Planetary Verbosity

Here’s the second part of this double entry – scroll down for part 1, which was posted yesterday.

Ok, now on to my sort-of four day weekend. We actually headed up to the homestead on Friday afternoon to take up some of the stuff we’d need. It’s a good thing we weren’t staying that day, as there were some pretty powerful storms and downpours moving through. We were caught in the middle of one of the downpours, but we easily escaped to the shelter of the shed. Before the rain started, I took some pics of the storms moving in, including this one of some ominous clouds hanging over the house:

After the storm passed, we came back out and were greeted with some beautiful after-storm sunshine. Here’s a pic taken from almost the same spot/angle as the one above:

We’ve been seeing a lot of rabbits on the property lately. Here’s one that was in the backyard before the storm; it took shelter in the forsythia:

We started our weekend on Saturday, setting up the tent and doing some yard work. For me, “yard work” also meant winding up with the end of the pole saw (saw blade part) embedded in my leg. Yeah. That was a little bloody and such. After rinsing it with rubbing alcohol and bandaging it, though, I was back at it. I won’t post a picture of the newest homestead war wound…but I did take some.

Dinner for the first night was hot dogs cooked in cast iron, and baked beans done in our small bean pot. (We’d like to get a small cast iron pot of similar size for the beans, but this one will do for now.) As with last year, they were cooked on the fire pit, which did a great job…it was delicious!

We were actually pleasantly surprised on Saturday night after dinner, when we got to see the fireworks (real ones, not the supermarket variety) set off by a neighbor/business owner. Sounded like they had a fairly loud crowd there, but we were lucky enough to be able to see part of the show – once we realized where they were coming from – from our upper yard!

On Sunday, we did some more yard work, but we were plagued by rain showers off and on all day. We decided against sleeping in the tent, which we’d discovered had a small hole in the corner. Instead, we opted to come back to town and sleep in the house. Since the weather was supposed to be iffy for the next few days, we decided to put away the air mattresses and such. It was a good thing we did, because when we went back on Monday afternoon (after a day of shopping and our first visit to Five Guys – best burger and fries ever!), there was water in the tent and on the tarp underneath. It must’ve rained pretty hard overnight.

The weather ended up being pretty nice on Monday, so I decided to go wading while we were there. I discovered that the jewelweed down by the creek is now flowering:

I also saw plenty of creek life, including minnows, crayfish, and as with last year, lots of ebony jewelwings (Calopteryx maculata). The male jewelwings seemed particulary fascinated by my trekking pole and tried to land on it a few times. They were also fine with posing for photos once they got used to me being there. Here’s one of the more curious males:

We got the tent put away and came back to our in-town home on Monday and decided to just stay home all day Tuesday after doing our regular shopping. Unfortunately, that means it’s back to work for me tomorrow. *sigh*

Here I sit, editing pictures and composing a two-part entry (ok, and admittedly listening to “Summertime” by NKOTB – they’re one of those high school habits that’s hard to break) on the last day of my four day weekend. Since Dave has some time off while his workplace goes through inventory, I decided to take a couple of days off from work. Rather than doing a Thursday – Sunday, we decided it would be better to have Saturday – Tuesday.

We were supposed to spend all four days on our homestead, camping out overnight in our tent like we did last year. That didn’t exactly work out according to plan…more on that later.

First, here are a couple of pics from the previous weekend (June 20-21). I continue to see – and hear – plenty of cardinals around our homestead:

And here’s a small white butterfly on a white avens (Geum canadense) flower. Yes, that’s really the butterfly’s name – small white (Pieris rapae); it’s also known as a small cabbage white. If anyone tells you these are moths, set them straight…it’s a plain-looking little thing, but it’s definitely a butterfly.

