Great Blue Heron surprise, and garden stuff

 One of the trails we like is a circle trail, in that you start, and walk the whole trail and end up back at the entrance.  However half of the trail is fairly open.  It's a nice enough walk, but not nearly as nice as the rest of the trail which meanders beside the river.   This time of year that part of the trail feels like you're walking through the happy part of a fairy tale.   The trees reach across the path creating a green arbour in places.  Huge swaths of wild flowers flank the sides of the trails.  Right now it's Queen Anne's Lace and Dame's Rocket, with just a pop here and there of Buttercups.  It's stunningly beautiful.

It's just on the edge of a fairly populated area, so it's amazing that there is quite a lot of wildlife which wanders through the trail too.   Of course there are song birds.  There were young robins looking for treats and hopping ahead of us as they weren't quite confident at flying yet.   There were squirrels and chipmunks and a big old raccoon wandered across the trail in front of us, down to the river, without a care in the world.

We had walked to the end of the river side trail, and turned back to walk to the entrance, thus avoiding the
other half of the trail.  We were close to the riverbank when there was a bit of noise coming from the few ducks on the water.   This great blue heron landed right in front of us.   They are very large birds and usually fairly timid.  This guy though, let us snap some photos and watch him for a few minutes.  Eventually, it was either the ducks, who were still making a bit of a fuss, or maybe he tired of us watching him, or the very noisy, loud kids who were just tromping into the area scared him off.  Regardless, it was a lovely treat to be quite that close to a blue heron.  They are majestic birds, although the noise they make doesn't quite match their looks -  GRAWK!

The garden is almost all planted.   There is some space for a second planting of beans and some space that I left for succession planting of greens.   However, they aren't always successful with the way our summers have been so hot, so I'm second guessing myself now and thinking that maybe I should plant something else in that spot.

My spinach and arugula went weird this year.  I'm guessing it's the late frosts we had.  Both of them went to seed before they were even large enough to eat.   I've replanted the pots though.   In one I've put some summer savory, since the chooks scratched through my last patch and in the other some catnip.  It used to grow wild, but there was none around last summer.   Everything has been watered, fed and what's large enough to have a straw mulch, has been covered.   If I can find a replacement pepper plant for that tiny pepper that hasn't grown since Easter, then I'll replace it.   It feels good to have most of the work done.  Now it's just watering, feeding and weeding if necessary until harvest.... yay!