snake charming

Today I planned to do, and did, some work out in the yard, the grooming stuff like cutting off the water sprouts on the crepe myrtles, digging up pecan tree sprouts, pruning off the spent rose branches and in general tidying up around the yard. The place I started at is a small bed by the driveway that has a rose bush, an althea, a ginkgo tree, and a lantana. I had tossed some larkspur seeds in there last fall too.

I had pruned back the althea some on the other side and I noticed some grass had made it's way in under the low branches and the lantana and the leaf mold and I started to reach in and...stopped.

Hmmmm. Maybe I'll poke around in the there with the long handled nippers first.

So I poked around in there three, four, five times and a big snake head popped up and started moving towards the rose bush. I could tell right away it was a big rat snake which are harmless unless you happen to be a small rodent, which I'm not, and I jumped up and ran in to get my camera. By the time I got back it had made it's way up into the rose bush and was on the trunk of the tree. And then I took pictures as it climbed the tree.

This is my third encounter with a snake this spring, well, in the last month. Tomorrow it will be 4 weeks since my snake bite. (And, in case you are wondering, it is still slightly swollen and is still a little discolored.)

The first, of course, was my copperhead bite. The second was about a week ago. Next to the outside wall of the garage, we have small stacks of bricks and other such stuff. It's also where the outside faucet is so we are in and around there all the time. I leaned over and picked up the watering can and a snake moved off. It looked just like the copperhead that bit me, same coloring, same size. I couldn't ever see it's pupil well enough to see if it was slitted or not (had no trouble with that with the big rat snake).

So did I leave it alone after it moved to perceived safety between some bricks? What do you think? I went and got the shovel and then proceeded to probe at it to get it out in the open where I could decide if it was a copperhead or a small rat snake. Did I have on shoes? What do you think? Anyway, the only shoe I can get on my bit foot is an old stretched out birkenstock, not much protection there.

It never did strike at the shovel but it's pattern looked right and it had a very definite triangular shaped head and the way it curled up in that S pattern was so familiar. So I chopped it's head off and apologized to it all the way back to the 13 Acre Field where I tossed it.

the turtle, birds, fish, and gardens

I've been kinda busy these last few days...mucked out the turtle pond on Friday, worked in the store last Saturday, finished planting the garden and finished a wax model on Sunday, Monday a trip to the nursery to buy azaleas that were on special to replace the ones I moved last spring and that did not make it through the brutal summer, and today I worked on designs for an elaborate mirror with lots of bevels and jewels.

I would liked to have worked outside today getting the azaleas planted and the new garden square finished but I was late working on the sketches. Marc got the grass up though after we marked out the space. We're going to plant watermelon seeds in there that our neighbor gave us. He says these are watermelons to swoon over.

The wrens are gone, I don't know where, but I haven't seen them in weeks.

I found a fledgling mockingbird dead on the ground, no sign of injury so perhaps it didn't survive the long fall. I scanned the oak tree canopy but did not see a nest.

A loud thwacking in my neighbor's yard caught my attention yesterday morning. A pileated woodpecker was very intent on a dead limb of the pine it was in. It deftly removed the bark to probe for insects.

As mentioned above, we mucked out the turtle pond, a task that took all day.

 

Much nicer now.

The goldfish were happy to be back in the pond.

These two minnows were circling each other and occasionally they would tussle.

We finished planting the garden. Didn't get potatoes in like I wanted or onions or the beets we talked about or any number of things I wanted to try. But we did get in tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapenos, cucumbers, pole beans, two kinds of squash, japanese eggplant, okra, watermelon, and cantaloupe. This food farming is still new.

I looked down for some reason and spied these tiny red dots in a flower bed. Baby lady bugs? They're not that much bigger than a pin head.

This cluster of rose blooms is enormous poking through the fence of the little back yard.

Spring.

a day (or two) in the life of Big Mama

Well, after Big Mama took her nose dive into the landscape brick around the bottom of her pond, I decided to widen the ramp so I added two boards and then after further consideration, put some foam underneath, you know, just in case she attempted another nose dive.

She approached it a couple of times and then retreated into the pond. Looked different, I guess, so she had to ponder it a while.

I decided to remove the extra boards and I guess that looked familiar.

For some reason, the camera started focusing in on the screen.

Apparently, the nose dive into the brick made an impression after all.

Every foot or so, she'd test the edge.

Made it.

After her initial obsession with the fence, she started to explore the yard.

Emma, the cat, wonders what this thing in the yard is.

She did eventually pounce but it was just a moving rock, after all.

Later Big Mama started digging the first of several holes but I don't think she has laid any eggs yet.

She's acting very weird this morning, coming to the end of the bridge/top of the ramp doing her digging thing on the wood. When I went out there she just gave me the eye but when I reached for her she ran across the bridge and into the pond. She's been out of the water several times since then just hanging out there at the top of the ramp for a while and then diving back in the water.

Oh, just now, she finally walked down the ramp so she's on the move, digging again in the same spot as before.

Now if she would just figure out that the ramp will get her back in the pond.