Also on Saturday, we got our very first solar panel for the shed! Ok, so it’s a small one that was part of a shed light kit, but it works. We picked up the Gardman solar shed light at a local farm store, and it’s actually a pretty cool little kit for under $40. It comes with the solar panel, light fixture (with pull cord), fluorescent tube, and everything needed to get started. Dave mounted the small solar panel on the front of the shed, where it’ll get plenty of light:

He put the light right inside the door (it’s not lit in this photo, btw):

Though it’s obviously not enough to light up the whole shed, this is a handy little light and works just fine. Fair warning – the NiMH AA batteries that come with it are only 600 mAh. We love using rechargable batteries and happened to have some spare 2600 mAh AAs, which we installed in the light. This will make quite a bit of difference in the amount of time the light will be able to run on a single charge. I wanted to include that detail for anyone who was considering buying this kit but wasn’t sure about the battery situation – they’re easy to swap out.

We finally broke down and bought a new engine for the long out-of-commission Gravely tractor (8163-T), and Dave finished installing it on Sunday, the 21st. It’s a much better engine and seems to work really well on the Gravely. (We got the engine online from Small Engine Warehouse, just in case anyone was wondering – smooth transaction all around.) This has already reduced mowing time by quite a bit, and we’ll also be able to use the other attachments – a snowblower, a push blade, and a rotary plow.

Here’s what it looks like without any of the attachments…finally working again!

Close-up of the new engine on the back:

We also had some company on the homestead that day – Dave’s mom, sister, and brother-in-law came to visit! Sis-in-law Faye also brought her seizure alert dog, Dreyfus, who had an absolute blast! His favorite part was definitely the creek:

If you want to read more about Faye and Dreyfus, their local paper recently did a great article on them. Click this link to check it out!

Ok, that’s all for now…part two will be posted tomorrow!

I am still here somewhere, but I haven’t felt much like blogging lately. It’s been over a year since I started working this job and shift, and I still haven’t gotten used to getting up so early in the morning (I’ve always been a “night owl”). As a result, I’m still always exhausted during the week. I do feel better on the weekends because I get to wake up at a more reasonable hour.

Dave’s now on a more normal shift, so we’ve been able to spend more time on our homestead lately. Over the past two weekends, we’ve seen a lot of flowers making their first appearances of the year, including the following: Deptford pink, hops clover, sweet clover, fleabane, ox-eyed daisy, and cheeses. The yellow flowers have started to bloom on the prickly pear, and fruits are starting to appear on the woodland strawberry, black raspberry, and honeysuckle bushes. We also discovered we have some type of mulberry tree near the barn; I hadn’t noticed berries on it last year, but they’re definitely there this year. There are also now tiny green walnuts on the black walnut trees.

What would a homestead entry be without photos? Here are some pics from the past two weekends…

These tiny bees really love the rough-fruited cinquefoil (Potentilla recta). Here are two different bees on two different cinquefoil flowers:

The honeybees prefer the sweet clover (Melilotus officinalis) –

Here’s yet another insect – this is an interesting one I hadn’t seen before, but a quick trip to What’s That Bug produced a picture of them mating right there on the first page. How’s that for quick identification! It’s a golden-backed snipe fly (Chrysopilus thoracicus):

The black raspberries are just starting to develop:

Love these – Deptford pink (Dianthus armeria):

On the 7th, my parents decided to stop by the homestead for a visit. Since they watch Snoopy while we’re away, he came along for the ride. The temperatures weren’t stifling that day, but it was still warm enough for him to want to find some shade:

Of course, it was even nicer in the woods…it was not only well-shaded, but Dave’s recent pass through with the string trimmer stirred up the cool soil. The pupster couldn’t resist the opportunity to flop down on said soil and get comfortable. I can tell he’s going to love being a homestead dog!

Mom also decided that she wanted to go wading in the creek, so I took her down for a tour. She actually had more fun than she probably thought she’d have, and I think she has a greater appreciation for why we bought a place with such a run-down house. Here she is with some multiflora roses in her hair; she hadn’t seen them before, but we have an abundance along the creek bank.

