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Or: how I stopped worrying and learned to love the goldfinches who eat my flowers. They really are lovely birds, and with the flowers so close to the window we can get a good look at them while they feed. Most interesting is the way they eat sunflowers: they perch on the top edge of the flower, then lean way over to reach the face of the flower. Sometimes all the way upside down, especially if the flower was already hanging down, as they do when they get old.

The sunflower has a layer of little green things covering the seeds, which the goldfinch has to peck out, and then they have to pull out the seed, which can be packed in there pretty tight. I tried to pull one out with my fingernails just to see what it looked liked, and it took me quite a bit of effort to get to it. We find little piles of sunflowers seeds -- empty shells and whole seeds -- under the flowers. I guess sometimes the birds knock extra seeds out. I wonder if the sunflowers will reseed next year? That would be nice. Maybe not though, because the soil in that bed has settled and I'm going to have to add another truckload in the fall. That may bury any loose seeds too far down.

So I don't mind the goldfinches eating the sunflowers. They look better and last longer outside than they would in a vase in the house. (The sunflowers, not the goldfinches. Although I guess the same could be said for the goldfinches.) And if we're leaving them outside, the birds might as well enjoy them. Especially when the sunflowers are all old and droopy, we get more enjoyment from watching goldfinches feed than we would from the flowers alone.

But I'm much less enamoured of the goldfinches when they eat the zinnias, which I do cut and bring inside. Because they don't just peck out the seed; first they pull off and discard the petals, one by one. It's very sad to go outside and see a bare stem with a few tufts clinging to the end, where there used to be a flower. I'm going to try and be vigilant about cutting the zinnias as soon as they bloom, and also leave the flowers with short stems so the goldfinches will still have some food. Also next year I'm going to plant zinnias in another part of the yard. Maybe that way the goldfinches will have enough food and we'll still have enough flowers for the house. Or maybe we'll just end up with more goldfinches.

In other bird news, we've seen a hummingbird hanging around lately. Or maybe more htan one, but we've only ever seen one at a time. It likes the orange zinnias (which is weird, I thought they only liked tubular flowers) and it finally discovered the cardinal flower we planted for hummingbirds last year. We planted a few other alleged hummingbird plants, but alas they've all been duds. Especially the pinapple sage, which hasn't bloomed at all. Next year I'll skip pineapple sage and try some new things.

What a relief it's been to have a lot of rain and a little coolness for the past 24 hours. We were determined to take advantage of the weather, as this may be the last pleasant day until mid September, and we did so by mowing and weed whacking before the rain, and then weeding afterwards. I hear that you're not supposed to dig in the soil when it's wet; it's bad for the soil structure or something. But wet soil is the best for weeding. It's so much easier to pull the weeds out by their roots.

Together we weeded almost the whole bank alond the driveway: I did the lower half of the bank, which can be reached from the driveway, and Georg got up on the slope and did the top by the fence. His part was harder because there's not a lot of room up there among the plants. Plus we stand on a board so as not to squash the soil too much, which makes it even more awkward. Since my part was easier, I had enough energy to keep going and weed the cutting garden, and most of the path around it, which had gotten totally overgrown. Also I finally pulled up the pansies, which had gotten really sad. They should have been taken out a month ago or more.

The flower garden is looking nice if I do say so myself. We seem to do best with the late summer flowers; I think this is because I first started gardening in late summer, two years ago. I planted things which were in bloom at the time, so our flowers are skewed towards blooming later rather than earlier. New this year are the sunflowers, which are doing really well. I want to plant more of them next year. Bees love them, and birds do too. This morning Georg and I saw a female goldfinch land on a sunflower, peck at it a bit, then get chased away by a male goldfinch who wanted the seed for himself. We have a big patch of sunflowers, plenty of room for everyone. But he had to have the one that someone else was eating from. I didn't know birds got territorial like that.

I also did some research for that picture frame project. I don't have any professional lighting, so we're going to shoot the frames outside, in a pretty garden courtyard with brick walls and ivy and terra cotta urns. I think the frames are going to look really nice, and plus it will be a lot less work than having to create a room setting for them. Because think about it, you can't have every frame on the same wall above the same piece of furniture. Each photo would have to look like a different room. Which would be a pain in the butt. This way will be much easier, and I think the frames will shine in a natural setting. We are going to need artificial lighting for a few of the photos on the shady side of the courtyard, but I can do that by putting my external flash on the tripod. Or, if I find that doesn't work, I'll have an excuse to buy some lighting.