Friday, March 18, 2011

Wildflowers are here!

Indian paintbrush in the Meadow...

Prairie verbena....
Across the street in our neighbor's yard, mountain laurel...
A dogface on a laurel bloom....
Bluebonnets!!!
Yellow evening primrose
And while you're admiring wildflowers, you never know what else you might spot, like teeny tiny spiderings, dispersing along a community dragline.

Lost Ladybug Project sightings

Coccinella septempunctata
(same as above)


Harmonia axyridis
This evening, one landed on me, and James spotted the other! I just uploaded these images to the Lost Ladybug Project. 



UPDATE SEPTEMBER 20, 2011–Rebecca at the LLP recently posted my images on the Lost Ladybug Project. Cool! "Your fantastic Olla v-nigrum photo is going in the CALS (Cornell Ag & Life Sciences) newsletter soon!" she wrote me. Even cooler! 

She owl



James saw our screech owl roosting again this evening. I grabbed my camera this time. Maybe we'll have little ones again this spring!

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

The mean side of nature...

Couldn't tell you when but one recent day I noticed my arms itched just a tad. Hmmmm, bed bugs? We just gotten a new comforter for our bed. I didn't think any more about it. Until the next morning, when I noticed the itchy places were starting to look....well.....a little like a rash. The NEXT day, I KNEW what I had....POISON IVY!

Been there, done that. At least twice in my history. "Well, at least it's just a mild case,"I told James. "I've had WORSE."

Yes, much worse. This one's been itchy but not unbearably so. Except for one night...at 2 a.m.

I'm pretty sure I must have met up with poison ivy on our 11 acres. I was out there with James last week, hacking grape and smilax vines. I guess there must have been a poison ivy one in there, too. Except seems like I should have a really, really bad case if our encounter was THAT close. Oh, well. I'm just gonna let it run its course. I bought some anti-itch gel Sunday, and that's helped. 

Another day I'll tell you what it's REALLY like to have a yucky case of poison ivy!

Our screech owl's definitely back!

There she is!
Maybe we'll get little ones this spring after all!

Monday, March 14, 2011

They're HERE!

Just this minute spotted our first hummingbird of the season! A male black-chinned hummer was at the feeder that I JUST HUNG UP YESTERDAY! Talk about perfect timing! Cool!

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

March 2011 in our Wildscape

I am going to TRY and shoot photos once a month for a year.