Ok, that’s all for now. I’m hoping the next update will include news that we finally got the big Gravely tractor working again! (We bought a new motor for it recently, and Dave has been working on getting it installed and running.)

First, some great news…Dave is finally on a much more normal schedule and has weekends off again, so we should be able to spend more time fixing up our homestead!

Last Sunday was spent mowing, as usual. We did leave enough clover behind for two of the homestead’s newest arrivals to enjoy a Sunday buffet. I almost didn’t see them at first, but a motion in the grass caught my attention, and I was able to stop quickly without scaring them away. I was definitely spotted, though:

These groundhogs were pretty young and are most likely living in a pile of dirt behind the old summer kitchen, where we’ve seen at least one entrance hole. Anyway, the one that sat up and looked at me scurried away as I started to record video of them, but I was still able to get pics and video of the other one, who paid me no mind as he enjoyed his clover buffet.

The other one eventually reappeared, and I was able to get some video and photos of both of them before the second one decided it was time to leave. The first one sat up once again while exploring, and I got a photo before it disappeared again.

I also finally made a YouTube channel for this blog and posted two videos of the groundhogs, as well as a brown thrasher video. I’ll try to upload more soon! Here’s a link:

DacsPlanet YouTube channel

This was the first appearance of the ox-eyed daisies (Chrysanthemum leucanthemum) this year:

I also made a great discovery behind the lilacs in the backyard…a patch of jewelweed (Impatiens capensis)! For those who don’t know, jewelweed is great for soothing and helping to heal the aftereffects of contact with poison ivy, stinging nettle, insect bites, bee stings, etc.

Some sources claim the medicinal properties are merely superstition, but I can say with at least some certainty that it works. I’d been having some trouble with a bug bite on my arm that was itching so intensely that I kept scratching it open (chigger bite, maybe?). As an afterthought when I was down by the creek – where we also have jewelweed – I broke a piece and put some of the juice on my bug bite, then promptly forgot about it. I happened to remember it on Tuesday and looked…the bite was almost completely healed and hadn’t itched since I put the jewelweed on it. I also didn’t get poison ivy much as a child, despite the fact that I am reactive to it and played in the woods quite often. I didn’t know what they were at the time, but I loved jewelweed plants and played amongst/with them quite a bit. Coincidence? Hard to say. In any case, it’s nice to have a patch of it up near the house!

Lastly, I know I posted some similar photos last year, but the astronomy buff in me still likes to take/post these. This photo of the moon is a 100% crop of the original and was taken around 6 pm on Sunday:

Now if I do auto-levels on that photo and then reduce the noise a bit, I come up with an even cooler lunar photo:

Not bad for a prosumer digicam! Ok, that’s all for now. Waking up very early every morning is starting to catch up with me, so I’m off to bed.

I’m sitting here, home from work on a Tuesday! No, I’m not sick. I usually work Monday through Friday, but we had to pick a day to work over Memorial Day weekend (typically a busier time for home improvement stores – especially the garden center). I chose to work Saturday and have off Tuesday, because at the time, Dave was also off on Tuesdays. Unfortunately, between then and now, he was put on a horrendous schedule, so I’ll barely be seeing him for a few weeks. Ugh. Oh, and for some reason, our adorable dog decided I shouldn’t sleep in on my day off because it’s not one of my usual days off…so he woke me way too early, and I’m more exhausted than I’d like to be this early in the evening.

Anyway, a couple of days after the area swimming pools officially opened, the temperature is a raw 53 degrees, and it’s rainy and dreary. Spring has apparently decided that it’s not quite done with our area yet. The weekend was hot and humid, though, so this is almost a welcome break. (Note to Mother Nature – 60s would have been just fine.)

Thanks to our schedules, visits to our homestead have been few and far between lately, so I haven’t had as much to blog about. (I could blog about other subjects, but most of those entries get ignored, so I’ve been sticking with homestead-related entries only.) Here are some photos from the past two Sundays – May 17 and May 24.

