I also mowed the grass recently, it was really long and I bagged so much that I was able to almost completely cover the area in the front yard that I had already mulched earlier this year, where I am trying to kill the grass.  Before it had taken me several mowings to cover that area, ugh, this time I did it in one.  Does that tell you how long our grass was?  I am already mowing again, mowed a little bit yesterday and a lot more today.  I was in a hurry because we were heading out to a picnic, so I actually dumped some of the grass clippings on our compost pile.  Killed me to do it, but I wanted to get as much mowed as possible.  Hurricane (well, now tropical storm) Dennis is on the way with rain, and so it might be a while before I can mow again.  Actually, it is 10:15 at night when I am writing this, and Dennis has already given us 0.79 inches of rain this evening.  More should be coming tonight and tomorrow.
 
     August 25, 1999 - With the cooler mornings Brian and I have been enjoying our breakfast in the solarium, where we can observe the bird activity in the back yard.  Today we got to enjoy watching two of the baby bluebirds fledge.   The first one wasn't a very strong flyer, he only went into the black birch tree which is pretty much just behind the bluebird house.  The second one flew somewhat better, but again didn't go very far, just into the willow, which is in front and to the side of the bluebird house.  The other two must have fledged before we were watching.  Oh, speaking of the willow, we will most likely be having it cut down this fall, as it hasn't fared well at all during the drought.  Brian had a good suggestion, that maybe we can put a vegetable garden in that area.  We have never been able to think of an area of the yard that we are willing to give up for a garden.  That sounds good to me.
 
     August 24, 1999 - Another 0.17 inches of rain.
 
     August 21, 1999 - I heard an owl hooting when I was outside in the evening.  I always like to hear them, it's a pleasant sound.
 
     August 20, 1999 - We got 0.72 inches of rain.  Yeah!  We still need lots more.
 
     August 15, 1999 - Between yesterday and the day before we got just over 1.65 inches of much needed and much welcome rain!  Not that we want to be greedy but we could use a lot more.  But this has helped perk up our doublefile viburnums, spice bushes, and exbury azaleas.  They were all showing a lot of stress and we didn't want to use the water to give them a boost.  Unfortunately there was a casualty because of the rain.  Once the ground is moist the frogs get on the move, and one was on our patio this evening and I stepped on it.  It was completely flattened on the ground and when I went to pick it up it hopped away, at least three feet from where it had been.  I picked it up and held it, it was definitely hurt badly and it died a few minutes later.  I felt horrible that I didn't see it.  I looked for toads as I always do but they aren't normally in the middle of the patio, so I guess I didn't look there.  This was a frog that probably emerged from a tadpole this summer, not real big.

     August 10, 1999 - We have a huge batch of four o'clocks growing next to our front porch, at least two dozen plants, about which half a dozen are huge.  Late tonight while we were looking at the plants we saw two white-lined sphinx moths visiting the flowers.  They are large and look very much like hummingbirds.  Very neat to observe.  Blazer thought so also and would have loved to have eaten them, fortunately he didn't catch either one and we took him back into the house quickly.  Still no rain despite the sky looking threatening many times throughout the day.  We did get 0.18 inches the other day, not enough to help anything really.  The statisticians are saying this is the worst drought for our area in the past century.  Maryland is being hit even harder.

     August 8, 1999 - All four bluebirds hatched without a hitch.  Yeah!

     August 7, 1999 - I checked on the bluebird nest, by the way, when I checked one day last
week I found out that she did lay a fourth egg.  Anyway, two babies were hatched out when I looked in the morning.  Hopefully the other two will hatch ok.  When I cleaned out our wren house I found three dead babies in the nest, I have no idea what happened to them, they were doing fine, but I am sure it was natural causes and not predation.  I don't know if the other two fledged or whether they died and were removed from the nest earlier.  Out front when I monitored that box, the one that had six eggs in it, I discovered that one of the six eggs had never hatched, but those five fledged successfully.  We had another brood of mockingbirds fledge and they escaped harm from the dogs.  And then I discovered a nest in our neighbors' Austrian pine, a mockingbird nest, and they fledged a day or two after I discovered it, also no problems so far.  Our robin is sitting on eggs in the maple tree.

     July 26, 1999 - I have been working some more on weeding around the kennel area, what a tedious job.  Temperatures continue to be in the 90's, and everything that got wet during the rain is drying out fast, making weeding very difficult.

