Just Saying Hello

In the barnyard, Emily says hello to Miss Calico. 

Frosty Field

Free Range Kids

For the time being when we are home, we are letting the little goats out of the barnyard so they can run and play. They are definitely much happier as free range kids than  as barnyard goats. As soon as we open the gate and let them out, it is as if a switch is flipped and they start to romp, and leap frog, frolic and  play. Inside the pen, though they have plenty of room to run around, they are pretty sedate...which is not the way a kid should be. 

.So even though they are bound to get into trouble, and nibble on the hosta plants,  knock over  the onions I've set out to dry, and spend half the day racing back and forth on the balcony, seeing their joy in being free makes it all worth while. (Well, that and  the fact that they really do seek out the poison ivy to munch on-- makes it so much easier to sacrifice a few hosta plants and repeatedly pick up the onions.)

Carolina Wren Nestling

It's all about the fuzz. 

Exploring the Wide Wide World

Our new flock of California White pullets got to spend the day outside exploring the jungle of grass and weeds and learning about the delights of  bugs and worms and wood sorrel.



Nine days old.

All under my watchful eye, of course---as I weeded the blueberries, potted up tomato plants and power washed the picket fence that encloses the front flower garden---because our number one egg thief and wanna be baby snatcher was prowling around the coop and yard in broad daylight this afternoon.



The neighborhood leucistic raccoon.



   (Of which I need to get a better photo.)

A Brand New Robin

...with two more on their way.

Linked to Macro Monday.

Turkey Eggs and Trilliums

I was out in the woods this morning pulling the never ending garlic mustard (what else does a person do on her day off in the middle of May?) and nearly stepped on a nesting wild turkey. It gave us both a good scare as she flew off. I quickly snapped a few photos of her dozen speckled eggs then left the woods, hoping that I didn't scare her off for good. This is one place where the rest of the garlic mustard won't get pulled this spring!

I'm loving watching our trillium turn from white to pink--and once again thankful for the cool weather that is prolonging the blooms (and making it more comfortable to work outside!).

And this morning, a non-tattered red admiral sat still on a dried oak branch long enough for me to snap a few photos...

In other news, I have bluebirds nesting in the bluebird box (house sparrows have taken up residence the past two springs). Now if I can just keep the raccoons from discovering the nest and eating all the eggs...

Getting Ready for Fall in the Garden

You know fall is around the corner when mushrooms start popping up all over the garden.We had a long, hot, dry summer but the last few weeks have been cooler with plenty of rain and grass is green again and I have been spared from the task of watering the garden every other day.

 ...group of golden mushrooms...

 This weekend I spent quite a bit of time in the garden, doing clean up, mulching, and planting seeds. I planted several different kinds of lettuce, spinach, kale, and collards. This fall I want to try row covers to help extend the fall crop into November. I have never done this before so it will be interesting to how it works.

I also thinned the spinach, broccoli raab, and carrots seedlings I planted in early August for fall crops. This is the first year I have tried growing broccoli raab.  My spring crop was a complete failure. In fact most of the spring greens were a complete failure, except for the lettuce. Broccoli raab, spinach, bok choi, and mustard all got a few inches tall then bolted. It was a cold wet spring, weather that these greens usually like, so I was surprised. I'm hoping for better luck this fall!

Broccoli raab seedlings

I dug all the potatoes who's vines had completely died back. This was every thing but the Pontiac red potatoes. The Pontiac reds, which are a late storage potato, still have green leaves, but I pulled one plant anyway just to see what was going on in the ground.

Wow, the one plant had many huge potatoes! I was very impressed. In the photo below are 8 hills of Yukon gold potatoes, and one hill of Pontiac red potatoes. I turned one Pontiac red potato into scalloped potatoes for Saturday dinner.

I prepared the soil where I had dug the potatoes for planting garlic this fall by pulling all the weeds and tilling in a few inches of compost. With any luck I'll get my garlic in the ground next weekend.

