Birds and Flowers in my Backyard

Some things I like more than pumpkin are birds and flowers so I thought I'd show you some of the flowers in my backyard before our dog River eats them all. He's a feral kind of guy and nothing makes him happier than munching flowers and sometimes the whole plant right down to the ground. The last pictures are me trying to build a fort around the clematis and irises, but he's way too smart to let a couple of chairs stop him. He's been on "escort only" punishment in the backyard, but he still gets them either by waiting you out or pretending he's a kamakaze pilot making quick trips around the yard and then going in for the kill so fast you haven't got a chance of stopping him.

The birds are back, too. There are five goldfinches in the picture, but we've had as many as eleven at one time on the feeder. This year some silly wrens made a nest in the "decorative" Virginia Tech birdhouse next to the finch feeder, so I'm going to have to move the feeder. Wrens are notoriously crabby birds and these are house wrens, not the adorable Carolina wrens. We also have nesting robins, chickadees and sparrows.