Is it Spring yet?

First Daffy-dill! Is it Spring yet?

The hellebore are prettier and prettier!

The atamasco lilies are coming up too!

road-kill

I was checking facebook updates this morning, getting ready to go do a day's work, when I got a phone call from an acquaintance... There's a fresh road kill over here, someone just hit a deer, it wasn't here yesterday...

I told him .... I'm on my way...

Fresh deer meat is mighty desirable.... You can't purchase anything like that... Go to the Walmart Super-Center and pick up a steak that's been fed chicken manure, and growth hormones... Sometimes, I can taste that stuff... And what they do to hamburger... After reading Toxin by Robin Cook, I was put off store bought meat for a month or so...

Anyway... I got to the carcass, the back end of the deer was clearly a dead loss.... but it was a brand new kill... threw that baby in the back of the truck!

Doesn't bambi look tasty!

Getting bambi back to the house, I lost no time getting the carcass processed...






Yeah, it's a bloody mess, but I'm quality control!

Does it look like food yet?

How about now...

This is a plate full of butterfly steaks (tenderloin) I've seen entire deer killed where the hunter took nothing but the tenderloin!
With our deer explosion, you hear some insane stories about 5 deer in the freezer, and the hunter still out there looking for more...



Butterflies in the pan... Mighty tasty! Some good eatin there!

Pot of ribs... Just add barbque sauce! Yummy!

Check it out... several meals ready for the freezer.

Who's coming over for dinner?

What's blooming today?

The hellebore seem slow getting started... While the blooms begin appearing in December, they're terribly far and few between...

It's the end of January, and I have some blooms... I certainly appreciate that... I'm impatiently checking all of my patches searching for colour!

This is a nice green one... I know someone that actually wants an entire patch of green blooms... I'd previously felt like there was something wrong when the bloom didn't colour up better... I've gained some perspective on that... It's genetic... You get what you get when you grow stuff from seed...

Here's a sweet plant...

Some people collect miniature daylilies, I suspect that miniature hellebores could well become collectible soon also.

Here's one with red spots...

And a sorta pink one.

I should mention that it was so dry last summer that ALL of my vegetables died....

These guys didn't get a drop of water, and while all the hellebore looked wilted, everybody pulled through like champs! Hellebore make excellent plants for dry shade...

Oh man, there's nobody home...

I am seeing the wrens acting interested in nesting sites... This nest is from last year, but I expect I'll be seeing new ones soon...

Winter

It's been that uncolourful period of the year, between the killing frosts of December, and the first blooms of January... Nothing to shoot with the camera except seedpods and berries...

Yesterday, I finally got a pic of a hellebore bloom!

today, I shot the bloom encased in ice...

Won't hurt the bloom though, hellebore are as tough as nails....

Shot a clematis show yesterday before the storm.... Summer clematis
seeds...

The towhees show up nicely against the ice...

These pics are all clickable.

One last snow picture....

house

Brought out a house...

Put blocks under it... put in a septic tank...

Started planting trees around it... still need to add solar panels...

Monarch butterfly

Monarch & tropical milkweed.

Mid July

Butterflies, lizards and flowers from the moon garden. click butterflies & lizards for larger pictures (opens in a new window)
gulf fritillaries	zebra swallowtails
painted lady butterfly on echinacea	buckeye butterfly
Takes caterpillars to have butterflies, and they have very specific dietary requirements.... In this day & age of endless turf, we all should grow butterfly host plants   << click the link It's no longer possible to depend on the vacant lot down the street to supply us with butterflies for our flower garden.
little gray lizard AKA Eastern Fence Lizard	striped lizard AKA Six-lined Racerunner
These lizards are helpful in the garden, They will occassionally dash out in front of me to grab bugs... I've even had them hang out next to the campfire eating termites while I made coffee & pancakes! I was reading at the baker creek forum (http://idigmygarden.com/forums) where somebody had a squash bug eatin horned toad! Obviously, you wouldn't have butterflies or lizards in so-called "traditional" chemical gardening...

Here's a couple taken at dusk from the moon garden.


flashlight bush

gourd blooms