Mystery Varmint Identified and some flower pictures

Well, it is another wet day in the Ozarks.  We have had 1/2 inch of rain in the early hours and more is due this afternoon before a drier and much hotter spell.  Maybe the heat will dry out our swamps.  Tractors can't get into the fields  until some of this wet  goes away.

Mystery Varmint:

Mystery solved.  We got the beast out of the trap (after it was deceased) and I hosed it off.  Now you can see the rings around the tail and a faint white around the  eyes.  It is a raccoon that will catch no more of our chickens!

Water is now standing even deeper in the west yard.

This is the newly named Kerria Bed (for the kerria japonica pleniflora bush)

 I planted a few  white vinca at the edges, wish I had done more:

 Finally, for the first time a a few years, I planted zinnias which are just now opening:

 The next are some close-ups of the blooms:

 I even managed a second later planting hoping that the flowers would last longer:
Note the three small lavenders at the edges.  I think I have 5 or so planted at the edges of this bed.

 This is also the bed where I recently managed to get the clematis up on a small circle of green welded wire:
I forget the name of the variety but it is a Type 3 that you cut down each year.  I have another growing the an Alba Rose.

 This is the middle of the bed where you can see the ferny cosmos that will come on later.

 and of course, my old standby, self-seeded flowering tobacco, nicotiana sylvestris, that is everywhere!

The kerria is in a rebloom period now:

I have Max out taking pictures of Willow and her new baby (another Willow story coming) and the lane that is full of water now.

I think  I will make soap today.  We are getting low again.