Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Ol’ Robbo mowed the lawn for the first time this spring today. (I tried to look up when I started last year by way of comparison but couldn’t find it.) I’m happy to say that both my mower and my weed-whacker fired right up on the first pull. I think this is supposed to bring luck. Or sumpin’.
I noticed recently an almost complete lack of dandelions in the lawn this year. Granted, I’ve got just about every other kind of weed you can think of plus enough onion grass to make a whole platoon of mowers burst into tears, but no lions. I guess this means my weed n’ feed efforts last year and this are producing at least some results.
Normally we’d be thinking about new plants for the porch and planters about now, but to tell you the truth I haven’t even bothered checking to see if the local nurseries are open or not. (I seem to have stopped getting constant emails from the usual mail-order ones, so maybe they’re shut down, too.) I particularly want to find another clematis to put under the back porch where yet another jasmine didn’t make it. (I’ve given up on them, by the bye. Even the ones advertised as hardier simply don’t seem to be able to hold out here.)
Meanwhile, on the bird-watching front, no sign yet of a hummingbird but I did see this morning for the first time a goldfinch decked out in full summah yellow. Huzzay, huzzah!
Also, we seem to have a new fox in the neighborhood. I saw him flitting about yesterday afternoon and then heard him raising all kinds of hullaballoo in the woods last evening, no doubt for the delectation of any vixens who might be nearby. It was something halfway between a bark and a scream, and if you didn’t know what it was it would have been quite alarming.
UPDATE: I just checked over at yootoob and there are several different samples of the fox scream like this one. And I have to clarify that, for all Ol’ Robbo knows, this could just as easily be a vixen wailing for her demon lover than the other way about. Ain’t nature wunnerful?
UPDATE DEUX: By the bye, can anyone put Ol’ Robbo some knowledge about what this might be? (Clicky to embiggen.)
The Mystery Vine
It’s a heavy-stemmed, vigorous vine of some sort and suddenly seems to be coming up all over the Port Swiller Manor demesne. I don’t mind it occupying places like my garden fence here, but I very much mind it trying to sneak up under my wisteria and strangling them.
The Port Stands At Your Elbow 
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April 5, 2020 at 9:21 am
Don
The vine looks to me like Euonymus fortunei.
April 5, 2020 at 10:50 am
Robbo
I believe you are correct, Sir! The wiki article says it’s an Asian plant but that it is invasive to the Mid-Atlantic as well. The thing has sprouted up on all four corners of my garden fence as well as a couple other spots in my back yard. There’s another, more mature one on a fence two houses over from me. I wonder if birds have been carrying the seeds over and dumping them. It would explain why they all seem to be located in spots birds perch and poop.
And speaking of which, when I went out a while ago to compare the thing with your link, I got a fine view of the local pileated woodpecker doing his thing. They’re pretty skittish, unlike some of the other peckers, and tend to stay hidden back in the woods. So double thanks!.