Baby Rabbits and Garden Blooms

I checked on the rabbit kits.  There was no sign of them above ground, but I did find a hole under the chocolate plant.  The hole was lined with fur just inside the opening.  It dawned on me, then, what had happened yesterday.  I'd encountered the same situation about a year ago in my rose garden when I found baby rabbits scattered throughout it.  Yesterday the irrigation system timed on, and the kits moved from their underground burrow onto the surface to keep from getting too wet.  Mama rabbit has dug a perfect hideaway for them.  If I'd moved them yesterday, I would have been doing the wrong thing.  I'm glad that I left the babies alone.  So often my heart wants to embrace every creature I encounter and keep it safe.  But I've learned that well-meaning humans often do animals more harm than good.  It is best to let nature take care of its own, in most cases.

This afternoon, I checked my garden and noticed that the bearded iris are already putting up bud stalks.  I should have flowers in a week or so.  Likewise, there are buds on my rose bushes, but they are still a couple weeks from bloom.

The rabbit kits' burrow under a chocolate plant.

I heard a roadrunner clicking its beak somewhere in the backyard.  I didn't see him, but that clicking sound is distinctive.  It sounds a bit like a dry, wooden stick being rubbed across wicker.  It's one of their calls, another being one that sounds to me like a dog whimpering.  The small birds avoid the roady; he can make a nice lunch of them along with lizards and snakes.  In fact, two roadrunners will often team up to kill a rattlesnake and then share the spoils between them.  One day last summer, I found a roadrunner hanging onto a curved-billed thrasher by the poor thrasher's wing.  I fussed at him and the roadrunner finally released the thrasher, who isn't as big as he is, but is certainly no small bird.  That roadrunner was an optimist.  But the thrasher was lucky.

The rabbit's plant isn't blooming yet, but chocolate flowers in my back courtyard are opening up.

Parry's penstemon in bloom near our driveway.  These do grow wild in the Sonoran Desert.  The tall plant in the background is an ocotillo.  It's thorny and doesn't have its leaves most of the year, but it puts out the most beautiful orange flowers along the tips of its branches.

These are California bluebells blooming in our front yard.
I sowed several pounds of wildflower seed
 over our 3/4 acre lot last fall as well as the fall before.
  I'm seeing plants pop up all over the place.

It seems a little late in the season, but this morning, I found this iris reticulata in bloom.  Some fall-planted bulbs, like dutch iris and daffodils grow well here in the Sonoran Desert.

This is called Butterfly iris.  I'd never seen one until I came out west.  It is used as an ornamental.

I still have some daffodils in bloom.  This is a bunch
I planted in the back courtyard.  The corona are a
soft salmon set off by yellow sepals.