Critters in my garden

I share my garden, usually willingly, with a number of critters.  The crab spider is one of my favorites.

It's intriguing to watch her go into a ballet pose and then hold her position while waiting for an unsuspecting insect to come her way. She sometimes changes her color to match the flower she poses on.

Another of my favorites is the black capped chickadee

.  I used to feed these cheery little friends from my hand when we lived in the country.  They each had their own unique ways, and I learned to recognize the different ones that  came to me.  They got so used to me that I could be hanging cloths on the line and a chickadee would come and peck at my hand on the line to try to coax a few sunflower seeds out of it.   I am just starting to make friends with the chickadees here, and they have been staying at the feeder when I am right beside it.

I don't even mind other spiders in my garden.  They do keep the mosquito population down.

This spider creates a giant web in a corner beside the deck and scares a few people with her size, but really, she does her job so well that I can't begrudge her the space.

Nor do I begrudge space to this busy little blessing:

The one frequent visitor that I do have an issue with is this cheeky fellow:

He spies on me when I plant my bulbs, and then goes on a treasure hunt as soon as I turn my back.  He is also bound and determined to get a whole feeder full of sunflower seeds.  He succeeded once while I was away.  But even this furry little guy provides us with pleasure in the form of entertainment.  He and his siblings love to play chase, sometimes bouncing from one hanging basket to another all across the deck and back again so fast it is a wonder the plants survive.

But he, too, is part of God's magnificent creation, and is just another aspect of the wonder of gardening!