Wow.
It seems like I just finished a letter blog.
Oh, wait. I did! And yet my folder
contains another 80 some pictures I want to share with you.
First,
let me tell you about Grammarly, a free editor I use to help me find my
mistakes before I post my letter blogs. Grammarly tracks and sends me 'awards'.
It also tells me that I was more productive than 98% of Grammarly users. That I
use more unique words than 96%. I struggle with accuracy (whatever that means)
and my top three mistakes always involve comma use. No surprise there, right.
Grammarly also tells me that they've checked 3,861,208 total words in the past
year. That isn't all letter blogs though. It includes emails and Facebook posts
and anything else I type on my computer. That's a lot of words!
Second, let me tell you that I missed
some pictures in my last letter blog. Fourteen of them! Like these two cuties
that watched us get out of the Jeep to browse a yard sale. They didn't bark and
that impresses me.
I
don't know how I missed all these pictures!
Oh, wait. Maybe I do. I was skipping
around in the folder keeping relevant pictures together as I write. I try not
to do that because I know I'll miss pictures if I do (and this proves that!)
but for the sake of story making, it's necessary.
One of the dirt roads you can travel
between my house and the bridge over the Susquehanna going into Wyalusing is
Gooseneck Road. There are only a couple of full-time residents on that road and
a couple of hunting cabins.
On Friday, June 14th, a guy on
Gooseneck Road killed his mother, step-father, a long-time employee of his
step-father, then killed himself. It's a huge blow to our small community.
Stuff like that just doesn't happen here.
Mike
and I, just like many other curious people, traveled Gooseneck to see what we
could see — which turned out to be nothing. No police tape, no barricades, no
evidence the police had ever been there at all.
I've
been watching an old farm on that road being reclaimed by nature for years now
and I've shared those pictures with you through the years. If I knew where to
find an earlier picture, I'd show it to you.
We
had one of the does bring her fawns up to the house for the first time.
There
was another doe here at the time and she was already eating the corn Mike put
out for her. The mother of the twins moseyed up to the corn and the other doe
gave way.
One of the fawns kept pestering the
other doe. Was he just being curious or didn't he know which one was his
mother? I don't know the answer to that question. But the other doe wasn't
having anything to do with the fawn.
She
turned around and smelled him...
...
and gave him a little nip...
...
and he took off.
It's Mama's job to teach the younguns
what's good to eat and where to find it. This one is taking note of the corn...
...but
wanted to nurse instead.
Mama said no and kicked him.
Look
at this troublemaker, would ya!
This little toady was in the dog yard.
I've seen one out there before, this one or another, I don't know, and thought
he was living in a void in the foundation just under the kitchen door. Since
the dogs didn't know he was there and he was staying where Itsy and Ginger
couldn't get to him, I let him be. Unfortunately, he came out to hunt or
frolic, or whatever it is that toads do and Ginger spotted him. Toads have a
toxin on their skin that makes the girls foam at the mouth for hours. Too much
and they vomit. Either way, it's not pretty. This guy's gotta go. After I took
his picture, I stepped over the fence, went around the corner, and set him down
by a small hole in the foundation. I thought that was the end of it. Not so.
A
few hours later I see Ginger's found something. When I investigated, I found a
toad, the same one or another, I don't know. But it appeared to me that he was
heading back to his home under the door. Troublemaker. I picked him up and put
him under the door where I suspected his house was. It's been a week now and I
haven't seen him since.
Speaking of Ginger, she's adopted a
new behavior. She won't go out in the dog run unless I go with her. I think the
hummingbird feeder is to blame. Hummingbirds sound like big bees and Ginger's
afraid of bees. Me too! They bite! Okay, okay! They sting. Either way, it
hurts!
I've
been trying to walk her a little more. She loves to go to the pond. But the
birds don't like her and dive-bomb her.
"I think they're Martins,"
my friend Jody told me.
The
Wild Basil is blooming. You can use the leaves in a salad or make them into a
tea. They can also be used to make a brown or yellow dye.
In folk medicine it's been used as an
astringent, heart stimulant, expectorant, to increase perspiration (although
why'd you want to do that, I don't know) and lastly to reduce flatulence (that
one I understand).
Check out this dude. He's just a baby
though. He'll be a Katydid when he's all grown up.
Do you know what sound a Katydid
makes?
Katy-did!
They get their name from the sound they make.
Even though Katydids have wings, they
don't fly. They'll flutter down but have to climb back up.
This is a Delaware Skipper.
"Peg, is he a moth or a
butterfly?" you ask.
