Night on the Porch

These two showed up on my back porch this evening, and were all about showing us their dance moves.  I tried to get them to stop... but they just were so into it.

Gant was all serious and everything.  He told me it was Zumba, but I knew that wasn't right.  Then to distract everyone, he picked up this turtle and started chasing people around with it.

Just a crazy night of randomness on the back porch.  Oh, and there was a pretty sunset......

I love it when the kids are here!

Bird Brain

I still have birds on the brain...  I haven't been able to get great pictures of all the great birds we have in the yard.  But I did get this picture last week of the swallows right before they left the nest.

They are darn cute, but they make the biggest mess.  The day after I took this picture, they all flew out of the nest and followed their parents around the yard.  That was about a week ago, and I still think they are hanging around the yard, but they don't really use the nest. 

But in this last week, I have also seen some Scissortail Flycatchers.  If they really do eat insects, they are more than welcome in my yard. 

I see them frequently, and wonder if maybe they have a nest in one of the Hawthorne trees in the front yard...

But, by far, the most exciting bird I have seen --

THE HUMMINGBIRD!  I was so thrilled to see one on the back porch!  It was fluttering around all the purple petunias, and I probably watched it for 15 minutes or so.  Of course, my hummingbird feeders are empty, and it is a two person job to refill them....  Who would have guessed?  The hottest day of the year, and I see a hummingbird on my back porch.

No promises....

Okay, I know you think you are tired of hearing about these baby birds in the nests in my backyard, but I just HAVE to show you a picture of how they look today.  They have doubled or tripled in size, and the mom stays on the nest almost all the time.  If I go out there to try and get a glimpse, she might fly off of it and try to distract me with one of her injury acts.  But it's a little like she knows me now, and she knows I am not going to hurt her little ones. 

And as usual, every time the camera snapped, these poor little things thought they were fixing to get lucky in a "Mama's here to feed me," kind of way.  I didn't bother them very long.  I had other business to take care of in the yard.  There were plants, flowers and trees to be watered and cared for.

Like this lovely pot on my back porch....   if you are one of my sons, you know where this came from, and I am enjoying it every day this summer!  Muah!

But on the way back to the house, we found this little critter wandering around in the grass.  Of course, someone picked him up and chased me around the yard trying to make me hold him.  "Horned toads are just the coolest things ever!" I think were his exact words.  Well, that they may be, but I have no need to carry one around.  Don't need to touch one.  Nothing.  Over and out.

A Few Trees... Or A Forest?

Where we live..... let's just say, there are not an abundance of trees.  Anywhere.  I mean that in our area of the world, there are not a lot of trees, and I mean that in our neighborhood, there are not a lot of trees.  In fact, you could almost say that nearly all of the trees in our town were planted, or there are a few that might have blown in and grown after the Dust Bowl.

So we are doing our part, I mean, Mike is doing our part, to get some more trees established around our neighborhood.  He started with about 35 trees and quite a few shrubs in our yard after we moved in a few years ago.  Since then, he has teamed up with my mom, who saves trees -literally- and has planted about 17 more down in this draw and in the far reaches of our yard.  Mom finds trees that blow into her yard or flower bed, digs them up, starts them in a pot, and babies them until they grow too big for the pot or she finds someone to give them a new home.

So we, I mean, Mike has stepped up, and I mean it was a job.  I just hope to goodness we can keep these things alive because he even purchased a couple.  He always teases that he has to buy big ones because he wants to see them grow as much as possible, he doesn't know how long he will be around.  It's funny, because they are good-sized trees, but you can hardly tell it from these pictures.

But someday, I want you to come back -- okay, I will keep the pics and repost them -- and see how much shade we are enjoying out in this neighborhood with all the blue sky.

And no matter how many trees we plant, and no matter how big they grow, we will never get tired of looking at these beautiful sunsets.........

