Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Daily Pics #192.
Good morning everyone and Happy Friday!! For some of you today is already drawing to a close, for others about half way through the day, and for some, like myself, Friday is really just beginning. Well, a couple hours ago anyway, 5 am to be exact. I was getting up at 4:30 before, but I have changed now to 5. The days are already getting noticeably shorter and there isn’t much happening before 5 am now. A few birds still begin singing earlier, like the robins, phoebe (I still have not managed to get a picture of this little bird), the Swainson’s thrush with it’s most beautiful song. I’m sure I could listen to that one for hours and not get tired of it. And those thrushes are usually one of the last birds singing at night too. It’s a great way to fall asleep listening to the birds singing. Also a great way to wake up in the morning. A little chipping sparrow family is around now, so nice to see them with their own young and not with a huge (compared to them) young cowbird.
I think Pocket has really learned to like his new way of dealing with Runner. Seems every time they meet now Pocket leads Runner on a great chase around the flower planters. It starts with Runner chasing Pocket, and it ends with Pocket chasing Runner right off the deck. Then he returns quickly, picks up his 3 peanuts and is gone before Runner figures out that something is wrong and returns, looking around for Pocket who is long gone. So he takes a peanut and off he goes. Yesterday Runner caught Skamper at the peanuts so the chase was on and Skamper jumped straight up in the air which allowed Runner to pass him and he kept on going thinking that Skamper was still ahead of him. But Skamper landed safely behind Runner and watched until Runner was gone off the deck chasing nothing. He then took his 3 peanuts and left before Runner came back. These little chipmunks are coming up with interesting ways of dealing with that squirrel.
And now, the flower pics for today. The featured image at the top is an old fashioned rose from a bush planted by my landlord’s mother back in the 1940s. A more simple rose than most seen today, but what an amazing scent!
And in the photo above are a bunch of “deptford pinks”. They can really add a splash of bright pink to a garden. They are a smaller flower but are packed full of beauty. That’s our pics for today, don’t forget to join us for another chapter of our mystery story a little later. I hope you all have a wonderful day and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2020 Steve McLeod.
Little Things #2.
Hello everyone and welcome back to our series called “Little Things” which I began back on June 6 and meant to make this a weekly series. It didn’t quite work out that way. But hopefully now I can keep it a weekly post until something new begins in the fall. This will be our summer series, just as “Nature’s Art” is our winter series. In this series will be a lot of different things that are small and quite often go unnoticed by people. Some will be more noticeable than others perhaps, but we still don’t give them much of a thought even when we do see them, with a few exceptions as we will see over the next few weeks. Some of these “little” things may not appear so little but because they blend in so well with their background I decided to add some anyway. But most will be small and sometimes very hard to see.
In the pic above is the “conifer false morel” mushroom. These mushrooms grow in the spring, which for us means they will show up in May or early June. As their name implies, they like to grow near or under conifers, such as pines, spruce and balsam trees. I found them down by the river under some red and white pines. These are not really “little”, they can grow up to 4 inches tall and wide (10cm). But they do blend in well making them hard to see unless you are specifically looking for them. These are NOT morel mushrooms, a type that people like to eat. These are false morels and are very toxic (poisonous), they can make a person very sick or even cause death. It is best to leave these mushrooms alone.
Then in this next pic above is a tiny “goldenrod crab spider”. One of my readers wanted me to show some pics of spiders, so here is one that is rather interesting. I don’t like spiders of any kind really, but small ones are not a problem like the monster ones that come inside. Anyway, these little spiders like to sit on white or yellow flowers (like goldenrod, where they get their name). They can change color from white to yellow, though it takes a few days, and back again, a little quicker going back to white. This is a female which also has pink to red stripes or spots on it’s body. They are hunting spiders and will sit motionless on a flower waiting for an insect to get close enough, then it pounces and uses it’s venom to paralyze the insect. It especially likes wasps. The male is more brownish in color. When she lays her eggs she will spin a web around them and diligently guard them for about 3 weeks until they hatch and go on their way, then she dies shortly after.
Well, there is our second look at little things, next week I will have something else to share with you. I hope you have a wonderful day and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2020 Steve McLeod.