The 17th saw the arrival of the white irises to go with the purple ones that had bloomed a week earlier. These are up by the barn, amongst the prickly pear and wild garlic.

Here’s a very young flower and buds of the black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis). We seem to have a lot more black raspberries around the homestead this year, but we most likely won’t get to them before the deer and other animals. Once we move up there, I plan to try to harvest some of the berries; I remember eating them all the time as a kid.

Though they are surely blooming by now, the star of Bethlehem flowers down by the creek were still hiding when I took this photo on the 17th. (I love the green stripe down the middle of the underside of each petal!)

Here’s the last pic I’ll post from the 17th. Most of you probably know that jewelweed is a great cure for poison ivy itching/rashes, stinging nettle, etc. Did you know that water will bead on the undersides of the leaves? I’d read about it but never gave it a try until now. I pulled a leaf, put it upside-down in the creek, and pressed lightly on the center to get some water into the middle. Sure enough, this was the result:

Love it!

Since both of us worked on Memorial Day, we had our cookout with my family on the 24th. After the cookout, we went up to our homestead to do a little mowing. Dave also wanted to work on the Gravely 526 walk-behind. He’d purchased two sets of tires (with better treads) and wheel weights/spacers on eBay and wanted to put them on to see how much of a difference this would make while using the sickle bar on the sloped terrain. Because it hadn’t rained much, we decided to only mow the main yards surrounding the house and not the upper yards by the barn.

After a quick run to the Path Valley General Store for some bolts, Dave was able to put the dual wheels and spacers on the Gravely. This was the end result…

The tires and weights did seem to help; Dave and the sickle bar made quick work of the overgrowth that was out of the reach of the riding mower.

The sweet rocket is now very high and is all over the woods and around the edges of the yard.

This weekend also marked the year’s first appearance of multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora)…

…as well as one of Adk’s favorites, Deptford pink (Dianthus armeria) -

Finally, in the interesting-but-weird bug category…many of you have probably seen these around your yard. I know I’ve seen them countless times and never knew what they were; I thought maybe they were eggs from some sort of insect. In any case, it looks like someone spit all over the yard. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, then, that these saliva-like patches clinging to the plants came from a tiny creature known as the spittlebug (the nymph of the froghopper). It’s usually hard to see them through all of the froth, but I managed to get a decent photo of this one on an Evening Lychnis in the upper yard:

Ok, I think I’m caught up now. Hopefully Dave will be off of this grueling schedule soon and we’ll be able to visit the homestead more often!

This is a continuation of yesterday’s entry…and, ironically enough (considering the title), it’s raining today.

Here are some of the other photos from Sunday and Monday. First, there weren’t nearly as many carpenter bees flying around recently, but I did notice a few. Here’s one covered in lots of pollen, enjoying the honeysuckle bush.

The next one isn’t so nice, but it’s a part of living on the homestead. I found one of these crawling up my sleeve; it’s the third one I’ve seen this year (though not all this species), thankfully all on my clothing. This one is a female lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum), easily identifiable by the white spot on the back.

Here’s a photo of the creek on Sunday. As you can see, it’s full and very wide now, thanks to all of the recent rain.

I almost can’t believe that’s the same creek we saw when we first looked at the homestead. At that time, we were in the middle of a drought, and there was very little water in it. I could’ve easily walked over to the “island” on the right side of the photo (covered by driftwood in this picture) in my hiking boots. Here’s a photo from the first time I saw the creek – August 16, 2007 – taken from the same vantage point as the above photo.

What a difference!

Here’s a photo of a local “landmark” of sorts. This is Knob Mountain, which is visible from much of the area and basically separates the vast Path Valley from the smaller Amberson Valley. It was one of the first things we noticed when we started visiting the valley to look at the homestead, and it still doesn’t fail to leave me in awe. It looks even more impressive now, when it’s covered in green.

Last, but not least, here’s a photo of our jungle-grass slayers. It’s kind of a pitiful-looking group – except for the one in the middle – but these things did a pretty nice job with the yard.

