Nature Friday – Warm Winter Visitor

Hi everyone! It’s Cindy here. We’ve had some crazy weather this winter. Our snow total so far this year is way below normal, and we broke a record for the warmest winter on record. This past Tuesday we reached a record high temperature of 73°F (about 23°C). When Charlie walked out to retrieve a delivery from our front porch on Tuesday he was startled to see something laying on top of one of the shrubs. He ran back into the house to grab a camera and carefully fired off some shots while creeping closer and closer.

Just hanging out here in the chamaecyparis

A friendly garter snake (quite harmless) had climbed the chamaecyparis to sun himself! We’ve never seen our snakes out so early, but thanks to global warming there he was.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the snakes perched on top of an evergreen shrub. A few times while I’ve been mowing the lawn I will drive by some bird’s nest spruce we have at the edge of the grass and be startled to see one on the top. Once it almost jumped onto the tractor with me because it was startled too! In case you are wondering I did scream, but with the tractor noise nobody heard me. 

Here is a look at one Charlie found on another type of spruce shrub we have. Charlie seems to have a knack for finding them and photographing them.

Just hanging around in this spruce.

Here is a better view of his beautiful markings.

We love seeing our garter snakes and are lucky that they are quite harmless unless you are a toad, frog, slug, or worm. I do admit that sometimes when I’m walking along and one slithers near my feet that I do jump and get startled a bit, but they are beautiful to look at.

We are joining the LLB Gang for their Nature Friday Blog Hop. You should pop over to their blog to see all the other posts.

Read Full Post »

Nature Friday – Honey Bees in Winter?!

Hi everyone! It’s Cindy here. We’ve had some crazy weather this winter. Our snow total so far this year is about a third of normal snow fall for the season and our temperatures have been above normal. This past Sunday our high temperature reached 55°F (about 13°C) and the flowers on our witch hazel burst into bloom.

Incoming!

Along with the beautifully fragrant flowers came the honey bees.

Look at those packed saddle bags.

Here is a little video clip I took of some of them in action. If you turn your volume up, you can hear the buzz from all the bees.

If you can’t see the video, you can go here to view it.

Those honey bees sure were working hard. It’s too bad somebody hasn’t invented smell-o-vision so I could share the beautiful scent of the witch hazel with all of you.

I enjoyed watching the bees do their work and hoped they all made it back to the hive before it got too cold.

The weather has turned much colder and just a couple of days ago we had an ice storm that left over a quarter of an inch of ice covering everything including those beautiful witch hazel blossoms.

We are joining the LLB Gang for their Nature Friday Blog Hop. You should pop over to their blog to see all the other posts.

Read Full Post »

Nature Friday – It’s the Little Things

Hi everyone! It’s Cindy here. Recently Charlie picked up a new macro lens and has been having fun learning how to use it. The main use for a macro lens is to take extreme close ups of your subject. As a reminder you can click on all the pictures to see a much bigger version.

Bumblebee on Red Dahlia

There is a very nice arboretum near us that has some dahlias so Charlie has taken a few trips there when the weather was nice and calm. In order to get sharp pictures there can’t be much movement in the subject. This bumblebee was still waking up from spending the night on this dahlia.

Can you find the hidden bugs on this dahlia?
(clicking on the image to make it bigger will help)

Sometimes the bugs are so small you don’t even see them when you are taking the picture as is the case with the picture above. Here is a hint there is a super tiny bug just left of center and a slightly larger one right of center hiding below the petals.

Hoverfly on Potentilla flower

Right in our own back yard one of Charlie’s favorite subjects has been bugs on the potentilla flowers. Just for reference these flowers are only about 3/4 of an inch (2 cm) in diameter.

Now I think I have to warn anyone that doesn’t like spiders much that the next few pictures might just creep you out a bit.

Crab spider on Potentilla flower

The crab spiders like to hide in plants and flowers and ambush their prey. 

Crab spider on Potentilla plant

These small spiders blend into their surroundings very well. One thing that is amazing about these pictures is that to the naked eye you cannot see the tiny hairs all over this little guy.

Crab spider with prey

The crab spider above has captured another spider that is even smaller than it. This last picture was created using a technique called “focus stacking“. There were multiple images taken very quickly at different focal points (the camera does this automatically when you set it up). Then the images are combined to create one image where more of the subject is in focus than would be with just one image.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the creepy little things Charlie has found with his macro lens. It’s amazing to look at these creatures almost as if you had them under a microscope.

Join the Nature Friday Blog Hop

We are joining the LLB Gang for their Nature Friday Blog Hop. You should pop over to their blog to see all the other posts.