Great
question! He's both! The moth is the working class dressed in plain colors. The
butterflies are the hoity-toity with their flashy colors and patterns. And the
skippers have characteristics of both so they fall into their own superfamily.
But most people call them butterflies.
Combined there are more than two
hundred thousand species of moths, butterflies, and skippers throughout the
world! But moths outnumber the butterflies and skippers by about eight or ten
to one.
Oh! My! Gosh! Look at this scary
looking critter!
"What
is that?" I asked Mike but that's like asking a brick wall. He knows about
as much about critters as the wall does.
His
front half looks like a wasp...
...
but I don't know what all the business in the back is about.
And I snapped picture after picture
after picture wanting to make sure I got some good ones.
This one, my dears, is called Ichabod...
no, wait, that's what I told Jody it was because I didn't know how to say his
real name. This is an Ichneumon pronounced ick-new-mon.
I had the ick part right anyway. And
he's a she. The female of the species has an extremely large ovipositor, a long
tube for depositing eggs. Yeah. Mine's a girl. Icky's are a parasitic wasp. The
female goes along the trunk and finds a hole made by another critter then puts
her egg on or near the young of other insects and spiders. Once the egg
hatches, it feeds on the unsuspecting larvae. Another website says she's
actually capable of piercing several inches of wood to reach her target.
Icky's are harmless to trees and
humans although you may get bit if you manhandle them. They don't sting like a
wasp might. Adults drink nectar from flowers if they eat at all.
They
also benefit us because they serve as a natural pest control for some
potentially harmful insects such as the boll weevil and asparagus bugs, which
eat valuable crops.
Other insects like spiders and birds
rely on Icky's as a part of their diet.
I always get excited when I find
something new and interesting to show you.
And here we have what I think is a
Mottled Brown Wolf Spider and she's carrying her egg sack around.
The
greatest enemy of the Wolf Spider is the hunting wasp and will only bite us if
provoked. Once her spiderlings have developed, she'll open the sack and they'll
climb up onto her abdomen and hold on to the little hairs. She can have as many
as a hundred of them! They'll stay with her for about a week then fly away.
Okay, okay! Flying spiders, how creepy is that! They don't fly but they do
disperse aerially. Sure sounds like flying to me! Actually, there are two
techniques they use, bridging, and ballooning. Bridging is climbing up,
dropping a silk line to cross to adjacent branches, and swinging — often with
the assistance of a breeze. Ballooning is climbing to a high point, letting out
a fine silk line that catches the breeze, and flying away.
A Soldier Beetle. They're sometimes
called Leatherwing Beetles because their elytra, the wing covers, are more
leathery than shell-like.
Going
out our road one day, Mike says, "Oh! I think I just ran over a
snake."
Immediately I'm on alert.
"Where?"
Mike knows me, stopped the Jeep, and
backed up without me asking. He was watching his mirrors until he spotted it.
"There it is. Maybe he was already dead."
I
hopped out, since no one was coming behind us, and called back to Mike.
"He's not dead!"
"Wait. I'll back up and get
him." He hates snakes.
I wanted him to get off the road
before someone else came along and smushed him so I touched his tail with my
foot — works to get the dogs moving. He curled up ready to strike if I nudged
him again.
"Okay, bud! You're on your
own!"
I looked back as I was walking away
and saw him heading for the grass on the side of the road.
"What kind of snake is he?" you
ask.
He's just a common old Garter Snake.
A female Twelve-spotted Skimmer. I
think she was dying. She flew from the pond in an erratic manner and landed in
the grass.
Lightning
bug.
I
was weeding my flowerbed and spotted this little spider.
It's hard to believe, isn't it? My old
Cadillac eyes and I can still spot these little critters. I don't always know
what I'm seeing though. Take this one for example.
Poop? I thought and wrinkled my nose. Upon
closer inspection, I see it's a snail's shell.
And
a snail!
I
picked the leaf to get a closer look and his little eyes came popping out.
Can you see what I see?
"Peg, all I see is a bunch of
gravel," you say.
I know, right!
These are turtle shells. All along the edge of the playground at church were
holes. Empty turtle shells littered the immediate area around them. I'd say there
were at least five such sites. A fox or coon or other critter sniffed out the
nests and had eggs for supper!
This
is Smooth Beardtongue also called Foxglove.
Bird's-foot
Trefoil. The name 'bird's foot' refers to the way the seedpods look on their
stalk with the central three held above the others, hence the name 'trefoil'.
Bird's-foot
is most often used for pasture, hay, and silage because it doesn't cause bloat
in ruminants. That's just a fancy-schmancy term for a critter that chews its
cud.
