Open your eyes!

You never know what you're going to see when you make the effort to really notice things! You should be able to click on these to enlarge them.

This little guy barely slowed down to get his picture snapped!

I prefer green lizards to this kind.

These died off in the middle of the summer, but came back beautifully later.

This little grasshopper thought he was hidden.

These green dragonflies are my favorites. They love to pose!

My camera never would focus on the flower.

I hate worms, so it was difficult for me to take this one. Ugh!

These flowers (weeds) are everywhere!

Want a closer look?

Another weed, but still quite pretty.

This thing turned its head to look at me. How creepy is that!?

I have no idea what this plant is, but it's sure interesting!

Squash Blossoms

It wasn't until I saw the photo of the squash blossom in the sidebar of Marion's blog that I really ever gave any thought to its beauty. I had never before considered it a "real" flower. It was just a means to the end, a precursor... necessary, but not necessarily noteworthy.

This morning I headed to our little garden spot and noticed that the blossoms were wide open and swarming with bees. I hurried back in for my camera so I could share some photos here.

I waited and waited for the bee to exit this flower. Perhaps he was drunk on nectar?

Not sure if this bee was arriving or departing.

I managed to find a blossom without a bee in it!

If you look in the background of this photo you will see blossoms becoming squash in varying stages.

Marion included a portion of a poem by Robert Francis under her photo. Here is the poem in its entirety.

Squash in Blossom
Robert Francis

How lush, how loose, the uninhibited squash is.
If ever hearts (and these immoderate leaves
Are vegetable hearts) were worn on sleeves,
The squash's are. In green the squash vine gushes.

The flowers are cornucopias of summer,
Briefly exuberant and cheaply golden.
And if they make a show of being hidden,
Are open promiscuously to every comer.

Let the squash be what it was doomed to be
By the old Gardener with the shrewd green thumb.
Let it expand and sprawl, defenceless, dumb.
But let me be the fiber-disciplined tree

Whose leaf (with something to say in wind) is small,
Reduced to the ingenuity of a green splinter
Sharp to defy or fraternize with winter,
Or if not that, prepared in fall to fall.

A touch of Spring

I got this in an e-mail recently:

I think we all need a little spring today!

Click on the snowman. You will get a black page. Click your mouse anywhere (and everywhere) on the page and see what happens. Better yet, click (hold down) and drag your mouse over the black page. Enjoy!!

Favorite Five - Flowers

All this cold weather has me turning my thoughts to Spring. If I take the past into account, we still have our coldest weather ahead of us here in south Arkansas. That doesn't stop me from dreaming about warmer days and what they'll bring. Flowers!

Here are my favorites. What are yours?

1. Pansy

2. Hibiscus

3. Moonflower

4. Camellia

5. Hydrangea

Blue Skies and Dogs

There’s no doubt about it. We’ve had an exceptionally wet September and October. I’ve been told that my rain gauge is probably not very accurate - therefore my readings may not be correct - but, we “unofficially” had more than 20 inches of rain in September and we’ve already dumped more than 15 inches from our gauge in October!!! Even half those amounts would seem like a lot!

The sun came out yesterday for the first time in several weeks. What a glorious sight! I’ve wanted some new pictures of our outside dogs, so I grabbed my camera and headed out into the sunshine.


Blue skies never looked so good! Of course the grass is nice and green from all the rain.


The begonias I planted at the beginning of the summer have done well.


Now that she doesn’t have to feed puppies and is getting fed regularly herself, Mama Dog has a soft, thick coat. She’s gotten back her figure as much as a girl can after having who knows how many litters.


Jed joined the ranks of the “spay/neuter club” in September. No danger of future puppies from any dog at our house now.


Blue had obviously been sticking her nose somewhere it didn’t belong. At least that was the only part of her that was muddy!


Mama Dog and Jed love to romp and wrestle with each other. Blue will sometimes join in.


This time she chose to watch the woods for something more exciting than romping with them.


None of the inside girls really mind going out in the rain, but they do love a cool, sunny day! Mabel, Alice and Esther wanted me to put the camera down and let them out.


Betty loves to bask in the sun on the back steps.

