Flock of Turkeys

This morning as the children were getting ready for the bus, we spotted this flock of turkeys in the field across the road. The continued to move closer, finally coming across the road and into our yard. I never tire of seeing this large birds.


They stayed for a while, but then the bus drove by sending them to flight. I'll be on the look out for them tomorrow.

Backyard Spider

The kids found this very interesting spider in the yard.

It is a Micrathena gracilis in the family of Araneidae or Orb Weavers.

You can tell it is a female by the many spines. The males only have a few spines. It was not a very large spider, maybe 1/2 inch in length.

I'm so glad that they enjoy finding creatures and sharing them. We left her to her business of catching food.

Bugs in the Yard

Here are a few recent visitors to our yard.

walking stick

lots of butterflies
This one is a bit strange. It is a female wolf spider. She carries her babies on her back until their first molt. We fished this one out of the pool. We often find all sorts of interesting bugs in our pool and each day before we swim, we make sure to do a quick sweep of the surface.

Saving the Tadpoles

With the imminent draining and repair of our swimming pool, we have been busy trying to save as much of the wildlife as possible. There are thousands of tadpoles! Bessie and Gabe have been venturing into the murky depths to rescue them.

We set up this child's pool. It is 18" deep and 8' around. It looks like it will do the job of allowing the tadpoles to mature safely. We are thinking a lot of them are probably tree frogs as there have been several adults in and around the pool. We also have took out at least one bullfrog, so we shall see what we have.

Gabe wanted to make sure we got plenty of scum from the bottom of the pool so the tadpoles with have stuff to eat. Yummy looking isn't it?


The pool company will be coming on Monday to install the new liner! Woohoo! We will be sorry to see our little pond go, but I know we will all be thrilled to have our pool back.

How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck?

We have had a woodchuck living in the wild grapevines between our property and the neighbors for a couple of years. We would see it now and again. As long as it left the gardens alone, we were content to let it stay.

This week, we saw the woodchuck and she had came with company this time. Across the road she came with two little ones in tow. One was spooked by a passing car and ran back into the field, but this one stayed with momma. They were so cute and what an exciting time for the kids to watch them as they trotted behind momma through the bushes.

Now we will see if she continues to stay out of the gardens!

Sticky Toes

Isn't this little guy cute?! He is a Common Gray Treefrog. Gabe found him in our pool today. Well he wasn't actually in the water as the pool is only half full, but what water is there sure is attracting a lot of wildlife.


Look at his little disk shaped toes. They are very sticky and he clings with little effort. He was very unconcerned and didn't try to hop away. He just sat on my hand.


He had very interesting markings on his back and bright yellow on the underside of his legs.


We let him go in the perennial garden. I wasn't sure if he would be able to get out of the pool area or not as it is quite a ways down. Hopefully he will be happy there.