HOW DOES YOUR STUFF GROW?

This used to be a neat, carefully built Robin's nest. For years it has been. The Robin returned this year and began carefully reconstructing his home. Somewhere in there, between tucking in a piece of string and finding another, came a Sparrow (a House sparrow, i believe.) and finding a nice foundation, appropriated the nest.
The difference, to me, between the two birds, Robin and Sparrow, is staggering. This is the kind of stuff I find fascinating. In addition to the overall appearance of mess (it looks like my room) the entrance to the nest is impossible to see from anywhere that I can stand. I have seen the Sparrow coming and going, so i know where the entrance IS, but I cannot SEE it.

This is Spiderwort. I first saw it growing in ditches and became curious about it. Finally one day John pulled over and I clambered into the ditch and grabbed some which i then planted. Imagine my surprise when, visiting my parents some 500 miles away, I found a row of carefully cultivated Spiderwort along our fence. My Father had seen some in a ditch and brought it home. How alike we were, but I never suspected until I was grown and gone.

 

My first rose of the season, albeit a wild rose atop a man-eating rose tree with canes as thick as a man's thumb and thorns designed to tear your gizzard out. They still smell great, and they are still beautiful.

When I was a kid I rode my horse almost every day past a beautiful blue-grey tree with a gnarly, coal black trunk that I loved. I loved the way the leaves blew silver when there was a wind or storm coming, and I loved the medium size, the contrast between the leaves and the trunk. It was, my Mother told me, a Russian Olive and I vowed someday to have one. They were awful, she said: dirty trees that break. How on earth I wondered, can a tree be dirty? It drops it's fruit, she told me, everywhere.
Oh, like the Walnut tree in our backyard or the oak trees next door.
So I grew up and moved away and raised my children and bought a Russian Olive after all these years, and this is my little 3 yr old Russian Olive in my back yard.

This is the Jungle. Due to the heavy rains it has grown like crazy. In the Jungle if you look carefully you will see the resident wolf and one of his cohorts scouting for deer.

This is the cohort (Llewis) rushing to get a piece of deer (Milk Bone.)

This is the wolf, contemplating the chances of capture if he comes any closer to claim his piece of deer.

And these are the mushrooms of which I am going to paint a picture. I hope. (Expectation often exceeds reality.)

                    "What the hell happened to my nest???"