Peggy's Jibber-Jabber: 42 Pictures!

Hello, hello, hello!

I know that Sunday has come and gone and you weren't expecting a visit from me this week, but after doing this for so many years, I just plain miss you! Doggone it!

Mike and I took the girls and went on a ride-about — on the golf cart — on dirt roads we've never been on before. We got to the top of a hill and Mike stops, taking in the beauty of the valley before us.

"We should have brought your mom out this way," Mike says, "she would have loved it."

All I could do was agree with him. "Yes she would have."

So, having said all of that, I'll show you some pictures from that day.

Old cars... and trucks... and other things.

Bittersweet Nightshade.

A gas well named Kathryn.

"Who names the wells?" I asked. "The landowner or the gas company?"

But Mike didn't know.

A lot of times they have people names like this one does. Across the road and down a ways is one named Redbone. A big landowner here simply uses his last name followed by a number.

Columbine. There was some pink close by too.

I took my letters down to the mailbox the other day and saw a dark spot in the back corner. Even with my Cadillac eyes I could see they were moving and I knew what they were.

Ants!

A colony of ants had taken up residence in our mailbox!

"I wondered why there were always ants on the mail when I pulled it out," Mike said when I told him. He's tall and never bothered to look into the deep, dark, recesses of our huge mailbox. He took care of them.

A bug on the milkweed. Last year the deer ate most all of the blossoms. Only a few survived.

Which reminds me...

We have been seeing, on the weather segment of our local nightly news that the Monarch Butterfly is in real trouble. The company that landscapes and maintains the backyard of the TV station (where the weather is broadcast from) is giving away milkweed seeds to everyone who stops by their greenhouse.

I love that my very beautiful sister Phyllis always plants milkweed in her garden!

Although this guy looks like a Monarch, he is not. He's a Viceroy, a Monarch look-alike. He piggybacks off the Monarch's reputation for being bitter tasting to the birds.

"How do you know it's a Viceroy?" I hear you ask.

Easy. Monarchs have two full rows of white spots on the wings; Viceroy's only have a row and a half.

Birds can't count so the Viceroy is safe.

Oh my gosh!

Speaking of the pond, I was down there the other day and saw a water beetle skating around on the surface of the pond. I took several photos of him never seeing the threat stalking him. Do you see it too?

A bee on the Multiflora Rose blossom. His saddlebags are full!

The blossoms are so fragrant! Sometimes I'll just stand there and inhale their sweet smell. And did you know that you can use the hips from the Multiflora Rose bushes just like any other rose hip?

A daisy with a bug on it. I love the daisies.

Pinecones?

Our cherry tree is full of cherries! But we didn't spray for

worms and we don't have a bird net, so at least for another year, the birds can have them.

The berries are coming on. These will be raspberries.

I don't know what these are.

This guy is called a Clover Looper.

Let's switch things up a little.

We have a rail line down in Wyalusing and the gas companies get their supplies in by rail-car, which means graffiti is always changing.

"What's that one say? Barack Obama?" Mike asked.

I had to take a picture of it and zoom in to see. "It says... Dank Burma? Whatever that means.

Ins't the hmuan mnid wndorfuel and amzanig! Gvie it a coplue of lerttes and ilt'l flil in the blnaks. Taht's why eevn if you mses up all the lerttes you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm as lnog as you keep the frsit and lsat ltteer in the rhgit pclae.

A barn quilt.

Okay, back to flowers and critters.

The Kipp's were visiting the other morning when a bird catches Rosie's attention. "There's that bird with a white stripe on his tail," she said. "We have looked in all of our bird books and we can't identify it."

"I'll Google it for you," I told her.

I didn't see the bird so I had to ask for a better description. "Which way does the stripe run? Horizontal across all the tail feathers or vertical like it's just one white feather?"

Rosie thought about it for a second. "Vertical."

I searched and searched the images on Google and I couldn't find it. I changed all the words in the search box and nothing new was coming up. Finally, in frustration, I clicked on a black bird with a white stripe running across his tail feathers and jackpot! This one came up.

I haven't shown Rosie and Lamar the picture yet, but if this is what they've been seeing, it's a Great-tailed Grackle. The stripe is a variation. My search says this about the grackle. The great-tailed grackle or Mexican grackle is a medium-sized, highly social passerine bird native to North and South America. Passerine? What does that mean? I had to look it up. Passerine is an adjective meaning: relating or belonging to a group of mainly perching songbirds, which forms the largest order of birds including more than half of all bird species.

Speaking of birds...

Bird on a wire.

I think that was also the name of a Goldie Hawn/Mel Gibson movie.

This is a Purple Martin.

"I thought Purple Martins were all shiny blue-black all over," you say.

That's true — if you're a male. The females have lighter under parts.

Purple Martins spend the winter in South America but come north to breed. They show up in Florida as early as January but in our part of the country we won't see them until April or May. These birds are aerial insectivores, which mean they catch their food in flight. If you ever see a group of them hunting, they are fascinating to watch.

Here's Callie enjoying the warmth of the sun. Since the spring, she doesn't stay in the cat room anymore and won't let me get close to her.

I made concrete leaves a few years ago. You can stand them against the porch for decoration or you can fill them with birdseed or turn it into a watering station for butterflies and birds...

Or cats.

Speaking of cats...

That Spitfire got another baby bunny. It was dead by the time I found him but I wouldn't have taken it away from him even if it weren't. Not after that last fiasco! I tried to save the babies and they were ungrateful enough to die on me!

Everyone knows this guy!

He's a Daddy Longlegs also called Harvestmen. These spiders never build webs. If you ever see one with tiny yellow, orange, or red blobs stuck on his body or legs, they're mites parasitizing him.

I was happy to see this one! We had this one in Missouri too. It's called Smooth Beardtongue or Foxglove.

"Why are you happy to see it?" you ask.

I was worried I wouldn't see many different wildflowers in my limited world. I don't get out and walk as much as I used to.

Mike and I were on the golf cart the other day, going out back for something or another and a deer takes off. I had my camera but by the time I took a picture all I got was the tail before she was gone. No big deal. We've all seen enough deer that no one is going to miss it if they don't see another picture of one. Reviewing my photos on the camera I see the rock has ears. See it?

Speaking of babies...

The cows have babies.

I love the babies!

And I love the cows!

This is Lupine. There's a ton of it across the road from where I took this picture and I suspect it was an escapee. There are over 200 species of this flower and they are in the legume family.

I thought these leaves were pretty and this is my current desktop photo.

We were going down Welles Mountain and I spot this flowering bush alongside the road. At first glance I thought they might be Multiflora Rose but soon realized they were different. The flowers were bigger and closer together.

I snapped a picture on the fly. "Can we stop on the way back?" I asked.

Mike is a good husband and on the way home he found a pull off close enough for me to walk back and get a few pictures. As soon as I saw the leaves I knew what it was. My mother had planted a whole bunch of these beside our back porch one year.

Aren't they pretty?

"Okay," you say. "What is it?"

This is Mountain Laurel, Pennsylvania's state flower!