We have unwittingly set up a deer feeding station in our back yard.
Mother and son
For several years it has been a chicken feeding station, poached by no undesirable critters other than the occasional grackle or bad dog.
But our luck wore out, and it seems that deer have excellent memories as far as food is concerned. They're daily buffet visitors now.
Scruffy deer
Hubby thinks they're cute. "You won't think so after they eat the entire garden," I warn, but he doesn't believe it.
This would be the non-existant garden... the garden we've yet to find time to plant. When I moaned about it at a meeting last week, a man told me that he hadn't planted yet either. "The signs aren't good until Thursday. Then they'll last for about 10 days."
Since it's supposed to rain almost every day this week, I'm not overly hopeful. Instead of planting by the moon, we usually use the "when we're both here and it hasn't been raining buckets" method. And those signs have been terrible lately.
Steve very graciously took us on another guided tour. Most of my flower photos didn't turn out well (it was too sunny) - the ones from last year are here.
Mabel and the formerly perfectly fine soaker hose.
Mabel's the new pup on the block, and she's very friendly. She's still at the chewing stage though, and will probably be on vacation during the upcoming festival, so as to save tent ropes and such.
Sadly, the lovable Buster passed away since last year. Lucy is as aloof as ever.
Tadpole
Tadpole walked with us. Her sister (Sarah) joined us briefly, but was skittish of the camera. Katy the calico slept through the whole thing.
Fiery Searcher
On our walk, we spotted a Fiery Searcher, Calosoma scrutator. They're also known as Caterpillar Hunters.
Another view
So brilliant in the sun! If not the most beautiful beetle, he's at least in the top ten. He was large, as beetles go, and very fast.
Take off your shoes
Also new since last year, this exquisite hardwood floor (Ash).
There are some wonderfully worked details. I didn't forget to photograph them, but I did forget to remove the lens hood. (The lens hood is great for reducing flare when you're taking pictures in the sun. When using the flash, it causes horrible shadows. Duh.)
Skull tree
The skull tree. Still wishing I'd thought of that. Now that we have Jasmine the bone-stealing dog, we don't find the number of skulls that we once did. But I'll remember Steve's advice for cleaning such things: stick them in an ant bed. Reeeeally wish I'd known that before the antler incident.
The Acoustic Cafe is all about String music, and this is its museum. (Click for a larger version.)
Now, Steve knows that while my friends and I do enjoy string music, we are pretty much totally ignorant about it. "You may not know his name," he said, speaking of John Hartford, "but you know his song, Gentle on My Mind."
I didn't realize though, til just now when looking up his links, that I did know John Hartford. He was on the PBS special Songs of the Civil War, that I had taped years ago, and watched dozens of times.
Here he is singing my favorite version of my favorite Civil-War-era song, Lorena:
I looked for another song I remembered from the show, Sweet Honey in the Rock's rendition of Climbing Jacob's Ladder. Couldn't find the video, but I believe this contains the audio:
OK, one more. Another favorite from that show was Hard Times Come Again No More, sung by Kate and Anna McGarrigle and their families. I found this somewhat later version by them that I actually like better, and it has the added bonus of Emmylou Harris:
I didn't get a better photo before he noticed us. He slithered away so fast I could hardly believe it.
I am really, really glad that venomous snakes don't tend to move that fast, or at least, not that fast towards you. (I have seen Copperheads move fairly quickly, but away.)
Anyway, this is a Water Snake, I think the Brown Water Snake (Nerodia taxispilota).
They supposedly have poor dispositions (they'll bite if you pick them up), but if you ask me, any snake that runs away from me has a disposition that I enjoy.
By coincidence, the state meetings of both the Alabama Master Gardeners and the Alabama Wildflower Society were held in Huntsville this past weekend.
I had a conflict of interests!
Actually it wasn't too bad, except for half a day on Saturday, when the AMG was winding down and the AWS was beginning.
We did not get as much time at the Huntsville Botanical Gardens as we would have liked.
This is their 115+ year old dogwood.
A trillium that doesn't know how to count. (It's supposed to have only three petals.)
A quadrillium...?
At a garden we toured, my favorite feature was this granite wall that the owner had built out of free scraps.
