Spring is coming

Barbarians at the gate...

A year and a half trying to fence the deer out of the exclusion zone... The last several months, fence looked absolutely impervious, yet bambi continued leaving fresh tracks everywhere inside the wire... and eating stuff...

Addams family flower garden... Bambi apparently has a taste for columbine flower stalks...

Or maybe Thumper's responsible... Caught 2 rabbits this week...

Here's trouble... Emptied rabbit from trap & caught this huge raccoon next night... They're after the chickens... able to kill yardbirds through the wire...

And then... there's the good stuff... Like this zebra swallowtail...

And this gorgeous leafwing...

 

Pawpaw flower... Tree doesn't look like much yet, but saw a zebra swallowtail laying eggs... ran for camera, but she was done and gone... so no pics of that...

Climate mitigation... cooking meal with dropped limbs on kick-down converted propane grill.

Snow Day

 The afternoon on the day before yesterday... it started to snow... just like the weatherman predicted.

I stepped out the door with a camera... and there was the problem animal thinking that I wasn't going to be noticing it being back...

Bambi is hiding.

Yesterday morning snow coverage...

magnolia tree

Driveway...

Garden fence...

I'm grateful that I don't have to deal with snow much... seems like 3 years since the last snow day... Also happy that this stuff melts quickly... 

January is winter for us... February is Spring..... can't come soon enough for me...

It's autumn...

 Scattered frost this morning... Had ghost pepper seedlings just coming up in a pot got frost burnt...

And still, sun came out, temp improved and the butterflies came out in force!

Gulf fritillary showing off it's ultra-violet spots as it nectars at hot lips salvia...

Another frit...

Zebra longwings...

Another one...

Cloudless sulfur

American holly

Check all those berries at the top!

American lady.... kinda looks like it's been around for it's life expectancy...

Flowers on camellia sasanqua.

Blue stem

Jewels of Opar

Mother hen and biddy

And... Some autumn colour on a maple!

Watermelons

 Not happening...

Hard to pick watermelons when the cats are eating them before they ripen...

And then the deer eat all the leaves off the vines... 

Kinda surprising that I'm still having trouble (with deer), considering the amount of work I've put into fencing...

Tree fruit

 

Pawpaws have dropped!

 After they've dropped, they can be eaten... I prefer to peel first, but it isn't really necessary.... 

Or is it? I've read that the peel & seed contains toxins... I've also read that toxicity may be mostly myth.

Persimmons!

 

Pears...

I've been picking and eating for a couple weeks... they're getting ripe enough to enjoy.

Still dealing with the deer fence...

 

This is actually an easier fix than all the fencing I've been doing over the last 2 months, where I'm just adding more wire above existing, and when they jump in, are apparently clearing existing 6 foot wire with no trouble...

Not being able to tell where they come in is a difficult fix... so much wire to add more to...

No problem...

 Hog wire added above existing welded wire... Let's see them try to get through that!

Dwarf Pawpaw & Gopher Tortoise

 

Mature dwarf paw paw 'tree'... Height waist high to chest high.

Loaded with fruit this year... But tiny!

 They're starting to drop... I pick them up and eat... plant seeds in pots. I tried planting seeds in flower garden a number of years ago when I got a few fruit... Unfortunately none came up...

I may need to try scarification.

Fruit on regular tree is still hard...

So bizarre watching gopher tortoise eating cnidoscolus... Aka "7 minute itch". I wouldn't want to try it...

Just brushing against cnidoscolus stimulosus feels like getting attacked by fire ants... and if unlucky enough to scratch irritated skin, may continue to scratch for the rest of the day!

Imagine getting a mouthful of that! But I see the tortoises browsing the plant every summer!

Actually, I may have some idea of how a mouthful of  cnidoscolus might feel...

I had a mouthful of fire ants yesterday... Pretty funny, grabbed a handful of potato chips from the bottom of bag, popped in mouth without examining... Had to pick fire ants off my tongue using mirror!