Mid-Summer Goings On

I could hardly leave you with the pics of the baby birds in the first nest without showing you the eggs that were about to hatch in the second nest.  It is up high enough that it is hard for me to get pictures without dragging a metal ladder out there.  Again, I can hardly believe that birds would put a nest in a tree with as little protection as this one provides...  But another mother Kingbird laid four sweet little eggs in this average-looking tiny nest.  She flew up above my head, squawking and trying to distract me.  She landed on the ground about 20 feet away, flipping and flopping, acting injured -- it was surprising the extent to which she tried to get me away from that nest area.

We caught these as they were hatching!  I didn't want to jinx anything, so I just snapped a few pics and left.  It was quite a sight.  Poor little things looked so pitiful, it is surprising they can survive at all.  It looked like a pretty big ordeal to get out of that egg and into this world.  Probably no different than every day of their lives after that...  just gotta keep fighting and moving forward!

Today was over 100 degrees, so I didn't even go out there.  If the mother was on the nest, I didn't want her to move her body and the shade that it was providing for all those little ones. 

Ornithology 101

About a week ago, Mike found two bird nests in the two smallest trees in our yard...  I mentioned this before.  I even showed you a picture of one of the nests with four little spotted eggs in it.  Well, a lot has been learned to me about birds since then, and I feel I must share.  *me being silly*

Here is the giant tree that the mother kingbird (found out it wasn't a meadowlark) thought would make a good home for her four little babies.  It is 3.5 feet tall at the most.

And here are the beautiful little eggs laying in the nest....  I didn't touch or breathe, or anything on them.  This was yesterday.  The nest is so tightly placed in between the branches, I just couldn't get my camera in any closer without risking moving something.  My camera was acting up, and it kept trying to focus on the branches or the other parts of the nest.  I have been taking pictures of the birds in my backyard everyday for about 10 days now.  I bet I have 1200 pictures of birds, feeding, flying, sitting, -- and about 95% of them are blurry.  You may not know this, but birds move fast.  Really fast.  They move lots faster than I am a decent photographer....

Then today, I got this picture of the mother sitting on the nest.  Can you see her in there?  She absolutely fills it.  Covers the whole thing up.  Wanna guess why?

 

One day later.  All those eggs have hatched, well, we think they are all hatched.  This was as close as I could get, and I was afraid it was too close.  Everytime they heard the camera go off, they opened their tiny mouths like they thought they were going to be fed.  I felt like some kind of fake mother bird.  :(

I want them to grow up and fly out of that nest so they can eat insects all over my yard!

You never know.

This is what I came home to find in my front yard today.  Yes, that is a tractor.  Yes, I live in town.  He is a farmer, okay?  Sometimes, we combine the two.

We have been in the house for about three years, but there continue to be little projects that come up.  Little improvements that need to be made.  Maybe a dead tree that needs to be removed or replaced.  But you must know, when Mike begins one of these projects, there is no way for it to be done but the best, A-#1, high-quality way. 

My example above -- See the lamp post sitting on a concrete pad?  We, jointly, decided that this lamp post would look better with a new coat of paint and some small shrubs around the base of the post.

Solution - LIZ - Run to local nursery, see what shrubs they have (it's nearly July, after all), grab however many we need, then come home, get on the business end of a shovel and plant them.

Solution - MIKE - Give deep thought to exactly what shrub would look best and do well in this area of our yard.  Discuss with Liz and at least one other person.  Decide how many of those shrubs we need, okay, eight.  Oh, good, Liz is going to Amarillo soon, she can run by our few favorite nurseries and find the Renaissance Spirea in the two gallon size that we will need.  In the unfortunate event that it is too late in the season that they don't have the size or variety we want, we will just order them and wait 3-4 weeks for them to come in.  This will give us ample time to build the proper box to border the new shrubs.  After measuring all sides, he welds a perfect 60" square iron box.  The only way to lift it over the top of the lamp post (believe me, this picture was taken after we had already tried the ladder -- I wasn't quick enough with the camera) was to go get this little John Deere, and lift the iron box right over the top of the post. 

So -- there it sits.  Now we wait the 3 weeks for the special order spireas to come in.  And we are super happy about it!  It's going to look great!  Such a tiny little project in a yard that needs so much!