I didn't take my "good" camera due to forecasts for lousy weather, and of course ended up wishing I'd had it.
Especially when we hiked the Monte Sano sinks trail. I saw Squawroot for the first time...
...I didn't realize it was so big!
One night the banquet hall was late opening up, so I wandered the neighborhood and photographed enchanted medieval castles. (Or possibly it was just a backlit church with swirling clouds.)
I had a wonderful time, but boy are my feet tired.
It was more spectacular before I thought to grab the camera, of course.
I grew up hearing this called sheet lightning or heat lightning, but to be correct I think it's actually called intra-cloud lightning.
I didn't realize, until playing it back, how loudly the frogs out in the pond were singing. And inside, you can hear Beaker (our parakeet, aka budgie) squawking, whistling, and talking. At around 11-12 seconds he says, "crazy bird". You'll have to have your ears pricked and the sound turned up to hear it.
After a week, we moved the chicks to a much larger container. Wow, were they happy about that. They started a sort of fighting almost right away. I believe they are establishing pecking order.
You can see them doing it in this short video. It brings to mind that chest-bumping thing that boys do, doesn't it?!
I don't remember our previous chicks doing this when they were so young, but it's been a while, so I may be wrong.
I hope it's not just the males doing this. That would mean we have 6 or 7 males out of 8 chickens. Eep.
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P.S. Please excuse the ratty-looking board the waterer is sitting on. We're recycling!
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P.P.S. The reason we had to give so much information when buying chicks, was, I suspect, the whole NAIS thing. It's basically so the government can track livestock.
In the case of chickens, it's so that they can come kill all your chickens if the Avian flu ever hits here.
I piddled around and waited too long to order chicks. Sold out!
I should have realized, after hearing stories about seeds flying off the shelves in this poor economy, that the same would apply to small livestock.
But we found mystery chicks from the Cullman Tractor Supply store.
I think we have Leghorns, a Rhode Island Red, and Dominiques. Maybe.
They are cute, at any rate, although I suspect that a high percentage may be cockerels.
Fuzzy.
Wuzzy.
We put them in a pen outside one sunny day, to soak in sun and eat bugs and scratch around, but mostly they acted like it was just another ploy to try to kill them.
The female Muscovy was verrrry interested. Poor thing wants to be a mama so bad, but is too dumb to figure out how to sit on eggs correctly. Maybe we should have brought her some ducklings.
This is how much they grew in just a week:
That one on the far left and one other black chick have tails already, which says "male" to me, but I pray I'm wrong.
Look Ma, real feathers!
To buy the chicks, we had to sign a paper: name, address, phone, driver's license number! I considered yelling "No NAIS!" and running out the door, but I didn't. I hadn't felt Big Brother peering over my shoulder like that since we tried to drive up to view the local dam, and had our plates and license numbers recorded.
Lord knows what sort of watch list I'll be put on for buying chicks, visiting a dam, and buying Sudafed.
We've gone from snow to temps in the 70s in one week. Don't plant your tomatoes yet though, says our Extension guy; there's still more cold weather to come.
Divided heart-shaped rock that has nothing to do with this post.
I'll be at the Cottontails craft show this weekend at the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic center. So if you are local and have $6, come see me. If you come Friday morning, you may see a friend of mine too. Two blogging soapmakers for the price of one. And if tell me, "You said on your blog that you'd give me a 10% discount," then I will.
The Virginia Bluebells are over there - hope they're ok.
Deer tracks in snow. I have been wanting to track wild animals in the snow ever since we moved here. Unfortunately the snow was all gone by early afternoon, and not many animals had moved around in the morning.
Duck tracks in snow. (The chickens were afraid of the snow. They refused to come out of the coop! It was hilarious.)
Mystery tracks in snow! There is my gloved finger for size comparison. Now if I could only remember where I put the tracking book.
Living in rural north central Alabama. Currently overstocked with pets and poultry. Having lived in several small towns and larger cities, country life is taking some getting used to.
The photo is of Jasmine, fearless protector of the homestead from coyotes, bobcats, deer, herons, airplanes, butterflies and fuzzy little bunnies.
