Our Christmas Wreath

Happy New Year everyone! I’ve been wanting to show you one of the other Christmas decorations we have, our ornament wreath. It’s in our front hall were the lighting couldn’t be worse for photographing it so I kept forgetting to get some pictures. Today I noticed it was as well lit as it was ever going to be so I snapped a few pictures for you.

Our Christmas Wreath

Long before Millie & Walter came along we started using a couple of artificial wreaths to display our ornaments for Christmas. The wreath is fairly large and is a great way to keep things out of reach of curious puppies.

A cute Chickadee in a Santa Hat

Many of the ornaments on the wreath are of birds and other wildlife we see around our house.

Chipmunk in an acorn bed

Some of the ornaments are gardening tools and some Santa’s with wildlife or gardening themes.

Froggie

Fox

Rabbit

Owl

Deer

Goldfinches on a Feeder

If you click on the picture of the wreath at the top you can see some of the other ornaments. I hope you have all had a good start to the New Year and enjoyed our ornament wreath too.

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Creatures in the Garden

Hi everyone! It’s Cindy here to show you some of the recent visitors we have had to our yard. These visitors are of the amphibian and reptilian type. I will warn you now that I am leaving, what many of you feel is, the creepiest for last. Now don’t let that stop you from scrolling to the bottom to leave a nice comment though.

You may remember a while ago when I posted about my surprise visitor on a Saturday evening. I was able to show you the under side of a Gray Tree Frog that had jumped on the window to munch on the bugs attracted to the light. We usually don’t see them much during the day so we were surprised recently when we found one trying to hide on the house.

Can you see him there in the upper right of the picture? Usually one or more spend the night sitting on the light of our patio door. I think this guy was making his way to someplace to hang out during the day and got sleepy.

Here is a nice close up of him. He fits nicely between the slats in the siding and is well camouflaged.

Next up is something we have never see around our property before and we have lived here 23 years.

Charlie happened to be walking up the driveway from collecting the mail when he spotted this Common Snapping Turtle in the lawn. Of course I ran out with the camera to snap some snapping turtle pictures.

Here is a close up of the head area. The turtle appears to be sleeping and even when I tapped on the shell it barely moved. Look at the claws on that thing too. It was headed in the direction of our creek and slowly made its way there.

Last up is one that some of you might want to scroll quickly past. We don’t often see the garter snakes that hang around our yard, but have occasionally found skins they shed. The other day I was photographing the flowers around the yard when I noticed some movement. Upon closer inspection I found this little guy hiding under the flowers.

We are lucky around here that we don’t have any deadly snakes and when I can see them like this I don’t mind them much. I have been known to scream a couple of times when I was walking along and one slithered right in front of me. As a matter of fact I swear I levitated a bit while he moved away.

He is a little more camouflaged here among the fallen stewartia tree flowers as he tries to hide from me. I left him alone after this since I didn’t want the pups to come investigate what I was looking at.

I hope you enjoyed this look at some of the non-furry visitors to our yard.

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