A turnover

I’ve mentioned the problem with water lilies and grass in our pond in previous entries. Several years ago we brought some large grass carp (supposedly sterile since they can also take over a pond) from our farm in the delta to “work” on the problem. In addition, we purchased some smaller carp a year or two later.

They just haven’t done much to alleviate the problem. So… my husband has begun the process of spraying the unwanted vegetation with an herbicide. I say “begun the process” because it’s not something that can be done all at once, even in a pond the size of ours. Once the vegetation begins to die, it sucks all the oxygen out of the water around it. Obviously, that isn’t good for the fish!! He’s gone out on several occasions, including a few of the times we’ve fished, and sprayed various areas of the pond. So far it seems to be working.

This past weekend we saw an example of what happens when the process is NOT done correctly. Our neighbor has a small pond in front of her house. She wanted to kill all the grass around the edge of her pond and, against the advice of others, sprayed the entire circumference at one time. It was a disaster!! Within a short time her pond started “turning over” and there were dead fish floating everywhere! They quickly borrowed a pump and began aerating the pond, thus stopping the process.

There were TONS of buzzards standing on the bank of her pond when we drove past yesterday morning.

At least someone benefited from the mistake.

Flowers and Dogs

I had forgotten how hard puppies can be on bushes and plants. When we first got Esther and Betty (and JJ and Veronica) we had lots of althea bushes in our back yard. All the dogs were “diggers”, but the rottweilers especially enjoyed ripping off branches and running around the yard with them. We still have problems with digging, but the new puppies also went through a phase of the “rip and run” game. This time it was our gardenia bushes. Right before we got the pups we added two small bushes to go with our two large, healthy plants. Five months later the two large ones had been thinned out to the point I wasn’t sure they would ever be the same. It was so nice to find a bloom on one late last week. Since then the entire bush has burst into bloom along with the other large bush and one of the smaller ones. Looks like they’re going to make it after all.




Thanks to all our outside dogs it has always been difficult for me to grow flowers in my front beds. During the hot summer they liked burrowing into the cool dirt under the bushes or just sprawling on top of whatever I had planted. Hope’s favorite place was right in the middle of my daylily patch. In looking for positives about our recent tragedy with the animals I realized I could finally plant what I wanted in addition to putting out my garden flag again. The food bowls and water bucket were moved and I was just starting to get used to driving up and not being greeted by a wagging tail.

Funny how things work. Last Thursday morning we opened the door to the carport and were greeted by two stray dogs. One is definitely older; the other appears fairly young and might possibly be her child. The young one either has mange or something that’s caused some of her fur to come out. We’re pretty sure the older one is (gulp!) pregnant. By the next day it was obvious they weren’t just passing through. They were settling in and getting friendlier by the minute.

I used up my favors with the animal shelter when they took the six puppies last January. Although I check the “Lost & Found” ads each day, I don’t expect to see them listed. I’m afraid it’s fairly obvious why these girls were dumped.

My husband wants to let them settle in a bit before we traumatize them with a trip to the vet. I noticed today he was calling them by “name”. When I questioned him about the possible puppies he said we’ll deal with that when the time comes. I just don’t see a lot of options right now and I’m sure not up to putting them down just because I wasn’t ready for another outside dog! As for our livestock, these dogs are sticking close to the house and can be taught not to wander if necessary. We had Hope long before we had livestock so she was never taught to stay home.

I have to wonder if somewhere, somehow Bella and Hope whispered in these dogs’ ears, “Listen, we know just the place for you to go. There’s a family with two empty spots in their yard and lots of love in their hearts….”

Flowers & Birds

The water lilies are trying to take over our pond for the second year in a row. My husband brought me a couple of the blooms yesterday morning and I have to admit they really are quite lovely.

Funny how the plants you don’t want seem to thrive and the ones you do want don’t always make it. ALL of our tomato plants are either dead or rapidly dying!! Lots of folks in our area are having the same problem, not that it’s really any consolation. I’m afraid we’ve just had too much rain. This has been the wettest May on record in Arkansas since 1882! That statistic was as of the 11th of the month, and we’ve gotten much more rain since then. We’re starting over with some new plants. A friend gave us some of his low-acid, yellow tomatoes. I’ve never had any so it will be interesting to see how they taste.