The one in the foreground is the Gravely 1130-E. It was at one time the same red color as the one in the middle, but it has oxidized to a kind of pinkish color. That one was an eBay find. The one in the middle is the Gravely 526 with the sickle bar attached. That sickle bar (also an eBay find) has been amazing so far; Dave even used it to help me finish mowing the grass when it started to rain on Monday. The one farthest back is the Murray 10/30…that one is the “freebie.” As I’ve mentioned here before, our former in-town neighbors once put this out for bulk trash pickup day. My parents rescued it (after asking the neighbors) and, after giving it a tune-up, let us take it up to the homestead. It did almost all of the mowing last year and is still going strong so far this year. We’re hoping to get the bigger lawn tractor, the Gravely 8163-T, working soon…it needs a new engine. Once that one’s working, the 50″ mower deck should make very quick work of the jungle…er, lawn.

Ok, that’s all for this week!

After nearly a week’s worth of steady rain, we finally had some nice weather, just in time for a visit to our homestead. Of course, since we hadn’t been there in a week and there had been plenty of “fuel” for it, the grass had grown to near-jungle proportions. Our first order of business was obviously mowing, which turned out to be harder than it sounds. Our “freebie” mower still did great and powered through, but I couldn’t keep the blade on the lower height because it bogged down and stalled. Having the blade raised helped enough that it only bogged down a bit, but it also looked like I barely cut the grass. Thankfully, Dave got the smaller Gravely rider (1130-E) working, so he was able to help me as well.

No visit to the homestead would be complete without photos, so I took plenty. In fact, I have enough to post that I decided to separate them into two entries; the other will be posted tomorrow. In this entry, I’ll post mainly photos of the different plants and flowers that have been showing up lately.

First, the buds that were on the autumn olive tree last weekend have since bloomed. Thanks to these distinctive blossoms, I was able to find another small autumn olive tree as well! I can’t wait until the fruits arrive, as I’d like to start trying some of the various recipes I’ve found.

Before we mowed, the creeping buttercups were reaching for the sky in clusters in yard just above the barn.

There are even more woodland strawberry flowers this week:

The iris buds I posted in the last entry have bloomed into beautiful dark purple flowers. The rain flattened them a bit, but I’m sure they were happy to have it!

The sweet rocket (Hesperis matronalis) is starting to bloom. I’d sort of expected this one, based on the time I started seeing them last year. They’re already really tall, probably thanks in part to the rain.

Guess what else is here…the jewelweed! It’s obviously not flowering yet, but the plants themselves are unmistakable. I think I may try to grow and transplant some of these once we start living there full time and may even consider using them to make a homebrewed poison ivy remedy.

This last one has a bit of a backstory. I’d decided to venture into the woods in spite of the fact that it’s even more of a jungle than the yard. I couldn’t believe how much everything had grown in one week. The small jack-in-the-pulpit plants I’d seen last week were now nearly the size of my hand, and the mayapples were finally flowering. I decided to get some close-up photos of the mayapple flowers and moved in on one, trying to get the camera centered under it. As I maneuvered, I suddenly felt a sharp pain on the backs of two fingers on my left hand. What in the world was that?! I hurried up and snapped the photo, then stood up to check out my fingers. They were throbbing and turning red, with little white bumps in the middle of the red. I definitely didn’t think it was an insect, but not knowing what it was, I decided to wait and see what happened…while continuing to take photos, of course…heh.

By the time I took the next photo of another mayapple flower (this one in a more open area), my fingers were burning in addition to the throbbing. The white bumps had disappeared, but the redness remained. Here’s that photo, by the way; it turned out better than the first one:

I debated dipping my fingers in the creek, but it was extremely high due to the rain, so I decided against it. Since the pain was subsiding, I decided to go back and try to get some pictures of whatever it was I’d brushed against.

