Last fall, I wrote about The Earl of the Back Yard and now I’d like to bring you all up to date with back yard happenings. Some same ol’, same ol, and some new stuff. (You can click on a photo to enlarge it)
The Earl is still with me and now he’s brought his entire extended family plus all his neighbors. At one point, I counted 13 of the varmints just on my lawn! They don’t understand that hospitality only goes so far! He’s hanging from the feeder and is sharing some of his food with a brother on the ground.Earl has learned he can just hop into the feeder rather than stretch and then hang onto the feeder. Much easier to chow down from this vantage point. Doves are feeding in the backgroundThis poor bush had broken limbs from the harsh storms of 22-23. To add insult to injury, some of the squirrels decided to build a condominium amongst its roots. That’s their dirt you can see piled up at the base of the plant.The above shrub was taken out and this new Cardinal Candy was planted recently. It’s supposed to be a larger plant and will have red berries in the fall. So far, the squirrels have left it alone. Fingers crossed.Dean has discovered he enjoys hunting lizards in the backyard (he goes out only with strict supervision)Sometimes, it’s a matter of life or death in the backyard. I happened to witness a Cooper’s hawk catch a starling in mid-flight and caught a few photos. Upon catching the prey, the bird extended its wings protecting his catch while he secured his grip.A profile of the hawk before he flew away with his meal. Sorry it’s not a sharper image
Another life and death situation in the back yard. This photo shows what the next photo should have looked like.
A stripped salviaTHE CULPRITS??? Ants taking pieces of the salvia leaves to their nest.
I think a mystery has been solved in my backyard. For 2 springs, something has gotten into the raised garden (with fencing and netting) and stripped off the leaves my plants. No holes or anything. This spring, I’ve twice planted some pretty plants in an unprotected area. Twice they’ve been stripped. Finally, I noticed huge red ants are doing the damage. I have watched them chomp pieces of leaves and carry them back to the nest! Now I need to decide whether to kill the nest or let them be. I don’t know exactly what that would entail but I know I don’t want them to sting me. Those stings are very painful and raise a good sized welt.
As for my raised garden. I’ve already decided to wait until fall and then plant a bunch of milkweed and penstemon to attract butterflies and other insects. I’ll be happy to watch them in lieu of my plants being carried underground to feed a bunch of antlings (antlets?)
The last photo I’d like to share is of three of my plants in the front yard. Lupine, peonies and brilliance (that’s the name of the pretty yellow plant)
Sometimes I feel like a farmer with some successes and some not. It’s a good thing I don’t have to depend upon my green thumb to survive.
Someone had told Jerri and me that we could take the Ranger from our houses through the mountains to her granddaughter’s house using trails cut out by many other off roaders. Of course, we wanted to see if we could find our way and the following is the adventure of that day.
The Carson River is not far from where we live. We ventured into the Pine Nuts (the range to the east of us) and followed a power line road for quite a way.The power line road sort of petered out and we wandered around trying to find the absolute right way. We could see where we wanted to be, but the trick was getting to the right connection without getting onto a paved road. The Ranger is not street legal and often the gendarmes look the other way. But we wanted to do it legally. Unfortunately, our final road turned into a motorcycle run and it was just too dangerous for us. As we turned around, we saw this sign and laughed. (This was a gully and NOT the road)So, we turned around and headed for home. BUT, we saw another road that would take us higher to give us some better views. This one was really fun! Prison Hill is to the left.A view of Slide Mountain and a portion of Carson City (Eagle Valley). Yes, part of it actually slid away down into Washoe Valley just north of Carson City. The mountains/hills you see between Carson City and Slide Mountain are a portion of the Virginia Range. Looking the other way, we could see the north end of our Carson Valley.A tufted evening-primrose (according to my flower book)Some Mormon tea plants… a different taste, but not a bad tea.Lots of arrowleaf balsam plants to add some color to the hillsidesThis is an example of desert peach. Those thorns are very mean if one is not careful.Jerri taking some photos that she’s already posted on Facebook. It was very sandy where we stopped and hard to tromp around the area. Since we had jackets on, you might wonder if it was warm enough for snakes to be out and about. Yes, they were, and we were very careful where we walked.As we began to go down the hill, we encountered this guy just sunning himself across our road. We estimate he was more than a yard long. Locally, he’s called a bull snake.We knew he wasn’t poisonous, so weren’t very concerned when we got out to look at him. He wasn’t moving and wasn’t even sticking his tongue out. I thought, at first, he was dead, that we had run over him when we went up the hill. I petted the back of his neck and he still didn’t move. Eventually he did stick out his tongue and then moved off the road enough so we could pass him without running over him. This guy was the first snake I’ve seen out in our wildlands, and I’ve been here almost 11 years. Glad, though, it wasn’t a rattlesnake.
We didn’t accomplish our goal to getting to Sierra’s house, but now we have an excuse to try again. No matter what adventure we take next, we know we’ll have a lot of fun.
buzzardnotes 