Critters again, and some Spring flowers

 Tortoise foreplay

Preparing to mount...

The male spent several minutes bobbing his head, I recorded 4 seconds, and then the batteries quit in the camera... and... those 4 seconds aren't in focus... 

But... here's those 4 seconds..... for those who have never seen a tortoise bob his head....

Rat snake... I also saw a big king snake... and didn't have the camera with me.

Romantic butterflies

Honeybee

Poppy colour

The Matelea are starting to bloom.... I've seen an occasional lonley monarch butterfly this spring, but still no babies.

Scutellaria integrifolia

Penstemon australis

Passiflora... I had a pic of a couple of fritillary caterpillars... and forgot to add them to the thumb drive before heading to the library...

Carduus nutans

Not sure what the name of these rambling roses is.... they're everywhere... up and down the highway... and at my house.

Rose campion (Silene coronaria) Or is it lychnis?

Mock orange (Philadelphus lewisii)

Chinaberry tree

This exotic invasive produces an interesting yellow coloured firewood....

Blunt leafed milkweed (Asclepias amplexicaulis)

Flower on the poplar tree.

Good critters and... bad.

Spring 'vegetable' garden...

Tomatoes and melons last summer, poppies and turnips over the winter.... soon, beans n stuff.

Beans and stuff....

Kitties eatin' rutabagas....

Any more rutabagas?

Swallowtail visits coral honeysuckle

nother swallowtail visits mock orange.

And.... hot lips salvia with swallowtail.

Gray treefrog on rain barrel.

Towhee in the branches....

Scarab beetle found a possum turd...

Kudzu bugs are infesting my buckeye bushes.

Leaf foot bugs in the thistles...
Did you ever try to catch leaf foot bugs in the thistles?

WARNING!

Next photo not for the faint of heart!

7 possum kittens from one mother possum... splains how they can strip a pear tree over-night!

They come for the earthworms in the Spring, and stick around for the pears and melons...

Safari

It was like an African safari at my house over the weekend... tigers and zebras!

Georgia's state butterfly.... the tiger swallowtail.

 Zebra swallowtail...

 Also had buckeye and Gulf fritillary butterflies out enjoying the nice February weather.

Of interest... is what flowers they are nectaring at. I have creeping phlox, daffodils, and hellebore in full bloom.... and redbuds, sassafras trees in bloom... and the butterflies are visiting the henbit and chickweed!

 Had these cute birds acting like love was in the air...

The goldfish were acting like they were sunning themselves... like a cat or a butterfly... never really thought about fish enjoying the weather...

For a nice day... started out a bit chilly... a bit of frost on  the rutabaga...

View of the house.... from behind the cut down smilax.

Wisteria and jessamine... Doesn't it seem a bit early for wisteria to be blooming?

Finally caught one!

These things are simply destroying the vegetable garden, and set the trap... catch cats... bait the trap with cat food, you know...

Early Spring

The weatherman on television has been complaining about a lack of winter.... That 9 days out of the first two weeks of Feb have been reaching above 70, with more seventies called for for the next seven days too.... doesn't bother me, none.... of course... means that all the winter wood I cut last summer is still sitting there.... I've been burning the left-overs from the previous winter...

Doesn't hurt anything for the firewood to sit in a pile in the yard... when I eventually get it cleaned up, I'll have another place to put in a flower bed. Something about a pile of wood... leaves the soil more productive...

The Carolina Jessamine is going full on.

Seems like the pear trees have been going for a month....

Plum... Can't say what kind... but has the tiniest flowers...

Person I got it from... called it a chickasaw plum,  it does seem to be the same as the Kansas sandhill plum... If different from what I've been calling a Sandhill plum...

The hellebore got kind of a late start this winter....

10 pound rat, anyone?

Possums and raccoons are simply destroying the vegetable garden this winter... I get tiny seedlings emerging, and these pests show up and turn everything under.

And... what they did to my pear trees last autumn...

Sparse turnips... Ok, Ima start cooking these up... directly.

Using the chainsaw to cut back the smilax thicket.... a slow job, and.... I might be robbing the birds of habitat... But did you ever attempt to walk through a smilax patch?