybody and everything that could get out, got out. As I was drinking my first cup of coffee I saw a Luna moth on the deck. We almost always see a few sometime in the spring.

Another visitor was a titmouse. Apparently mister and missus are building a nest under the deck somewhere. They were fluttering and hopping around the deck, pulling off little pieces of cardboard and gathering clumps of weathered leaves. They had beaks full of various recycled materials. It was a very bold bird, but it didn't like the sound of the camera.

Coming back from checking on the garden I stopped to look at the turtle in the road. I am pretty sure it is a three-toed box turtle. It was

Three-toed box turtle

 very suspicious and refused to show me its legs

though.  I relocated it in the direction I think it 

was going and left it.

My transplanted tomatoes and blackberries are doing well. I am keeping the small tomato plants moist, but they have been hardened off well so I am not too worried. No sign of cutworms yet. They aren't as much of a problem in the raised beds, but I have stuck little twigs alongside the stalks just in case, to keep any cutworms from encircling the stem and gnawing it through. It seems especially wasteful to just cut the plant off and not eat the rest of it.

You have to work hard to make something, like a nest or a garden. You have to be careful and crafty too. There are things out there that can destroy all your work. Fruitfulness depends on effort, care, and intentionality as well instinct and the undeserved blessings of a beautiful day.