For a while a little tiny woodchuck joined me in the garden. Actually, he was right on the edge of the garden, busily munching on clover and alfalfa. I know most people wouldn't consider a woodchuck a pleasant gardening companion, but he was so tiny and cute and has been the first one I've seen since one got locked in our large garage the first week we moved here and destroyed the insulation.



...a lunch of clover and alfalfa...

We may have to do something about him later, but for the moment, I just enjoyed him, and he obviously was delighted with the alfalfa and clover. He keep one eye on me the whole time, he wasn't about to to let that stop him from getting a meal.



It has also been a delight to watch the butterflies, of which we have many. This summer I have learned so many of their names. (I have plenty more to learn, though.) Here a Pearl Crescent pauses for a moment on a blade of grass.



A Pearl Crescent butterfly.

What things are you enjoying in your garden right now?

This post is part of the barn hop over at Homestead Revival.

Painted Turtle

This is probably a hatchling from last year.  Midland painted turtles are the most common turtles in lower Michigan. The female lay eggs late May through July and the little turtles hatch in 70 to 80 days. The little ones usually stay in the nest until the following spring. They are able to produce an antifreeze substance to keep from freezing to death during the long winter in the ground.

This little turtle appeared to be making its way to the marshy pond quarter of mile through the woods from us.

For more information on painted turtles, read here. (The four types of painted turtles are pictured about half way through the article.)

Four Blue Eggs

I peeked in the nest today and was surprised to see four eggs! This nest is only a few feet off the ground, so we are hoping the eggs or babies will not get eaten by either raccoons or our cats. The mother robin has been setting for two days now.

Mama Swan and Babies

There are five little ones. And they don't look like ugly ducklings at all!

Another Nesting Swan

This is the fourth nesting swan I have seen so far this spring. Amazing what you can see if you just keep your eyes open when driving. It is things like this that make all the driving that I do for my job feel like it is worth while.  I'm hoping I will get a glimpse of some cygnets this spring. I have never seen one before. There are at least  four different ponds that I can look for baby swans on a few weeks from now.  (I just need a better camera...)

Wings of Spring

The first day of spring came in with pouring rains and thunderstorms--at least the geese were happy, and as for me, I will take thunderstorms over snow any day!

Gaggle of geese

Apparently geese on the ground are called a gaggle of geese. If they are in the sky they are called a skein of geese. I googled "gaggle of geese" for the fun of it and learned that is a term of venery. "Terms of venery" are Old English words from hunting, particular words used to indicate collections of beasts and birds.

Yep, definitely a gaggle of geese.

These next few photos are for Wildlife Watcher:

Is the grey goose in front a greylag goose? I'm pretty sure the white goose is a domestic goose.

And any idea what kind of ducks these are? The dark one is the male and the white one is the female. It is kind of hard to tell in the photo, but the male's face is very warty. He looks like a portly old red faced gentleman when he waddles. Looks like he'd be right at home with a cane and top hat. I am guessing they may be some kind of domestic duck, as they are bigger than the mallards.

These photos where taken yesterday in a park located inside the city I often work in.

A quiet moment

Today I stopped for a few minutes in a little park by the side of the road. This swan must have been used to visitors, because he swam right up to me and happily posed for some photos.

Michigan in March

My part of Michigan is made up mostly of barns and corn fields and trees. I stopped for a few minutes today along the side of a country road to make some phone calls and snapped this photo. This is the landscape I drive through every day.

Though it is hard to see in the corn stubble, we do have about 8 inches of snow on the ground. It did not get above freezing today, but spring is on the the way. I can tell because the sand hill cranes are back in the cornfields from overwintering in Florida.  I saw my first lone couple on Feb. 19th. Today though I saw several dozen.  I can't help but wonder if they wish they had stayed in Florida for  a bit longer. There has got to be much more food there right now.

