Blogging – WVnature.com

Hello Everyone!

This blog is now located at:

Please visit there for all new posts.

Thanks!

Debbie

Mother’s Day 2010

It’s not every day that you are greeted at your door by little people with flowers and a balloon. 🙂 But it’s nice!

My two oldest went to my parent’s house for a little while on Mother’s Day and during their visit, they came by and brought me a Happy Mother’s Day balloon and flowers “they” got me. 😉
They are at an age (6 & 7) where getting a photograph of the two of them together where they aren’t moving, talking, and/or making silly faces is nearly impossible. So I take whatever photo I can get. LOL!

(The flower is an annual called a Lobelia. I kept the basket on our outdoor table all spring/summer and it flowered the entire time. My mom and my husband helped me keep it watered on days I wasn’t feeling well. I was really impressed by how many little flowers it ended up making, and how long it kept them. It was quite a nice gift. 🙂 And outdoors it did not have a strong odor, which is a nice perk for those like me with allergies. I took better photographs of it that I will share later on, as I come to them.)

While the older two were visiting their Grandma for a few hours, my husband and I took the baby out to get some new photographs of her. Here is one of those:

I hope all the mothers out there had a lovely day!

~ ~ ~

Front deck

I took all of the Rhododendron photos from here, on the front deck.

The deck was covered in maple seeds from the huge maple tree.
I don’t spend nearly as much time out here as I would like to. My health issues keep me inside far too much.
Most of my photo taking is done in short trips outside. When I was healthier I would spend almost all of my time outside. I miss the things I used to be able to do, more than words could ever say. If there is something you want to do, you should do it while you can, because you never know what tomorrow might hold.

~ ~ ~

Will’s birdhouse

My parents got our son a birdhouse kit for his birthday and recently my Mom and the kids put it together and painted it. I think they all painted on it some. I love how it turned out. I think it’s adorable! When it was finished they hung it in a tree in our yard.

I never dreamed anything would nest in it this year. I thought it would be at least next year before something would. But (as I am behind in posting) I can tell you that something already is. But I won’t tell you what. You’ll just have to wait till I get to those photos. 😉

~ ~ ~

Pollen!

Pollen was absolutely horrible today. I only went out for a short time today (with a mask) and go so very sick from it. Even though I showered immediately upon coming inside my lungs remained flared up the rest of the day and night. This does not bode well for me for a good pollen season. 😦

I later heard something in the news about this being the worst tree pollen season in decades. After the day I had, I believe it.

I did manage to take several photos close by the house in my short time out. I will share some of those next. Nothing terribly exciting but… I’ll share anyway. 😉

~ ~ ~

Hot!

Today it was 90 degrees outside! Which is shockingly hot for April 2nd here. I noticed something interesting. Wasps were really aggressive all day long. Even other people were commenting on it. Which is odd because typically this time of year here they are flying around looking for places to make a nest. And they aren’t typically more aggressive until later in the summer. And by that time they have their nests set up, etc. But I’m thinking now that their aggressiveness must be tied more to temperature, than to what stage they are in. Because during these warm days they have been as mean as they are in August. And the temps today are about what they are in August. Just a random observation.

~ ~ ~

How you know you have a small dog

What I am about to describe happens so often and I always say, “This is how you know you have a small dog.”
We have other dogs but our very small dog is Sniffer. (Our son named her Sniffer several years ago when he was very young. He said, “Because she sniffs out crunchy treats.” Due to her habit of following the kids around cleaning up their crumbs.)

Sniffer is a rescue. 1/2 Chihuahua and 1/2 Jack Russell Terrier. And she would like to be about as onery as you would imagine a cross of those two breeds would be. But I am very good at training dogs. So she’s a great little girl, with very few of the quirks of a toy breed. And we just love her to pieces.

She’s actually about 10 pounds, but you would never guess it by looking at her. She is quite small. But her body is very compact and muscular, so she weighs more than you would think by looking at her.

When she goes out to potty she sometimes likes to nap in the sun at the back steps. If she relaxes enough to go into “dead dog” sleeping mode, she attracts vultures. It creeps me out a little. If you think about it, they are just hoping one day she’ll be dead and not sleeping I guess. So that’s kinda morbid and gross. But since she’s not dead and just napping, and they never get too close, it’s mostly just funny. Sometimes I’ll let her out and then be washing the dishes and I’ll look out the window and see big shadows going across the yard and I’ll know the vultures are circling her again. LOL! They never land in the yard, but they do circle. If we step outside they usually leave, or circle very high, instead of down so low.

Today I decided to try to get a video clip of them. You can’t see Sniffer in the video clip, but she was sleeping on the sidewalk and this is the turkey vultures circling above. They were very high up by the time I took this clip. I apologize in advance for the shakiness. My current neurological symptoms make it hard to hold a camera still. They were lower in my first clip, but I was too shaky to make it worth uploading. I did a little better for this clip:

And here’s a photo of sweet little Sniffer. Otherwise known as Vulture bait. 😉

~ ~ ~

That time of year again…

My father out readying the lawn mower for another grass cutting season:

~ ~ ~

Black Ice

I didn’t take any photos today. But I just wanted to note that we went from flowers to black ice overnight. We had a very heavy frost and woke up to lots of black ice everywhere this morning. Lots of dangerous steps and driveways when people woke up today. And the frost finished off my crocuses as well. The Easter lillies have survived, but with some damage.

~ ~ ~

Blog boredom

Things feel boring to me on this blog lately, sorry for that. Winter just isn’t terribly interesting around here most of the time – nature photo wise. Today we saw 7 large turkey vultures in a tree. I would have loved to have photographed them, but we were on the road and I didn’t have a camera with me. Grr

I heard of something else this week that I would have loved to have had the opportunity to photograph. Nearby at my parents house, my mother was watching her bird feeders and a wood rat came into view on the ground. And then a hawk flew in and dove for the wood rat. Right as she watched! She said it happened super fast. But the hawk was small (maybe young) and kept jumping with its claws out trying to catch the rat and missing. Then the rat ran into the woods and the hawk flew after it. They went out of sight so she doesn’t know if the hawk got the rat or not. But what she saw would have been interesting to catch on film.

I also saw a pileated woodpecker today, but didn’t get any photos worth posting. He was too buried in the trees.

I’m thinking that now might be a good time to start sharing some of my old archived photos – pre blog days. At least it would make things a little more interesting around here, while we wait for warmer weather. I may do that soon, unless something more interesting to photograph pops up. If I post anything from pre-blog days I’ll note within the post that it is not a current photo.

I am tiring of the excessive snow this year but I have to say, I do not look forward to pollen season and the misery it brings me at all.

~ ~ ~

Facebook

As of today (January 17th, 2010) you can add my Nature Blog on Facebook, by visiting the link below and clicking “become a fan” of the blog. And if you read the status updates for the “pages” that you have become a fan of on Facebook, then you can get updates of when I update the blog here. I thought it might be a nice feature due to how I am sometimes a little sporadic in posting at times due to my health. So, I will try to always post updates on Facebook now when I post new blog entries here. I hope my readers will enjoy this new feature. Thanks!

Debbie Norman’s Nature Blog