Not long ago I was driving home when I saw the most interesting birds. Like nothing I had ever seen before, I was anxious to get home and look them up in my bird book. They were unusual enough that I knew I’d have no trouble picking them out. Sure enough, there was only one bird in the book that even remotely resembled what I saw. “Scissor-tailed Flycatchers”! I don't think they're very common to my area, so I'm excited I saw them.

On a final note, the crows have been unusually vocal lately. I’m not referring to the big flocks that loudly caw as they fly over, but to the individuals that sit in the trees and “talk” to each other. It’s funny hearing their distinct voices as they converse. Okay. I'm easily entertained.

Valentine's Day 2009

Isn’t this a beautiful azalea plant that my husband gave me in celebration of the day? It will definitely get planted in the front yard away from the tiny terrors who are wreaking havoc on everything in the back. Actually, they aren’t so tiny anymore. They went for their last round of puppy shots yesterday and each now weighs more than twenty pounds!

Last fall one of my book-loving friends recommended a new series to me. The “Sookie Stackhouse” books (Southern Vampire Series), on which HBO’s True Blood is based, take place in a small fictional town in northern Louisiana. They’re filled with references to places and things that are totally familiar to me making them all the more fun to read! I got the boxed set of the first seven books for Christmas. I was going to make myself wait until the eighth book came out in paperback to purchase it, but when I found out the author, Charlaine Harris, was having a book signing in her hometown today… well, I couldn’t resist. Only 30 some-odd miles from my house, it was worth the trip to get a signed copy. I was going to post a picture of us together, but I had such a dippy look on my face I cropped myself out. So, you’ll just have to use your imagination to picture me next to Ms. Harris in this photo!

Photomosaics

I held off on working the second puzzle my daughter gave me for Christmas fearing it would be a nightmare to complete. Once I had it laid out, I realized it wasn’t going to be impossible… just challenging.

The title of the puzzle is “Sunflower” and it is part of the “Photomosaics” collection by Robert Silvers. “Photomosaics” are pictures made from pictures. Thousands of tiny photographs are pieced together to form a larger image. In “Sunflower” all the photos are flowers. Stepping away from the puzzle, the sunflower image is quite distinct, but upon closer observation, the individual photos become apparent.

There are several books of Silver’s work available. I have the first, published in 1997, which provides a nifty little magnifying lens for examining the individual photos. Although all the images are impressive, two of the more notable are a portrait of Abraham Lincoln done entirely with Civil War photographs and a portrait of Marilyn Monroe commissioned by Life magazine using only photos of Life covers (including all those featuring Marilyn and others in her life). The book also includes images from nature, art history, currency and more.

It’s a fascinating form of art!

Water lilies

The water lilies are growing in our pond at an alarming rate! I'm not really worried about them taking over since our pond is pretty big (about 12-15 acres), but we will have to start eliminating some of them soon.

This morning I decided to go out in the boat alone, armed with both camera and fishing gear. I managed to catch (and release) three bass....one of which was 3 or 4 pounds. I snagged two others (one big, one small), but both managed to get away before I could get them in the boat. I know the towel distracts from the fish in the photo, but it's the only way I'll handle them! (go ahead, call me a sissy)

Despite the fact the lilies are a nuisance, they are rather pretty when blooming. Here's a poem about lilies to go with some of my photos:

WITH A WATER-LILY
by: Henrik Ibsen

See, dear, what thy lover brings;
'Tis the flower with the white wings.
Buoyed upon the quiet stream
In the spring it lay adream.

Homelike to bestow this guest,
Lodge it, dear one, in thy breast;
There its leaves the secret keep
Of a wave both still and deep.

Child, beware the tarn-fed stream;
Danger, danger, there to dream!
Though the sprite pretends to sleep,
And above the lilies peep.

Child, thy bosom is the stream;
Danger, danger, there to dream!
Though above the lilies peep,
And the sprite pretends to sleep.

'With a Water-lily' was originally published in 1863. This English translation by Fydell Edmund Garrett is reprinted from the Westminster Gazette of May 6, 1903.