Guess who is back??? Mr. and Mrs. Pileated Woodpecker

Today we had they pleasure of seeing the Pileated Woodpecker again! I have been patiently awaiting his return. Not only did he return, but he brought his mate with him. Yes, you heard me right I had our Male Pileated and Female Pileated together today!!! I can not tell you how thrilled Kelly and I were. They visited a dead tree in our back yard for a little date time snacking, lol. 

I can not even begin to tell you how amazing this is. This picture was taken from the deck door in my Master Bedroom. Kelly and I set up a chair and Scope and enjoyed them mostly all day. We just couldn't stop watching. It's super rare to catch one of these birds in the wild, let alone a pair like this.

Definitely the blurriest pictures I have ever taken, but I still enjoy the thrill of trying to capture the.

After they left and went into our woods to check out what they were 'snacking', and this is a close up of the tree where they spent most of the day. I was almost thinking they were trying to nest at one pint. How incredible would that have been. I could;t be that lucky, could I?

This day was definitely for the record books. I don't think I will ever catch the chance of seeing the two of them together like this again. It's good to know there is a couple here, and that they will be mating in my backyard sometime in the future, so cool! 

Moo??? Who's Baby is this?? THE COW BIRD

First time spotting one of these today, a Cow Bird. I read all about these bird, and I was really hoping I would get to see one, I did today. First impressions was this thing is BIG!!!! I can't believe it goes depositing it's babies in other peoples nest for them to raise. What a LAZY bird, lol. If you have not had the pleasure to read up on this bird, I would highly recommend it. It's so really different from any other bird out there. It's pretty FUGLY too :)  

Red Bellied Woodpecker

Yes Yes Yes, it finally happened and this big fellow showed up in the yard today! He is my very first Red Bellied Woodpecker. I'm hoping he is one of many that decide to frequent this year, he didn't hit the feeders, but he is sniffing around on the ground which is a good sign. He is a lot bigger than I expected him to be, and it was really a thrill to see him. I knew what he looked like from my birding books so I was hoping to spot one.  Now lets hope he brings his friends for a free buffet. I have a variety of things out that he should really take quickly too.  As you can see from this picture we seriously need to cute the grass HAHA :) 

Yard and Flowers for Today

I'm totally not going to apologize for this, but todays post is going to be INSANE picture heavy. For those of you that have slow internet, run do not walk, lol. So I went picture happy today so I'm going to split today's posts into two separate post. One post will be for flowers and the yard stuff, and one post will be for birds and bird feeders. Yes, there are THAT many pictures. Let's start with the front window garden area.

Short of this little girl mysteriously blowing up in a million pieces, be prepared to see her time and again for the lifetime of this blog :)

The new kid on the block. We went back to that same garden center and found this little beauty to match with my fountain. She is currently on the back deck of the house, but she will eventually work her way to the from of the house. I think I start to say that OVERALL my photography skills have stared to improve. I guess it doesn't hurt that I went out and splurged on a new Canon 60D :) My Dream camera has arrived.

My Mom visited this Spring for NY, and we planted a bunch of stuff. Amongst those plants are these two Bushes shown below (Update: both of these did not make it - like so many we planted too early this year and were fooled by the early warm weather). I'm glad I got these pictures of them, they definitely are beautiful and remind me of my Mother. 

Here goes the awesome photography I promised you guys, lol. I can't promise it will aways be this awesome, but it's a far cry from when I started this blog. I have to remember to take out my GOOD camera and get REAL pictures whenever I can.  The colors where speaking to me today!

Around the Yard..

Cleaning up some messy spots in the yard

Kelly and I are at it again. We have a few eye sores that have been bugging us for a while and we finally decided to tackle them. First up is this tree. Out here in the country Black Rat Snakes can get into the yard really easy, especially if you have tall weeds and grass at the base of your tress. We decided as an experiment to do this one up and lay in some gravel to give it a manicured look. In hind sight, I wish we hadn't used 'white' gravel, it's a bit on the tacky side, but it was what we had at the time. We can always refresh and update it if the need arrises.

Below, we also had another eye soar in the yard. The prior owner thought it would be a good idea to put bricks around this tree. As you can see below, it was really hurting and looking sad.  It wasn't easy, but Kelly dug out what he could. 

Finally, below is a peak at our new raised flower bed which I really love. For now it only has a few lonely flowers in it, but I hope to fill it up soon :) 

More yard project and flowers coming soon...

SNOWmagedon 2011

THIS WAS THE BIG ONE, I am sure of it. The biggest snow that the Midwest has seen for awhile, and I have a feeling it will hit the record books for sure. It may never happen like this again for a LONG LONG time so I want to document it here. I wasn't originally NOT going to include winter stuff here, but this was such a monster storm it needs to go down in the books, or at least in my books.

IT STARTED LIKE THIS...

Okay this was just a wow! This is our garage's back door. We opened it up to get a peak at what was really out there. Having a great big yard can be really fun and rewarding, but someone has to clean it up when it snows and that someone is Kelly, lol.  Let's get out there and see how really bad it is? UM WHAAAAT :) Kelly is over 6 feet tall, and the snow is over his knees! BUT oddly enough, look under that tree to the left, GROUND??? Weird. It's all about the snow drifts here. We had drifts in NY too, but not like this. We had areas of our year from this storm that where up to Kelly's chest area! 

I didn't feel too bad for him because he was dying to jump on his 4 wheeler and start pushing snow. He cleaned up our garage landing area, but that was about it, we needed a front loader to clear the rest of our drive which was just downright CRAZY!!!

It looks like ice-cream oh so YUMMY! I love taking pictures of the snow 'untouched'. The house was basically buried. I wonder if we ever get a snow like this again?

The pond is under there somewhere. Where did it go?  Below, the kitty cats got their own private pathway cut for them. My Cats love being out in the snow, or at least Salem doesn't mind too much. She let's me know when she is ready to come in and warm up near the fire. 

LET ME IN you crazy people. don't you know it's cold out here! This is our princess Salem :)

Stay tuned. As soon as all this none sense melts, Kelly and I will be prepping for the 2012 planting season. We still have a ton of projects left to get the outdoor living space up to par. 

Stormy Weather and Sanford and Son...What?

Today we had a pretty strong storm rip threw here. It was not a Tornado, but it packed some serious high winds. Several branches in the back yard came down so Kelly took advantage of it and did some additional trimming as well.  We also had a eye sore spot where we had piled some junk in the back yard and it was time to get it cleaned up.  As you can see I have containers and birdhouses just piled around :( - Not a good thing.

In the picture above you can see the old bird bath just filled with ORANGE water? That bird bath is going to turn into something pretty soon! It is actually a broken fountain, but Kelly has a wonderful idea about bringing it up front and planting in it. I think we are going to go with it. 

On to the other cleaning we did that day, below. Check out this mess. I am almost too embarrassed to post this here, but it does get cleaned up and needs to be shown. I hear the Sanford and Son music playing in the background when I look at this mess, lo. Maybe it will shame me enough never to do this again!! It was beginning to look like a junk yard - GAHHH.

LET THE CLEAN UP BEGIN...

So much better, ahhhhhh. This needed to be done so badly. Now this area is not done and there is still a lot more that needs to be done here, but this is a great start! 

Can't ask for more than this! Now at least Sanford and Son won't be moving into my backyard any time soon.