“I hope you don’t think I’m a Peeping Tom . . . but I’ve just got to ask you a question, if you don’t mind.” 

“Where are you taking the chipmunks in that wired box thing?  I see you putting them into the trunk of your Smart car.  I’d kind-a like to get a ride in that cute thing myself.”

My husband just returned from chauffeuring Chipmunk No. 8 out to the country – maybe it was Peeping Tom himself!  When Lloyd opened the door of its mesh holding cell, the chipmunk scooted a short distance, then stopped, and paused . . . gathering his bearings, or maybe just stopping to say, Thanks for the ride!  He was a sanguine little creature, indeed, certainly not what you would call a Type A!

If that had been a squirrel, he would have charged out like a bolt of lightning the second Lloyd raised the door.

P.S.  Oh dear.  The Chipmunk Express is becoming too popular.  Before 5:00 p.m., Chipmunk No. 9 was demanding a ride in the Smart car, too!

It had just started to rain, so we obliged right away.  As we headed out, Lloyd said, “I’ll soon have to start charging.  I’m closing down the Chipmunk Express for the night.  Two trips in one day is enough.”

Well, I’m heading back into the studio to paint some more of PEI’s gently rolling hills that we fell in love with a couple years ago.

Every morning I have been fetching the hummingbird feeder in, cleaning it, and filling it with an inch of fresh nectar.

Taking a break from the studio where I’m working on a painting of Prince Edward Island, what did I see a hummingbird choose for high tea?  Bee Balm!  He’s gone completely green, all right.   No thanks to that concoction in a bottle surrounded by plastic flowers!

Can you see the open end of the petals?  How quickly the hummingbird moved from one petal-tube to the next on the mop-like crimson flowers.  He then flew to a clump of bee balm a little lower in the garden and rapidly sipped his ‘tea.’

No bells rang out, announcing his visit, but some golden bells were joyous nonetheless.

I found these golden bells at Sheridan’s this spring, and bought the vine instantly, and planted it by our pond.  Its proper name is allamanda.

We grew this vine when we lived on the Island of Bonaire, Caribbean Netherlands.  The vine filled a trellis at the end of the veranda with its wonderful scented bells and long, chestnut-brown, pointed buds.

Have you ever had a helicopter land on your deck in absolute silence?

After landing, it paused . . . then flew straight up, and back down again into the very same spot!   Was he having trouble with his landing gear or what?

Once upon a time, I did a watercolour of the climbing rose blooming by our side door – Sir Wilfrid Laurier.  The story was blogged previously about how a lady in Ottawa had moved this same type of rose bush to another part of her garden, but it did not survive.  She had received the rose for a birthday gift, and dearly loved its classic shape, and its long-stemmed blooms.

Terri, for that is her name, had been trying unsuccessfully to find another Sir Wilfrid Laurier rose for about ten years.  When she stumbled upon my painting on the Internet, she emailed me.  The result was that I sent her several cuttings in the mail.  I explained how my husband’s mother successfully started new roses from cuttings, putting the end of the stem in the soil, and sheltering the rest of it beneath a glass jar.

This month, Terri emailed us that she and her husband and niece would be returning from a vacation in West Virginia, and could accept our previous invitation to come by and see us and Sir Wilfrid Laurier on their way home.

In the meantime, unbeknownst to me, something wondrous began to happen by our back door.  Sir Wilfrid Laurier must have sensed that Terri was coming . . . and set quietly to work.  Lo and behold, he managed to produce a baby not half a foot away!

However, by the time Terri arrived on July 12^th, there wasn’t a single bloom on Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

Sir Wilfrid Laurier had absolutely outdone himself this spring, and I photographed him daily, and emailed several photos to Terri.

But now he was resting.  All that could be seen on the healthy climber were promises of another round of roses – fascinating little crimson shoots.

Baby Laurier had been carefully dug out a few weeks earlier and placed in his own ‘play pen’ (pot).  Mind you, he was just a baby with only two small legs, and a few of his leaves dropped off like baby teeth!  However, I’m eager to hear how he likes his new ‘bed’ in Ottawa.  I know he will get all the pampering a baby rose could possibly want.

Just ask the chipmunks.

I didn’t go along with Lloyd when he took his double catch, Chipmunks No. 2 & 3, out to their country estate.  He told me that he thought they might be frightened . . . so he sang hymns to them all the way out!

Today, Sunday afternoon, I went along to escort Chipmunk No. 4.

Have you ever tried fitting a seat belt around a chipmunk?

He soon settled down, however, and sprawled on his tummy, hind feet behind, for most of the trip.  Once we reached the vicinity of his cousins and stopped the Smart car, Lloyd hoisted the cage out, and lifted its end gate.  Chipmunk No. 4 exited like a shot out of a gun, jiggling the tips of the tall grass on the embankment as he sped along.