A patch of alpine squill

[seasonoftowers]

They aren't very alpine in Romania, and mostly grow in shadowy areas such as forests. These I found hidden under a hedge on my daily walk.

Funny little difference: you know all the 19th century romantic poetry using violets as a motif associated to pale, wan, beloved women? In Romanian, the translations use alpine squill instead, because violets are gendered masculine in Romanian - hard to be wan and romantic about a flower called little-axe or three-spotted-brother.

I feel like this works better than the original, however. Alpine squill really is a pale, wan flower that needs specific conditions to bloom, whereas violets are cheerful, hardy weeds that take over entire lawns if you're not paying attention.

No More Suet

[yourlibrarian]

We had a disappointing experiment with suet this year. The sparrows and finches were interested largely if the seed plate was low, and they seemed to make little progress with it. However the starlings definitely liked it. A bunch of them came in for a few days, and they ended up attacking it so often it got dragged off the food plate -- and eventually off the side of the balcony.



I imagine if they no longer found it there that the local squirrels would, but although we've seen the occasional Blue Jays and Cardinals, for the most part we have only the finches and sparrows coming to eat. This past week though we've been seeing some mourning doves and I suspect that as nests get started that we'll see them more often.

Sidenote: In the bottom photo I was amused by the birdies who seem to realize they're on camera.