a few more pretties

I love this picture

These white flowers are one of the common understorey plants along with the may apples (below) that have umbrella forms that remind me of Dr. Seuss.

Couldn't just grow around the leaf, this one had to bust through.

..and oh.. hello? A tree frog about 1 1/2 inches long and candy colored . It's the only one we've seen here to date but we will surely keep an extra eye out for them now that we know they're here.

Cuteness Overload

Baby Foxes
There you go...
...Bask in the Cuteness

love the black sox

More Pictures of Animals

We have better pictures! yay! Dennis did a good job getting these shots!

I like how they lift their feet up!

The Heron has proven difficult to photograph but I'm pretty happy with these.

GOSLINGS!! Two of them! The whole little family hit the road over night. I'm sad to no longer have them in the pond but I'm glad we got pictures when we did-- these little guys are maybe a day old.

And so it appears there were two geese tending the nest (we only saw one at a time and assumed mama goose was on her own-- we were mistaken). But oooh soo cute! Baby Gooses!

Graphic Design?

Here's an example of "just because you've never done something, doesn't mean you can't do it." Now I'm not saying anything about: "doesn't mean you shouldn't do it."

Here I've designed a logo for a farm that keeps bees and chickens -- the client is very happy and that makes me happy. This was a different type of experience for me and it all sort of happened suddenly. I didn't hood wink anyone, he knew I was a puppeteer before we started. I think Dennis help me talk myself into this.

Here is the first set of samples with a few different ideas:



When the beau came home the day I sent these off his comment was: "You made clipart!"

After a few drafts we landed here:

Adventures Out Back-- The Toad Pond

About a week or so ago we had a night of thunderstorms and we heard the toads calling. The toad mating time is pretty short so we decided to take advantage of it. We suited up for the rain and took a couple of flashlights.... and it was amazing!

Surprisingly, the pond featured in the last post held no toads, they has all congregated in another pond further off the main trail. There in the rain and in the dark with our flashlights we saw a different side of this piece of nature. The toads weren't skiddish so we took extra precautions not to step on anybody because they didn't jump away-- even the few that we bent down to get a closer look and stroke their back-- they seemed almost in a trance.

Of course we didn't dare take a camera with us that night as it was very wet and muddy. But the toads were still calling the next day so we thought we would try to get a few shots-- which we did-- but the action was certainly dying down.

The Toad Pond

Toad calling... we didn't see many lady toads around... poor fellas

I think toads are cuter in person

Then as we were on our way back, we had a surprise!

Baby Foxes!

Toads? What toads? Sorry guys but you just can't quite compete with a den of baby foxes! They were very curious! We think there are six.

This place has gotten even better!

Adventures Out Back-- The Main Pond

First I must say that my husband did a great job of finding a home for us! He did it by himself, as I was working in California, and he did it on a very tight time-line-- I'm not ruling out divine intervention here-- this is a good place for us. The house has it's quirks and is not amazing all by itself. What makes it all noteworthy is what's Out Back.

We have a fenced in yard to call our, rented, own but behind our back gate is not another house, it's a park. A wooded park with a walking trail loop-- the typical playground and sports field is on the other side but most of our time is spent surrounded by trees and with spring comes a lot of cool things to see. the next few posts will be about those!

This is the main pond. This photo was taken a couple of weeks ago and the place as greened up a bit since. I left this photo large so you can get a closer look of you want. This shows roughly two thirds of the pond. It's not huge but is not small and lots of folks live here.

The nesting goose is one of my favorites for many reasons: 1) she's always there so I look forward to seeing her 2) it's neat to watch her nest (not quite as passive as one might think-- still a lot of sitting though) and 3) I'm really looking forward to goslings! The thought makes me beam inside.

And if you look behind and to the right you'll see the Heron-- not the best picture, I know, he's on the other side of the pond. He's more of a visitor than a resident-- but pretty awesome. That day I watched him catch two fish. They wriggle as they go down his throat!

I went out on the first really sunny day we've had in a long long time and was surprised to see turtles... we had never seen them here before. There are 9 in the photo above and as I sat I counted no fewer than 25 ranging in size between 2 1/2 to 5 inches long. Times like this I wish I had a telephoto lens/ camera with telephoto lens capability.

These Green Frogs are pretty common (they can withstand higher pollution levels than many other frogs-- and this pond receives runoff from an adjacent golf course) but they typically don't stay still long enough to get a good look. These are the ones that croak a "meeerp!" as they jump into the water to hilarious effect especially if several jump in succession.

I learned that sitting still, and having a nice toasty sun out, will coax them to hold still. A few days later I learned that it's a different game at night!