Those of you who have had encounters with this stuff already know what I’m going to say. If you thought it was stinging nettle, score yourself 50 bonus points. I didn’t know it at the time, as I’d never encountered the stuff before. I took a photo of the leaves and one of the stem full of stinging “hairs.” Starting with Dave’s suggestion that it may have been nettle, I started researching and found that it’s actually another variety of true nettle called wood nettle (Laportea canadensis).

There were no lasting effects of the stings. The worst of the throbbing/burning feeling only lasted maybe 10 minutes at the most, and soon subsided to a dull ache that was barely noticeable an hour later. There were a couple of extremely faint, tiny red dots on the back of my finger the following day, but they disappeared as well.

Needless to say, now that I can identify this stuff by sight, I’ll be trying to avoid it as much as possible.

It sort of resembles some varieties of mint, doesn’t it?

Until you get a close-up look at the stems…or brush up against them!

Not very friendly-looking, is it? Surprisingly, stinging nettle is actually very healthy to eat! No, really…it’s full of nutrients, and cooking it for 10-15 minutes (or drying it) will remove the stinging properties. This page at “Wildman” Steve Brill’s site has lots of information. Who knows…I might actually try cooking this interesting plant once we live there full-time.

Ok, I’ll save the rest of the photos for tomorrow’s entry!

It’s been raining almost non-stop here since late Friday. There was a very brief appearance by the sun this afternoon, but other than that, it’s been dreary and depressing all week. Snoopy was even sick on Monday and Tuesday because he gets so depressed when it rains. It’s supposed to be nice by the weekend, and there’s a slight chance that the rain will break a little tomorrow before coming back on Friday. What’s up with this? I can only imagine what the creek looks like by now.

We did manage a quick visit to our homestead on Sunday in spite of the rain. Since no entry about the homestead would be complete without pictures, I did actually take some, holding the umbrella in one hand and the camera in the other. Most of them actually came out ok. Sunday’s rain was steady but somewhat light, and the birds were loving it. I saw female cardinals being chased around the yard and through the treetops by the males, as well as mourning doves, a catbird, a blue jay, and assorted others.

Here’s my first ever photo of a female northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis); I’ve gotten several photos of the males in the past, but this is the first time I’ve seen a female on the homestead, and there were at least three of them playing in the rain.

This gray catbird (Dumetella carolinensis) wandered happily around the yard, looking for worms and apparently unphased by the creature with the camera and big blue umbrella:

We have lots of lilacs, of course:

The creeping buttercups enjoyed their bath:

We have lots of honeysuckle on our homestead, but unfortunately, it’s not the sweet-smelling Japanese honeysuckle. What we have is Amur honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii), which is very invasive. Once we move to the ’stead full time, I’ll try to get rid of much of it, as it’s as out-of-control as the forsythia. In the meantime, we can enjoy the flowers and the red fruits (non-edible but pretty) that follow.

The autumn olive tree (Elaeagnus umbellata) is now starting to flower:

This week also marked the first appearance this year of the evening lychnis (Lychnis alba). The cloudy weather tricked some of them into opening mid-day:

I have a feeling the irises will soon be blooming! What gave it away?

Clouds in the valley, with the mountains in the background:

Ok, that’s all for now. Here’s hoping we’ll see some sun soon!

As we figured would happen any day now, our lilacs had really started blooming by the time we made our Tuesday homestead visit. I’ll only post one picture here since I have photos of other things to share, but this one is pretty representative of what we have so far. They’re not in full bloom just yet, but they’re almost there, and they already smell amazing!

In addition to the ones I posted in my last entry, I noticed a few wildflowers on this visit that I hadn’t noticed just two days earlier. First, the creeping buttercups (Ranunculus repens) have started to make their appearance.

We also have some woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca) up near the house. I had to dodge lots of divebombing carpenter bees to get this photo!

This one is a first for me on our homestead. Admittedly, this is only the second spring we’ve owned the place, but I definitely don’t remember seeing these last year. I only saw two of them in the woods so far, but there will probably be more this weekend.

Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum):

It was so warm on Tuesday that I was again able to wade in the creek. As usual, I took plenty of photos, including a few shots where I got the camera as close to the water as I dared to get an interesting perspective.

We stayed long enough that we were able to see the setting sun battling with some incoming clouds to see who would win. In the end, it looked more like a draw, and it made for a good photo opportunity. This first one is from up the hill; the building in the shadows is the neighbor’s shed.

A patch of blue over our house:

Since the weather will be kind of dodgy this weekend, I’m not sure when our next visit will be. I’m looking forward to seeing how the lilacs have progressed – and probably bringing some back for our in-town house.

I thought last weekend was a “summer preview,” but this past weekend was even hotter and more summer-like. It was almost to the point of being unbearable, but wading in the creek on Sunday helped. Yeah, I actually went wading…in April. It was a little chilly at first, but not alarmingly so, and it quickly became refreshing. I was fully prepared to get right back out of the water if my toes started to go numb or something, but it was actually nice enough that I stayed in awhile, got out, and then got back in again later. The water is still pretty deep, though, so I didn’t do much exploring. It should be even deeper by next weekend, as it’s supposed to rain Wednesday through Saturday this week.

As usual, I took a lot of wildlife photos, both of the plant and animal varities. Here are some of my favorites from both days.

Last week, only the common blue violets were blooming, but this week, they were joined by two others. I noticed the northern white violet (Viola pallens) on Saturday…

And the yellow flowers of the round leaved violet (viola rotundifolia) on Sunday…

Here’s yet another patch of grape hyacinth. I wouldn’t have posted this one (already posted them in two recent entries), but these look nicer than most of the other ones I’ve seen around the homestead.

In the edible-but-invasive category, we have a decent amount of garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) in the woods.

Remember the skunk cabbage I posted a picture of in my March 10 entry? It has now matured into this:

Little tiny pine cones on the “Charlie Brown tree” up near the barn:

For Gettysburg Mom and the other lilac fans out there, I finally saw one single bloom! Yeah, only one, but it’s a start…they’ll be here soon!

I posted a link to a great explanation of 100% crop awhile back, but here’s one of my own examples. Here’s the original picture of a small bee on a dandelion, followed by a 100% crop of the same photo.

Now for the animal/insect life. First, I have a few pics of eastern carpenter bees (Xylocopa virginica). They’re extremely plentiful around our homestead this time of year, especially when the sun is out and the weather is warm. Here’s an interesting one for me, as it’s the first time I captured the green eyes close up. It didn’t seem to notice me as it feasted on the ground ivy.

Later, I happened to see a male carpenter bee under the forsythia near the shed, and it was behaving really oddly. It was hovering just above the ground, buzzing wildly, but staying basically in one spot. I was able to get several photos and even a couple of videos before I realized that there was another bee crawling around under some brush. I realized that I was probably seeing the male doing some sort of a mating “dance,” and sure enough, he eventually went after the female in the brush. Here’s the male, hovering; males are easy to identify because they have the whitish spot on the face.

And here’s the object of his affections:

The robins were out in full force this weekend:

I also managed to get a couple of photos of a brown thrasher in a tree near the barn. They have an amazing repertoire of songs; I got a minute-long video of him singing, which I’ll eventually post to YouTube.

Shortly before we left on Sunday, I also noticed something else. I was trying to spot a blue jay I’d seen flying through the trees when flashes of white caught my eye on the other side of the creek. That’s pretty far away from where I was standing, so I just decided to zoom in to the camera’s max and take a pic and video. They’re hard to make out in the original photo…

But a 100% crop reveals a pair of young deer:

See them behind the branches? As I said, this was all the way through the woods and on the other side of the creek, so I was glad to see that I even got something identifiable. Unfortunately, the video feature on the camera auto-focuses and it focused on the branches, so the deer were blurry in the background. I may still upload it, as it’s clear to see them flicking their tails as they wander through the woods.

That’s all for now.