Weekend mornings are Anna’s chance to catch up on some sleep. I usually take Owen first thing in the morning and spend a few hours hanging out with him. At about eight o’clock he falls asleep in his swing and I get some morning quiet time, where I usually catch up on e-mail or survey the garden. This morning I took the camera out and took a few pictures of the garden.

Last weekend, however, we learned we had a family of foxes living in our back yard. I knew we had at least one at some point over the winter – now there are four foxes living in our backyard. One morning when I was watching Owen, I looked out through the window to see two fox cubs playing on some of our rocks outside. One of them had caught a mouse and they were playing with it. Then, one of the cubs went into my vegetable garden, and that’s when things got less friendly. At that time we thought there were two – then later last week, Anna saw three cubs and a possible mama outside. It’s fox central!

Colorado has the “coexistence” policy, so animal control won’t do anything until one of them attacks a person or does something otherwise threatening. These guys are pretty shy – if I open the patio door, they go scurrying away over the fences. I would list “digging in my vegetable garden” as a threat. It will be at that point when I go buy an air rifle and sit out in the backyard in sniper gear. But for now, they keep the bunnies away and they aren’t hurting anything, other than certain spots in my yard where they pee. But in other spots, they poop, which helps! So – yeah.

The garden is doing pretty well now that manbearpig has managed to string together a bunch of warm days in a row. You may be a little surprised at how tame our garden is this year. Here are some comparison pictures: in 2007, 2008, and 2009. The first year was an experiment that went very well, the second year was … overenthusiastic, and the third year, well, we’ll see how it goes. So far, so good.

Owen is really starting to grow into a little man. He’s talking up a storm, he’s large, and he likes trying to stand up. He’s also very, very, very loud. Like air-siren loud.

Here’s the full picture link!