July 29, 2026

The flowers around our house constantly come and go. Right now there is pink phlox outside my window, a window being vigorously climbed by a thicket creeper. On the other side of the house are bee balm and my favorite gooseneck loosestrife. A few short, brief thunderstorms aside (that uprooted a decently sized staghorn sumac in the backyard), it has felt like a dry summer, dimmed by Ontarian wildfire smoke. We’re under a flood watch at the moment, however, and I hope for little damage to anyone under it, but a couple more inches of water in the brook.

A red-eyed vireo still sings every day, and I hear Louisiana waterthrush and common yellowthroat in the woods from time to time. A red-tailed hawk has added our neighborhood to its hunting grounds, too, from the sound of it. Lots of house finches and still the rose-breasted grosbeaks at our feeder.

A couple weeks ago a bear dragged our trash barrel, secured with bearproof straps, from the end of our driveway 30 feet down and across the road. It managed to rip a strip of plastic off the lid (unless the lid broke from the bear’s rough handling and knocking around), reach in, tear a bag, and get some of the trash out. It took 30 minutes to clean a small amount of refuse from the woods and a large amount of trash from inside the barrel to a fresh bag. We should get a replacement barrel tomorrow to transfer the straps to. In the meantime, our garbage is inside the busted one with a smaller trash barrel inside and upside down.