Outdoor Update – End of June

I haven’t visited the pond in quite a while. The grass is growing high around it, so I’ve been avoiding the area because of my fear I’ll be inundated by ticks. Not that I’ve gotten a tick here yet, but I’m sure they’re out there.

I decided to venture back there this afternoon. Laura caught a snapping turtle in the pool a few mornings ago and I wanted to see if I could find it. According to her, it may be somewhere near the pond because that’s where she released it. I’m concerned that if the turtle does make the pond its home, it’ll eat the other wildlife that we’ve been releasing there. But those fears have been allayed because during my visit to the area today, I found oodles of tadpoles and salamanders. Of course, I took pictures of them and as I was taking them off my camera, I figured I’d post what’s been building up on Laura’s and call it an update.

First, let’s start with the salamanders. Since all my salamander pictures look pretty much identical, I’ll post only one. During my visit though, I did see at least five floating around simultaneously. It’s a riot to watch. They stay near the top, in the warm water, just slowly wagging their tails while looking for food.

By the way, if you’re interested in seeing a picture of an enormous salamander, you can do so here.

As I was standing at the pond, I noticed something wiggling towards the shore to my right. Then after that, I noticed a few things wiggling. To my surprise, I saw about four huge tadpoles. I’ve been wondering what happened to the pollywogs I transplanted back in May. I guess they lived because from what I saw, they are almost frogs. They’ve got webbed feet and everything.

Yesterday was a good day for moths. We were doing some work on the front of the house and found these guys:

They were just chillin’ on the front wall. I don’t know why.

And around the same time, I found a toad hopping around at the side of the house. I was walking back and forth because I was digging up bushes from the front and planting them along the pool fence. Here’s that toad, looking as darling as ever:

Before I walk upstairs for bed at night, I like to turn on the lights in back of the house, just to make sure there’s nothing swimming around in the pool. About two nights ago, I didn’t see anything swimming, but I can remember spotting sort of a shadow near the skimmer. I didn’t think anything of it until Laura told me the next morning that she fished a snapping turtle out of the pool. I’m assuming the shadow belonged to the turtle and I was too interested in bed to make anything of it. Laura says that the turtle was disagreeable and didn’t enjoy being pulled from the entrance of the skimmer. It didn’t try to bite or anything, but it put some muscle into resisting. She let the turtle go way in the back. I will tell you this – I’m not sure how comfortable I am with all this action going on while I’m asleep. I generally enjoy trapping and releasing and things of that nature.

I already showed you all the wildflowers we’ve got growing in the lawn. Those look really great and are moving swiftly through their lifespan. The yellow flowers are turning into those Dandelion puffy things and the orange ones are still going strong. We’ve got some taller yellow ones introducing themselves, along with these new purple flowers. I’m not sure what these are called, but I’ve seen them about a zillion times.

We have many apple trees on the property, but I’m not sure we’ll get any apples this year. For some reason, I didn’t see many apple blossoms and I’ve only seen a few baby apples. The pears are doing well though. We’ve got about thirty little baby pears growing mighty finely. I’m extremely hopeful that these will mature healthily because I haven’t tasted a pear picked from a tree like this in years.

One thing we do have an abundance of is wild blackberries. They are in flower mode right now, but from what I can tell, if these grow to fruition, I’m going to be spending a lot of time picking them. Blackberry and raspberry bushes are also in abundance up in the trails at the end of the road. I heard that people from far and wide come to pick them, so I have to get there early if I want my share.

I found a few extra pictures on Laura’s camera that I thought were worth posting. She’s got a really nice shot of one of our Peonies…

…and a pretty dark maroon flower growing in the grass:

She also managed to capture another beautiful butterfly on film.

Lastly, but certainly not leastly, we’ve got a somewhat blurry, but who cares, picture of a Red-winged Blackbird in flight. It’s the coolness of this picture that made me take notice.