No Ice Skating.

After visiting the exhibits at the Harvest Festival, we decided to explore the wooded area on the property and found this.  I gave us a laught, but I wonder who would think of ice skating on this piece of land?  The nearest body of water is a very small pond with vegetation growing up through most of it and it's several yards beyond this sign.  Hmmm . . .

Sunshine and Spiderwebs

I haven't seem many insects hanging around this summer.  I'm happy to have found this one.  You should double click this one to get a better look.

Strawberry thief.

Not only do the squirrels get into our garden and steal the strawberries, but they also climb onto the ledge of the kitchen window so we can watch them eat the berries.

A quick trip

to the National Zoo.  We saw only a handful of animals before we called it a day.

Do you see what I see?

That little guy was eating my almost dead plant at my front door.

Not a great hiding place.

Apparently one of our chipmunks thinks a good place to hide his food is on a seat cushion under a pillow on our front porch. 

Mallards at the Mall.

The ponds are beautiful at the mall right now and apparently this mom and her babies think so, too.

Second Instar. 243/365

I was preparing (what turned out to be fantastic) chicken for dinner and needed parsley. I ran out to cut some from my plant and found five of these guys just hanging out. At first I thought they were just ugly bugs that would devour my herbs and give me nothing in return, but after some research I found that these fellas are at the front end of a life-cycle we witnessed part of on days 222, 227, and 235. This is what the black swallowtail caterpillar looks like soon after emerging from it's egg. I have never witnessed in the wild this much of one species' life-cycle.