A Deptford Pink in the Oxeye Daisy
patch. Did you know you can eat daisies? The leaves raw or cooked, the flowers
in a salad or pickled.
"My mother's favorite
flower," Miss Jody tells me.
"Mine too!" I told her,
although truth be known, whichever one is blooming at the time is my favorite.
I love the wildflowers.
While
I was taking pictures of the flowers, I looked to see what Ginger was doing.
She was rolling in the grass. She was wet from being in the pond so I didn't
think too much of it — until she got up, turned around, sniffed, and flopped
back down on the same spot! That was suspicious!
"AH-AH-AH!" I yelled. "YOU
STOP THAT!"
Too late! She'd already perfumed
herself up with whatever this is. I suspect it's something out of the south end
of a north-bound critter!
Quick as we got in the house I took
her right to the shower!
Pee-you! Pew!
I
used baby shampoo. After she was dry I had to shampoo her all over again with
dog shampoo cause the baby shampoo didn't do the job, she still stunk.
Guess what?
It rained last week. The first time
for three days, the second time for four. Just kidding but it has been raining
a lot.
It came down so hard the culverts
couldn't handle it and it flooded our road.
The
end of our driveway. Front...
...and back.
Vernon's
driveway. It was still raining and there's water on my lens.
Mike
poured the second section of the patio wall. Wall? It's not a wall although it
comes up two inches. He's evening out the front of the patio in preparation for
closing it in someday.
We came home and Macchiato was sitting
on it.
"There's a paw print," I
said.
"It looks like he was scratching
at it too," Mike added.
In between bouts of rain, we framed in
for the third and final pour. This section doesn't have a lip sticking up so
Mike drilled holes for rebar.
Then it was off to Laceyville to get
the concrete.
"What's that?" Mike asked.
"Looks
homeless to me."
I
waited in the Jeep and took pictures while Mike and the yardman loaded it.
Passing a farm, a little girl asked Mike to toot the horn.
"Naw," he said when I
pointed it out. "Her mom might think something's wrong like she's in the
road or something."
I frowned. "I doubt it. If it's
anything like my kids she probably does it all the time and her mom's used to
it."
"There's a fawn!" I exclaimed
and Mike slowed. "All by himself. Did you see him?"
"No. Where is he?"
"Right beside the road. The bank
is too steep for him to climb."
Mike checked to make sure it was safe,
then backed up. The fawn wasn't having any of that and started running down
beside the road. He came to a spot that wasn't as steep and he scampered right
up.
Shortly after, we pass a dead doe.
"Aww. I hope it wasn't his mother. If it was, he's gonna die. He's too
young to survive on his own." We were quiet for a moment as all kinds of
animal stories flash through my mind's eye. "Unless he goes up to a house
and asks for help." It happens sometimes when an animal is in trouble they
turn to us humans for help.
"If
they cry all the time that means they need help, right?" Mike asks.
"Right," I confirm.
An open door — and stuff!
Smudge! That cat! He's so curious. He gets
into everything!
The
last pour was longer than the other two and just about did Mike in. But it's
done now.
Mike put my bell up for me. It only
took a year. You can't get in a hurry about this stuff, don't 'cha know.
Mike
test-rang it and I'll tell you what! Just standing next to this tiny little
bell as it was ringing, I understand why the Hunchback of Notre Dame was deaf!
My best girl, my ray 'o sunshine,
Joanie had an old cedar that was starting to rot and threatening her house. It
had to come down. (Picture by Joanie)
"I wish I was there to watch them
do it," she told me.
"Me
too!" I said.
"You could go take
pictures."
I was busy and couldn't go just then
but I was hoping they'd be working when I did get there. They weren't. The tree
was down.
"Maybe she'll let us have a
piece," I told Mike.
"You can't just take one,"
he admonished.
"I
wasn't going to. I was going to ask first."
While I waited for Joanie to answer my
text, I took a picture of her garage.
Then her handsome son Josh came by.
Joanie said I could have one for my
hillbilly patio table. I'd never be able to help lift it but Josh is strong as an
ox. Between him and Mike, they might've been able to get it into the back of the
Jeep but why bother if you don't have to. Mike backed the Jeep up to the bank
and he and Josh just rolled it in.
"I
want to see it when it's done," Joanie told me.
We got it home, rolled it out of the
Jeep, rolled it up to the patio, righted it beside a chair and, "Joanie! It's
done!"
I'm sure that someone as talented as Josh
is in woodworking could turn it into a truly fabulous work of art, but this was
all I ever intended to do with it.
Joanie, it will forever remind me of you,
and I'll smile.
Let's call this one done!
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