Speaking of cold and snow, I stopped on my way home and picked up the antidote to cold and snow:

Shadows was right there, when I took the little pot of campanulas outside to photograph. He sure has this thing about flowers.

Miss Calico came along to see what all the fuss was about. Apparently she is more of a normal cat and does not seem to be inordinately fond of flowers.

I like how the light from the setting sun turned the snow ever so slightly pink in the above photos.

I sometimes wonder if sunsets would mostly be very plain if it weren't for jet trails. We live below the flyway from Detroit to Chicago. It seems that the prettiest sunsets occur when there is lots of haze in the sky from dissipating jet trails. Take for an example tonight's sunset:

The sunset was even prettier 20 minutes later:

10 Reasons Opossums are Cool

I've always loved opossums and thought that they are totally cute little creatures, slow, gentle, and relatively harmless. A few years ago I caught an opossum in our live trap that I was using to trap and relocate the squirrels and who were wreaking havoc on my strawberries, melons, and squash. (Those squirrels literally would go through my 50 foot strawberry bed, pick  every half ripe strawberry, take one bite out of it and then throw it on the ground.)

 I belonged to a gardening forum at the time and posted about the possum I had caught. I was stunned and sickened by the amount of raw hatred that most of the other members had toward opossums. I got a several dozen comments about how I ought to drown the poor animal, beat its brains out, shoot it, or run it over with a car. What the heck do possums do that make them deserve that amount of hatred?

Not much. They do eat eggs and while they often get blamed for chicken deaths (maybe because they are slow and rather obvious?), they don't go after adult chickens very often. They do eat chicks and other baby birds. They will eat pet food if you leave it outside. Frankly, I think they do much much more good than harm and they are welcome on my little farm any day.

10 reasons opossums are cool to have around:

1. As mentioned above they are very cute.

2. They are the only marsupial in North America. (The babies are born at 11 to 13 days gestation and are so tiny you could fit 10 of them in a teaspoon.

3. They eat mice and rats, moles and voles.

4. They eat earwigs, slugs, and cockroaches (what's not to love about that!).

5. They eat carrion--which means that they deal with dead animals and I don't have to.

6. They rarely carry rabies--in fact they are more resistant to rabies than any other mammal--possibly due to their low body temperature. They are also immune to rattlesnake venom--and they eat snakes.

7. They rarely eat ripe fruit, but they will clean up rotten and over ripe fruit that has fallen to the ground.

8. They are the ultimate pacifists--rather than fight back or even try to escape when threatened, they fall over and pretend to be dead.

9. They are clean animals and will spend lots of time grooming themselves just like a cat.

10.  Opossums are among the oldest, most primitive mammals. Some scientists call them "living fossils" because they have survived relatively unchanged from ancient fossil records.

Stopping to smell the flowers

I look forward to little clay pots of tete te tete daffodils going on sale at Kroger's supermarket in February and March every year. I always have a pot of them on my window sill until my own daffodils start blooming. When spring comes, I plant the bulbs in the garden and so can watch them re bloom every spring.

And it looks like I am not the only one who appreciates spring flowers...Shadows seemed to be enthralled with them as well and spent several minutes sniffing them ever so delicately.

(An hour or two after I took these photos yesterday afternoon, it started to snow--we have about 10 inches on the ground and more coming down.)

Swan

Swans are back in the thawed lakes and rivers. I saw at least twenty yesterday while driving through the country seeing patients. I'm wondering what they are going to do when the water freezes again. Temperatures are dropping again and we are supposed to get more ice and snow by this evening.

Mole Patrol

Shadows has been catching a mole a day in my flower beds all winter. Here he is hiding in the lavender plants waiting for a fat juicy mole. Hopefully this means that most of the bulbs I planted last winter are intact. Today I noticed the first green shoots of crocuses poking out of the soil.

Can I call this the first flower of 2011? Or is it a remnant of 2010? All  I can say is this little pansy has survived a tough winter and is smiling brightly at our 55 degree temps today.