Oak-y dokey

It's been downright soggy here and the whole darned yard is basically now a mushroom farm. There are a lot of different small varieties and also these three different huge fungi all on the same tree.

We had carpenter ants on the same huge tripartite oak in early September, and Ryan from SavATree reassured me that it's not necessarily a sign of decay. However, he said to keep an eye on this cleft between two of the trunks. If it gets bigger, we need to worry. (Meanwhile, being me, I guess I'll just worry that it will get bigger.)

Barely scratching the surface

"I'll get started on the bulbs today!" was what I told myself, and then I decided to place a stepping stone, and by the time I'd planted a measly two bulbs (the one-turned-into-two allium from the back plot, transplanted) it was lunchtime and darned if there aren't still FORTY-SIX MORE BULBS to plant on top of all the other carp on my to-do list.

Anyway this is where the first two are. They're just uphill of the delphinium and south of the new stepping stone.

And I saw a new kind of butterfly, American Lady, on our sad-looking end-of-season zinnias:

Our house in the middle of our street