    July 25, 1999 - We checked the bluebird house, there were two eggs two days ago, when I checked it after I had already written in the diary.  Today when I checked around 9:30 am, the female flew out of the box, as though she were sitting on the nest, and there were only three eggs, so we think that is all she is laying.  The nest in the maple seems to be complete, we are pretty sure it is a robin's, we'll know for sure when she starts sitting.  We have more bullfrog eggs in the pond!  I did a lot of weeding out front, between our pampas grass and our dogwood tree.  It looks a lot better, but I had better get some mulch down quickly or it will be all weeds again.

     July 23, 1999 - We discovered a bird building a nest in the smaller of our two red maple trees.  I think it might be a robin, but it doesn't look like a robin nest could fit where this bird is building.  We'll see.  Both yesterday and the day before the bluebirds, both male and female, were active at the house we have on the right side of the yard, the one they used for their first nest.  We hope they are going to build again.

     July 22, 1999 - Overnight we got 0.73 inches of rain and then in the evening we got another 0.62 inches, so, 1.35  inches for the day, what a welcome relief.  Yesterday 55 counties in Pennsylvania were officially declared in a drought emegency, York County included.  A few counties were listed as being in a severe drought, York was moderate, but where I grew up in Northampton County, they looked like they were in the severe part.  Brian and I were in Lehigh County, which borders Northampton, over the weekend and we would believe it from the looks of things.  I have continued working on weeding our paths around the kennels.  I have all three kennels empty of weeds and an area about ten feet long in front of the one kennel finished.  It is hard on the hands weeding in the gravel, not to mention you can't just dig the weeds out or use a dandelion digger.  Now the temperatures are heading back into the mid 90's so I won't get much done for a while.  We have more baby mockingbirds in our wild tartarian honeysuckle that borders our property on the left side.  Hopefully some of these will survive.

     July 19, 1999 - Well, this weather is really getting disgusting.  Tonight it looked threatening for rain once again, but when I got home from work and checked the rain gauge we had gotten .05 inches, or maybe .06.  But, that's it.  And yet at Red Mill Elementary School, which is three miles tops, as the crow flies, from where we live, they got 1.92 inches!!  It is enough to make you cry.  Our rain barrel is still full as we have been using the water very sparingly.  Our willow looks really awful, as it does every summer any more, but the grass doesn't look nearly as bad as it could, and most of our plants are holding up ok.  The doublefile viburnums are showing stress in the fact that their leaves look droopy, and our river birch that has been in about six years now has lost some leaves, and our daylilies, though supposedly drought resistant, are showing stress, but most of that is probably because they need to be divided so badly.  Some of our annuals won't make it through this, and some might make it through but never be the same, but that's a loss we can deal with.  The high was 99 degrees today, coming off at least two 100 degree days in a row.  We are pleased that our paperbark maple is holding up well, as last year it lost a few branches and we are sure it was drought related.  I have only watered it once.  Perhaps it put a lot of energy into root growth last year.  Most of the spiderworts that Brian's sister Cheryl and her husband Mike gave us have put out new shoots, so they should be ok.  We think our wrens out front finally fledged today.  I'll know for sure tomorrow.

     According to a news report the other day, this is the worst drought our area has experienced in the last thirty years.  We are six inches below normal in rainfall for the year, which doesn't sound that bad, but we are coming off a year of drought that we never recovered from, since we never got much in the way of spring rains or winter snows.

     July 16, 1999 - I watered some plants using water from our rain barrel, early in the morning, and also filled our birdbath out front.  That gets used quite a bit, even though the pond is always available.  And I topped off the pond, even though I didn't want to.  When I was checking to be sure the pond was full, and enjoying watching the spawning activity of the fish which is always greatest early in the morning and after the pond has been filled and they can access more plants, I saw a wood thrush come down to the streambed for a drink of water.  Except for the one that was on the nest in the woods, that is the first wood thrush I have seen in years.  We hear them all the time, but they are elusive.

     July 14, 1999 - I managed to get a lot of work done outside today, mowing both front yards, bagging the grass and putting it on the "floor" of our mini forest to be.  If it ever actually becomes that.  It may end up being a daylily forest instead.  : )  I finished putting grass along a straight line between us and our next door neighbor, now I have to work my way across our front yard and eventually decide on a border.  I'll want it to curve, but don't really know how or where I want the edge to be yet.  I also did some weeding around our tomato and zucchini plants.  I picked three more zucchinis, the plants are really producing nicely, though I am having trouble with blossom end rot.  I don't know if it is the heat or if I need to add lime  I have some areas in the back yard that could be mowed and bagged, but for the most part, even though it has been more than four weeks, it doesn't even need to be mowed.  The pond should be topped off again but we hate to use the water.  However, we will probably have to since the weather forecast is for several more days in the upper 90's coming at us.  Today was much more pleasant, still just 73 degrees at 11:00 am, and overcast all morning.

