Yard Stuff

I was out and about in the yard on and off over the last few days in between bouts of torrential rain. The first picture is of the sign on a tree as you enter the driveway. I don't think anybody would steal the sign as that is Poison Ivy covering it! Most people run at the sight of Poison Ivy as it leaves horrible weeping blistering pustules on the skin. Natures chemical warfare. Up to now I'm immune. So far! We seem to have a mutual understanding. I leave it alone and it leaves me alone.

Poison Ivy

Ugly Fly

Shed Window Box

The shed and garage all have these black plastic wood window boxes. They are growing well and look nice.

Ricketts Glen State Park

The best place that I know of in Pennsylvania for waterfalls is Ricketts Glen State Park. So this morning we headed North for the 2 and a bit hour drive to the State Park. Weather was heavy overcast with rain showers,thunder and lightning with the odd bit of sunshine here and there. We got lost, twice. We walked 10 times as far as we needed to but we managed to get to the start of the water falls trail we wanted to get to 3 hours earlier. We will know next time and get pictures of the many waterfalls. Enough of the chit chat, heres some pictures.

Garden Bugs

After a couple of inches of rain overnight (50.8mm to all you metric types) the yard was a bit soggy and humid with lots of bitey mossies in the shady areas which is pretty much the whole yard really. After a quick going over with anti bug spray I ventured out with camera and a 150mm Macro lens and first checked out the herbs growing in big pots on the deck. I found several Black Swallowtail caterpillars but no Monarch caterpillars as yet. Further down the yard the Mayapples had nice big 'apples' but I wasn't going to get low enough to get a shot as it was way too wet. Further down I came across various and assorted other bugs that I'll go look up.

Black Swallowtail on Parsley

Black Swallowtail on Dill

Good Bug and Bad Bugs

Assassin Beetle?

Assassin Beetle changing his skin?

New photographic model

Each spring we can lie in bed at night listening to the chorus of American Toads amongst other critters that inhabit our yard and neighborhood. There are several out there but I've never seen one until today. Well here he is. Very cute he is too.

American Toad

American Toad

In a garden center I stopped off in a while ago they were selling tadpoles of various species of toad and frog and I did consider buying some Bullfrog tadpoles. After seeing what they eat I would be scared to go outdoors at night so I forgot that idea pretty quick.

Dreamy Stream

I really must go out and take some more pictures but as I haven't had my second cup of tea yet heres one from a while back that I've been playing with.

Memorial Lake Stream

Forest Greenery

While I normally like my pictures to be crisp I thought I'd give this one a slightly dreamy look to it for a change. This was taken in the Pocono Mountains a few years ago and I came across it while looking through old images as I do from time to time I felt I might have a go at it.

Greenery

Colin an old birding friend of mine always ends his blog post with a music video. While his musical tastes are very different from my own I thought I'd add one of my all time favorite love songs.

Potential

Late yesterday afternoon I popped across to Hershey to have Chicken Noodle soup with Kelly. She fancied Chicken Noodle Soup so thats what we had. I can recommend Panera soups, very nice. I had noticed the flowers along the verges and took my photo gear to have a quick attempt at photographing them. I'm relatively pleased with how this came out. It needs a few things doing differently. I was using a Zeiss 21mm Wide Angle lens mounted on a tripod. It gives a very wide depth of field but I was too close to the front flowers to have them in focus. Still I like the concept as I think it has potential.

Hershey Flowers

Ring-necked Pheasant

This is the 1st Pheasant i've seen this year and it will probably be the last Pheasant I'll see this year. They are very scarce over here for some reason. In 15 years over here I've probably only seen about 10 the whole time. In the U.K. I used to have them in my back garden, if you went out at night and one flew up in front of you it was enough to make you need a change of underwear. They have very short broad wings and they just take off very fast and very noisily at the last minute. Beautiful birds though.

Ring-necked Pheasant

Ring-necked Pheasant

Wild Life

Last night during a particularly heavy thunderstorm I went down to feed Ginger a farm cat from across the road. He was there at the window at the level of deck which makes a very nice serving hatch. He was wet and bedraggled and looked a little apprehensive (my I'm using big words this morning). I slid the window open and gave him his plate of Salmon Supreme and crunchies as usual and he backed away from the paper plate. The reason soon became apparent when Rosie Raccoon came out of the darkness and started tucking into Gingers food. Poor Ginger, the look on his face was priceless. I put another plate of crunchies out for him while Ms. Raccoon polished off his food. I went back a little while later and Skunky was now tucking into Ginger's food and Rosie Raccoon had backed off. At that point I dashed up and got my camera and took a picture.

Rosie Raccoon

I need an infusion of dog occasionally after all these damn cats

This is Tasha, she's a Bishon-Shih Tzu mix. She's a lovely little doggie.

Tasha

Bluey

Another shot of Bluey because he was available to pose for me.

Bluey