Read Full Post »

Nature Friday – Flowers for Marg

Hi everyone! It’s Millie & Walter here. We’re joining a special Nature Friday and helping Marg celebrate her birthday. Marg is a special Blogville friend who helps lots of kitties. We are going to show you some of our early spring flowers.

Let’s see what’s blooming in our yard.

We have two different color of witch hazel bushes in our yard. Since this is the first thing that blooms in our yard the insects flock to it for nutrition.

A honey bee works on the yellow witch hazel.

 

Even the flies were working the witch hazel.

Here is a little video of the bees and flies enjoying the witch hazel.

If you can’t see the video you can go here to view it.

There is also an orange version of witch hazel.

Orange witch hazel

The only other flower we have blooming right now are our Chionodoxa bulbs.

Blue Chionodoxa

 

White Chionodoxa

These little flowers are all around a little mound at the back of the yard where we had to cut down an ash tree.

The ash tree stump is where we did our modeling for these pictures.

 

Blue Chionodoxa

We hope Marg and all of our visitors enjoyed seeing some of the flowers we are lucky to have blooming so far. If you want to add your birthday wishes to Marg you can pop over to the Zoolatry blog and leave your comments there. As usual we’re way behind many of our friends in the flowers that are blooming in our yard but there are some daffodils that are springing up out of the ground and may be blooming soon.

We are joining the LLB Gang for their Nature Friday Blog Hop. You should pop over to their blog to see all the other posts.

Read Full Post »

Wordless Wednesday

It’s been a rainy gloomy day here today but you can still find interesting things to photograph. Charlie found this spider web covered in droplets on a shrub in the yard.

We hope your day was a bit brighter than our was.

We’re joining Comedy Plus for their Wordless Wednesday blog hop.

Read Full Post »

Nature Friday

Hi everyone! It’s Millie & Walter here. There aren’t many new flowers blooming from last week but we have some beautiful pictures to show you.

Let’s see some beautiful flower pictures.

We call this our “School Bus” Yellow Daylily

Pink daylily with coreopsis background.

Here is a picture of what happens after the flowers bloom on one of our plants.

Hypericum androsaemum ‘Albury Purple’ berries

Don’t the flowers behind me kind of look like Christmas lights?
That’s how you do “Christmas in July”!

We hope you enjoyed a look at some of the nature in our yard this week.

Join the Nature Friday Blog Hop

We are joining the LLB Gang for their Nature Friday Blog Hop. You should pop over to their blog to see all the other posts.

Read Full Post »

Nature Friday – Beautiful Blooms

Hi everyone! It’s Millie & Walter here. We’ve had some scorching hot weather this past week and it’s caused lots of shrubs and flowers to bloom.

Oh look! Dad’s over there taking pictures of some flowers.

Let’s see what’s in bloom.

Korean spice viburnum

Doublefile viburnum

Korean spice viburnum in black & white

We sure do have a lot of different viburnum.
What’s dad taking pictures of over there now?

Deciduous azalea flower

Bumblebee on azalea flower

My Monet Weigela flowers

Those are all such pretty pink flowers. Now for our favorite flower…

Blue Columbine

There sure are lots of things blooming in our yard.
That’s not even everything that is in bloom. Stay tuned for our next installment.

We hope you enjoyed a look at what is blooming in our yard. We had record high temps this past week and will now get some more average temps in the week ahead.

Join the Nature Friday Blog Hop

We are joining the LLB Gang for their Nature Friday Blog Hop. You should pop over to their blog to see all the other posts.

Read Full Post »

Nature Friday

Hi everyone! It’s Millie & Walter here. We’re finally getting some warmer weather and some of our trees and shrubs are starting to open their buds.

What should we look at first?

The Korean Spice Viburnum buds are ready to open.

Even though the buds haven’t opened yet the Korean Spice Viburnum sure looks pretty.

Ogon Spirea

This spirea has the tiniest flowers but with so many of them on each stem they almost look like they are covered in snow.

Serviceberry tree blossoms

We were afraid that some of the cold weather we had might ruin our crop of serviceberries this year but the flowers look like they are doing fine.

Serviceberry in Black & White

Serviceberry tree blossoms

We can’t wait to see all the fruit on the tree and have it covered with all kinds of birds that love to eat the fruit.

I found a nice stick to chew on.

We hope you enjoyed a look at what is blooming and almost blooming in our yard. With the warmer temps we are supposed to get this coming week we should start to see more flower opening up.

Join the Nature Friday Blog Hop

We are joining the LLB Gang for their Nature Friday Blog Hop. You should pop over to their blog to see all the other posts.

Read Full Post »