     July 13, 1999 - Today Brian and I went to a daylily farm called Chestnut Sands Daylily Farm.  It is located in York, PA.  There were so many varieties to choose from that we had a hard time deciding.  I really like the ones I already have at home, but most of them are yellow.  I wanted some variety.  I ordered some pink and some red, some with a hint of orange.  I ended up buying ten plants and the owner is going to throw in two free ones as well.  These plus what I will get when I divide mine will probably give me way more than I need.  Uh oh.  We both fell in love with one named Real Wind.  What a pretty plant.  We will be going back in September to pick up our order.  That's the proper planting time for daylilies in our area.  And it will give me time to get some spots ready.  If it ever rains and I can work the soil.  We found a dead baby bunny when we were walking through the woods.  Perhaps it was the one I released first the other day.  It was bigger than when the dogs had them, but not by much.  There were no marks on it so I don't really know what happened.  We have a wren sitting on five eggs in our bluebird house on the left side of our yard, back box.  That is where they have already raised six babies this year.  And another wren couple are feeding six young in our front most box, on our split rail.

     July 12, 1999 - I started cleaning out along the road on the other side of  the driveway.  The roots of the ivy are harder to pull out, guess they are in more dirt and less gravel, but it is still going faster than the other side because there is just less ivy where I don't want it.  So, I am more than halfway through this side, which is also shorter.  I still have a chore cleaning the dirt from the side of the driveway and all the gravel that has accumulated at the bottom of the drive.  It was great working today, it was overcast the entire time I was working.  And, we got .05 inches of rain, that won't put any dent in the six inch deficit there is for the year.  Fifty nine of Pennsylvania's sixty seven counties are in a drought.

     July 11, 1999 - Another bunny story.  Blazer found another one of the bunnies.  I have no idea how long he was playing with it before I discovered he had it, but I am sure he had it on the ground batting it with his paw as well as carrying it in his mouth.  When I went to take it out of his mouth it was so far back I thought he was trying, perhaps accidentally, to swallow it whole.  It was alive, but not looking too good, and completely wet.  I put it in a box in the house and checked on it periodically.  I had the box in the solarium which was quite warm, trying to warm the bunny up because it was shivering, and to help dry it off.  When I checked on it maybe ten or fifteen minutes after I put it in the box, it was hopping the way bunnies do when their nest gets disturbed, but as the day went by it just sat there, not moving at all for several hours.  I went to work figuring it would be dead when I got home, only to have Brian tell me after I got back that he had been hearing noises coming from the laundry area and it took him some time to realize it was the bunny.  I had left it on top of the washer, in a box that was only about eight inches high.  There was a towel in the box which was all folded up and the bunny was under just one piece of it.  But Brian said he had kept hearing plastic sounding noises.  Here the bunny hopped out of the box and must have fallen between the washer and the dryer, then made its way behind the dryer and found an empty plastic bag from the grocery store.  It actually had crawled into the grocery bag and was at the bottom of it when I found it.  Thank goodness it didn't suffocate.  And thank goodness it went behind the washer/dryer and not into the house where all the dogs were loose.  When I took it out of the bag it was so lively I actually had trouble holding it.  I took it to an unpopulated area and released it, rather than risk it getting caught again by our guys.  I was really happy the little lagomorph was ok.  It probably took about seven hours before it recovered.  Our three baby bluebirds have fledged without incident.

     July 10, 1999 - Unfortunately the dogs discovered their first nest of bunnies of the season.  Corrie found it behind the rhodendron that is behind our pavilion.  Brian was there but couldn't stop anything.  He had to go to the front of the house to get me.  When he headed out front Blazer already had one baby, and Joy had another.  He told me that the bunnies really scattered when the nest was disturbed.  Fortunately they were big enough to do that.  I took the bunny away from Blazer but didn't realize Joy even had one until Brian made it back around the house.  We couldn't believe that the one Blazer had was not only alive, but quite lively, jumping in my hands, by the time I went to release it in the woods, on our neighbor's side of the fence.  The one Joy had was not as lucky.  But all in all, with seven dogs loose, we were thrilled to have only lost one baby.  They never found any of the ones that scattered.  I spent several hours working along the road, removing ivy again from the ditch between the ivy and the road.  I can't believe how much stuff I have taken out of there.  My new compost bin has an area about three feet tall by four feet wide and about seven feet long filled already.  I have about three feet left of ivy and dead leaves to remove on the one side and then I have the other side of the driveway to tackle.

