April Flowers

Native crossvine

Natural coral honeysuckle

Ok, Native plants aficionados... Can you explain the difference between a native, a locally native, and a natural?

Red buckeye; Also a native...

And since I'm not strictly about growing native plants.... here's an exotic azalea... 

Poppies are blooming... Here's a time lapse of the same patch... the patch starts out red... and eventually turns mostly purple...
As gorgeous as these are... I'm kicking myself for not having planted more... But... Pictures just don't do them justice, and I forget how much I like them when October planting time rolls around...

Bearded iris in foreground.... Louisiana iris in background....

Found my black rat snake coachwhip snake... tied up in bird netting ... cut it loose
Maybe y'all remember the king snake from 2013?
You'd think I'd quit trying to use bird netting in a nature garden... But... I was trying to protect my baby carrots... sure is hard on my valuable snakes, though...
I'm using window screens over the seedlings in pots... I'm going to have to start using the screen out in the beds...

It's definitely Spring

Bloodroot... I potted these babies last Spring, when I noticed that the voles were eating them in the garden...

Redbud tree in early bloom... one of the seedlings that I rescued from town....

chenopodium giganteum... gonna be ready to cook soon...

Zebra swallowtail.... came to help me spread horse poop.... I always get a kick out of that... spread manure, the butterflies show up....

 Ladybug on elderberry...

Cluster of aphids... the reason for the ladybugs on the shrub...

cutworm

 The eastern columbines are attracting butterflies...

 Tiger swallowtail

 Black swallowtail...

Kitty

Hmmm... Didn't think to get a pic of the toad that I dug up yesterday when I was spreading manure... :(

 How about some bird pics?

Robins

Woodpecker

And finally... How about this rainbow I captured one day as I left the library?

Brrr...

Ice on the goldfish pool...

Frost flowers... Verbesina above, dog fennel (Eupatorium capillifolium) below.

Frosty chickweed... it's so short that I can't hand-pull it... was watching a mockingbird feasting on it... and of course no camera... It flew away before I got back with it....

A blogging friend posted an article on backyard birds

So.... I eventually was able to get a few pictures this afternoon...

 Cardinal onna fence post

 Towhee in the chickweed

Some kinda wren, I reckon

Kinda difficult to get bird pics when you aren't shooting bird feeders...

While I was putting up barbed wire over the last coupla days, I was seeing truckloads of birds... everytime I walked past the garden... Of course.... no camera handy... really woulda needed to shoot action shots... can't get birds on the wing with single pics.... and they rarely pose on posts....

Here's a pic of the fence cutting through a nice thicket of blackberry bushes mixed up with wisteria... Guess which one I'd wish gone?

Hint... it's the invasive wisteria.... the blackberry actually has uses... While I rarely see berries... it's so dry... they wither up on the vine.... The briars make good habitat for the birds... They're also medicinal...

Here's a deer stand right on the property line... they're who the fence is for (poachers & thieves).

 I spoke to the sheriff's deputies... Hunting stand on the property line... nothing I can do...

 Seems like common sense they'd cut a path through the trees on the property that they're renting... put the stand out of eyesight.... at the very least...

Kitty eatin potato peels...

Frost flowers!

When people mention frost flowers, they usually mean verbesina virginica (pictured above).
This is as profound an ice bloom as I can remember... I theorize that the recent rain may have something to do with the amount of ice squeezed out of the plant this morning...

At my house the salvia coccinea Also produces frost blooms... Unfortunately... I can't say for sure whether it's also represented in this group of pics...

December critters and other pretties.

Eastern towhees in the brush pile

Mocking bird in same brush pile...

 Grey ratsnake

 

Close-up of colour.

Surprising to see one of these guys at Christmas...

Honey bees in camellia flower

Cat in redbud tree.... 

is this how she's catching the birds?

Goldfish... Hunting mosquito larvae, and apparently for frog eggs...

The frogs have been visiting my ponds, but there's never eggs left here... when I moved some over... they never had a chance to hatch.

Deciduous holly berries

Other holly berries.

New paths through the brush...

There's a winter rainbow through the middle of this picture... Usually rainbows at my house are in the garden in the west... this one was over my house in the north... Unfortunately it never got very bright, fading almost as quickly as it formed.