Knock Knock

Someone is there.  She is shameless.  A beggar.  I like to leave the doors propped open on nice days and guess who wants in?  Last week I was sitting in my chair when something jumped up on my foot resting on the footstool.  I was shocked and jumped.  She hurried back out the door.

I feed the squirrels nuts and this one has learned a few tricks.  She can climb up the screen door and rock in and out and cause quite a racket when she wants some nuts.  From the time I raise the blinds in the morning, they watch from the trees and come running.  Mother Nature has to comply.  I do enjoy the animals.

Assist Please

I love looking through UK magazines.  Recently, I found the wall paper I want to put up in my powder room.  It has only taken me three years.  My problem? I have looked high and low for this pattern, which reminds me of a trip to Italy.  I must be missing something as I cannot find it. Have any of you seen this hillside pattern in your publications?

I love the English language are rarely come across words I haven't seen before.  This one caught my eye.  Have you seen it in your readings before?

My Garden Spider

Every spring I look for argiope aurantia, commonly know as the Black and Yellow Garden Spider. If you don't like spiders, this variety is considered harmless to humans. With the elaborate web she weaves, I've come to enjoy watching these year after year. They start out each spring finding a spot where she will spend the rest of her days; tiny webs at first growing up to two feet across in late summer.
These Garden Spiders mate once a year, then lay their eggs at night and form a ball of silk around them. She guards her sack as long as she is able. As the fall nights cool, she becomes more frail and dies around the first hard frost. Her hatchlings, the size of a speck of dust, will exit the pod in the spring. The teenies then exude a strand of silk that gets caught by a breeze, and fly away...

THEY'RE HERE

The aliens have been here all along - we just didn't know what to look for. The tops of my tomato plants were sticks today and some of the green tomatoes were half eaten. Squirrels! Had to be. So I started looking at my plants and found this big guy munching away. It is bigger than my thumb. Needless to say, I removed it to a sunflower and it immediately tucked its head down and played opossum. Unlike Great Grandma Merriot, who used to pinch them, I released this Tomato Horn worm into a patch of volunteer tomatoes. It will grow up to be a Sphinx Moth.

EGGS

When I was small, I had a thing for bird's nests and their little eggs. Curious wild child that I was, I roamed the countryside, climbing into treetops as far as the tree limbs would allow me. Why was I so enamored of eggs? I don't know. As you can see, I still am. Clockwise from left, an ostrich egg, an emu, goose, chicken, banty chicken, quail, and in my sculpted hand, three little eggs I found on the ground and don't know the breed. I also collect nests I find here and there, but only after they have been abandoned.

SOUP?

This is a young Alligator Snapping Turtle making his way from the creek across the field to a small pond. It is probably several years old, but a young one since they can live over a hundred and fifty years. This one is about 18 inches from head to tail. Its tail alone is about 6" long with stegosaurus-like plates along it. Its head is massive; as big around as my wrist and extends out a whopping 6". It is also very wary. Its eyes rotated like a chameleon's and watched my every move. I stood still, but as long as I was close or moved an inch, it wouldn't move. I must have waited 45 minutes for these shots. Notice the sharp edges at the tail end of his shell.

When I backed away it began to move again. I had to hide behind a red cedar.

I am lying on the ground to get these shots hoping I wasn't being eaten up by chiggers. I did get three ticks. What I do for you guys.

He quickly went under and watched me; froze in that position. Snapping turtles can weigh over 200 pounds. Can you imagine? I tried to pick up one once (a little bigger than this one) and though I'm not afraid of much anything, I jumped back pretty fast when it turned around in an instant. They can move like lightning unlike the slower box turtles. They also let out a low hiss or growl - much like the sound an alligator makes. I'm quite sure this one could bite toes and fingers off. They are so cute when they are hatchlings, but really ugly when they get big.

I wanted to show you this still life under a cloche. I am always finding things on the farm. I found the little screech owl in the attic over the garage. I guess it got up there then couldn't find its way out. The smaller skull is from some kind of tern that I found by the pond in some grasses. The hummingbird flew into one of the windows on my house. I have saved many birds when they do this but this little guy didn't make it. The nest is a hummer nest; they use their spittle to attach tiny lichens to it. Did you know that birds reuse their nests several times during the spring and summer? The fungi, lichens and mosses are from the woods and when dried, they remain as they are for years to come.

Some of my friends

Thought I'd share some of the deer and other animals on our Peaceable Hill Farm this year. Currently, I'm feeding whole corn to about 27 deer as there aren't many acorns this year. I think a late hard freeze this spring hurt the oaks. The doe standing on her hind legs is snap kicking or boxing the others to get them to go away from the corn. They do this a lot; must be some kind of hierarchy. The kitty is one of our barn cats that followed me from the barn to the pond where I was taking pics of the deer. He is so sweet. More about the barn cats later. The geese at the pond just wanted bread. They ran honking and hissing after the deer and the cat shortly after the photo.

Nature

I used to break roly polys in half. They were fairly large and inside of them were tiny white crawly things. Babies, perhaps, or parasites of some sort. Ick. I can take most anything except parasites. Now, I don't kill anything. Karma you know. Oh, I do pinch fiddleback spiders, and the yearly cottonmouth water moccasins that take up residence in my gold fish pond... It's not that they eat my goldfish. There are generations from the calico goldfish my young son won at the carnival years ago. But, I do mind the snakes killing two of my ducks that wondered up to the house and don't want them to bite us or my pets. Supposedly, this venomous snake is aggressive though I have never seen that. All the snakes around here seem to want to get away asap. Be that as it may, if I see the watermocs out sunning on my lily pads...
Notice this year's fawn and my male goose running after it. The rest of the geese are his babies from the spring hatch. Also, my female Bourbon Red turkey peeking out from behind a hosta on the back porch. Which reminds me, did anyone go to the annual turkey drop in Yellville,
AR last weekend? This is a town of about 1500 and they have a celebration every year on the town square and the highlight is a plane flying overhead dropping turkeys. When the turkeys land, (some land dead but don't tell anyone I told ya), the celebrants scramble for the fleeing turkeys. I heard one little boy carried his around the entire day like it was an Oscar. No kidding! I'll see if I can get a still photograph or two.

This is my Emmy; the sweetest, most wonderful dog in the world.


This is Sister; Emmy's ornery little sis; field rat killer extraordinaire.