     July 9, 1999 - I removed the two bee nests that were in the doublefile viburnum.  The first one I found was definitely not a hornet nest, the second one was.  All the hornet larvae were in chambers and were still moving.  The few that were actually formed as hornets but hadn't emerged yet were dead.  When I broke open the second nest, it was just loaded with wasps, I don't know what kind but they did look a lot like yellow jackets, they were all piled up at the entrance hole.  The larvae didn't seem to be in chambers, but maybe I just destroyed them in the process of opening the nest.  It was just strange how all the bees were there at the hole, and as I was digging through them, while I had the nest sitting in a bag on Brian's lap so he could see, we realized one was still moving.  That's one of the bees, not a larva!  Boy, did I move fast, but I guess it was half dead.  I stepped on both nests to destroy anything that was remaining alive.  The larva in the second nest all appeared to be dead.

     July 8, 1999 - We finally got some rain, on the second of July, nine tenths of an inch even.  Brian's dad who lives just four miles away only got a quarter of an inch out of the same storms, so we were lucky this time.  Other times it has been the opposite, Brian's dad or his sister who is about ten miles away, were always getting more than us.

     In late June I had weeded a lot behind one of our pampas grasses which was a real chore, because the blades are like razors.  But I did a really nice job with that, and then brought leaf mold down from our one compost bins and mulched the area.  I also weeded about two thirds of our front flower bed and put compost down there as well.  Unfortunately I have to keep stopping on that project either because of dryness or heat.  We just had three straight days of record setting temperatures, over 100 degrees with high humidity and dewpoints in the 70's.  Heat indexes were around 114 degrees each afternoon. And of course no rain during that time.

     We lost a fish because it beached itself in one of our pots, probably during spawning activity early in the morning.  By the time we found it it was too late.  We have very few fish anymore that we can recognize as individuals, because so many are solid orange or solid grey.  This fish was orange but we could recognize it because it is the one that was all scarred from the great blue heron attack.  Sad that it made it through that only to beach itself later.  I topped the pond off, which we hated to do because of the drought, and that was right before it rained.  Or course.  But the four or five other times that I didn't top it off because if was supposed to rain, it never did.

     After the rain I started a new project, cleaning along the road where our English ivy has grown out over it.  That is a chore that isn't hard, just time consuming.  Several years ago the township resurfaced the road which made a really deep trench between our ivy and the edge of the road.  I used to be able to mow down there but once that happened, I couldn't mow any more.  The ivy has been taking over and I decided it was time to get rid of it.  Well, there are runners all through the dirt, leaves, and gravel that have collected in that trench, so it takes a lot of patience to clean it out.  I have gotten about two thirds of the way along one side of our driveway, but am temporarily halted by a back problem.  And we have finally had somewhat of a break in the weather, I have to force myself to not go out and work.

     All the debris that I have been removing is now going into the wildflower area that I planted on May 16th.  I knew it was too late to get that seed in when it was finally sent to us, and the plants are only about four inches high still, they will never amount to anything.  The area where I put the wildflower seed was already fenced off because it had previously had tomato plants in it, so I am just throwing all the debris in there and making a new compost bin.  I never have enough compost.

     Our wrens that are out front hatched, and the robins in the ash tree fledged as well as the mockingbirds.  Unfortunately Blazer, our puppy, got two of the baby mockingbirds.  Both were on the ground, one had probably only been out of the nest a few minutes, the other was the next day and it had travelled from the patio all the way up to our hemlock tree, which is very far from where they nested, but it was still on the ground.  What a shame.  The robins were ok.  We have bluebirds that are fifteen days old, so they will be fledging in two or three days.  There were four eggs but only three hatched.  As far as I know the fourth egg is still in the nest, it was there yet when the babies were around three days old.  That will only make five babies out of two nests, hopefully they will raise a third brood, but we doubt it.

     I got stung by what I had assumed was a hornet, last night, up by our pavilion.  We found the nest in our doublefile viburnum, and I sprayed it with wasp and hornet killer after dark.  Then when I went to check on it this morning, I saw that the bees that were still hanging around it looked more like yellow jackets than hornets.  We know yellow jackets nest underground and don't build a hornet type nest, but we don't know if another bee builds the same type nest or not.  I decided to look for more nests and found another in the same tree!  Good grief.  That one was definitely a hornet nest and I sprayed it as well.  And about two weeks ago I had to spray one on our garage.  I really don't like destroying them, but don't feel I have much choice.  With Brian being a quadriplegic if he were to start getting stung, he might not even realize it for a while.  Plus, he can't get out of the area very quickly should they start attacking.  The first nest I found last night is really big.

     It has probably been a month, at least, since I have mowed the grass, that is how dry it has been.