Since we set up the bird feeder, instead of leaving seed on the ground, the blue jays have been harder to get photos of. They see me moving to the camera on its tripod and fly off.
It seems they are starting to get used to seeing us in the window now. Or, at least one is.
He’s watching me.
I love the little head tilt!
The Re-Farmer
While it might be hard to get photos of them as they do their upside down thing, the nuthatches otherwise seem rather okay with posing for the camera. Right side up, at least. :-)
The Re-Farmer
Heading out to work on the spruce grove, a splash of colour in the big garden area caught my eye.
While its white counterpart has finished blooming for some time, this one still has a couple of buds!
The Re-Farmer
While walking near the harbour in town, I passed these very interesting looking seed pods.
One of them was hiding a tiny surprise.
The Re-Farmer
We saw this little guy while playing tourist, a few days ago.
So cute!
I tried to identify it, and the closest to it seems to be the banded tussock moth.
The Re-Farmer
We got to play tourist again, today, this time heading out to visit the snake dens. It turned out to be a fairly cool day, so I wasn’t expecting to see very many. We did see quite a few, though nothing at all like when they first emerge in the spring.
We saw many along the paths, including some we only saw because they moved when we got too close for their comfort. More than a few times, we would look ahead and wonder; were we looking at a bunch of snakes up ahead? Or a bunch of twigs? Sometimes, it would be both. Other times, we would see a big branch on the path ahead, only to have it move and turn out to be a huge female (female garter snakes are MUCH bigger than the males).
The dens were filled with huge burdock and nettles, and one of them had snakes draped all over the place!
A few were climbing trees, too.
I’m glad we were able to make the trip while the weather is still holding. While going in the spring is much more dramatic, I rather like that we had the entire area, all to ourselves! It made the hike much more enjoyable.
Hmm… I think living in the city for so long has really peopled me out. :-D
The Re-Farmer
While walking around the yard this morning, picking up branches fallen after last night’s high winds and a bit of a storm, something caught my eye.
I ended up having to grab a stool to get any photos, since standing in my tip-toes, stretching as high as I could and using voice commands to take pictures, wasn’t quite cutting it. ;-)
These pretty little mushrooms are tucked into the V split of the large maple that is causing me so much concern about the power lines.
I love finding these little, hidden surprises. :-)
The Re-Farmer
A couple of photos from when we were exploring the native plants garden.
This bee photo was pure serendipity. It was the first of several I took, in quick succession, and the only good one of the bee!
This was in a structure near the native plants garden that I think is actually there to disguise and protect some infrastructure equipment. There were several wasps nests in varying stages of construction, all on the shadow side of these support beams.
I didn’t see the spiders until I uploaded the photos, though.
I’ve seen many wasp nests in varying stages of construction before, but never have I seen the cells exposed like this, at this size. The little ones on the left of the photo is usually about as big as they get, before they get covered over. I think the high level of protection they have in these locations may have something to do with it.
The Re-Farmer
Though it’s only the end of August, everywhere we look, we see the signs of autumn.
This is one of the crab apple trees in the West yard. The apples are smaller than usual. Though the apples are not ripe yet, the tree, like so many others, is turning colour and dropping leaves already.
One of the plum trees has completely changed colour already, and the plums…
Most have already dropped, and what few remain on the tree are looking like these.
Today was our day for heading into the city for our monthly shop. Along the way, we saw flocks of Canada Geese in the fields, taking a break from heading south. We’ve been seeing them in fields on the way to town, too.
On the drive home (when it was warmer), the snakes were out. I was able to avoid a couple, but the highway had many squished snakes on it that others did not miss. They have been making their way to their hibernation dens to the north of us for at least a couple of weeks, now.
I had seen a news article about how it’s expected to be a mild winter this year, but earlier, I’d see that The Farmer’s Almanac is predicting a long and bitterly cold winter, with possibly a late spring as well.
From what I’m seeing, I think The Farmer’s Almanac is likely to be the more accurate prediction. :-(
Either way, we’re going to have to start our fall preparations for winter over the next few weeks.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 