Halloween Time!!!

I came up with the idea to blog our Halloween pictures to keep track of them.  I'm going to go back and add 2011 and 2012 Halloween as well because I have them too. This year we added a new Balloon....Mr. Spider!! Okay, that isn't his name but it was the best I could think of lol. 

Very Very cute as far as I am concerned, and it's a perfect match to the other balloons in the yard. How seriously cute is his big purple hat??!!

Most everything is similar to past years, but it is a;ways great to see progression. I will start with out Witch and Cauldron. She is always the highlight of the yard!

We do not have the fog machine set up in the Cauldron yet, that will be closer to Halloween time. No need to hook it up this early. I will have updated pictures once I get that going. It's fun to see the Cauldron bubbling and smoking!!!

Next up is the Graveyard scene. This has become a staple for us on Halloween. We always have a graveyard each year. I wonder if my Husband is trying to hint at something? lol. This needs an updated picture as well because this wasn't the completed graveyard. I will add one in after this picture.

Then we have the infamous three ghosts. These things are cute and you can see them when you are coming down the drive. There arms just peak up from the tall grass field.

One of my personal Favorites though is good ole Franky!!! His is

 such an awesome balloon, one of the tallest we have. He always looks great since we have such a large yard to fill, a large balloon like him is just perfect!

We also have a cute pumpkin with a witches hat. I love the hat the most with the bright yellow moons! 

That's it for all of the balloons. We have six in total now. I think that's a good amount. It gets difficult to put them up if you get more than that. I think we will stay at six for a bit!

On to the other decorations. Our most famous non balloon deco is "Scott".

The Skull sitting on the table was only added last year. I think I got it at Swiss Colony last year, lol.

We upgraded the bat lights for the garage this year. We moved them up to the gutters. They were hanging too low before over the garage door opening and my poor new FJ was rubbing them.

I think I'm missing my Pumpkin Garden Stake, but I still have my Bat one!

I also stepped up the straw display from the year before. I think 2 years back I just had a single bale and that was really it. This year I went all out to display our pumpkins.

The last part of the decor outside is the small graveyard I do at the base of my kitchen window. It's small but very cute. I only just removed flowers from this area. As you can see everything is still green and growing.

I'm really happy how all the pictures came out. I used my Cannon 60D on Vivid Creative Mode with the background blur on max. I'm getting better with the camera, but still need work. I will learn it all eventually!
 HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Chipping Sparrow

Today is a really quick post with just one picture of a Chipping Sparrow. This little guy is super cute. To me he looks like he has on a stripped racing helmet. very different, and I was able to spot him out very quickly amongst the other sparrows. Glad he came for a visit today. 

Butterfly Beauty

A little too bright and a little too grainy, but still there! This butterfly was so big and beautiful I just had to snap a picture of it. I was lucky to even get this terrible picture. Butterflies are so super hard to photograph. They move so quickly and I never get a chance to set up my camera fast enough. I will leave the Butterfly pictures to the professionals. My camera was apparently taking a nap today, lol. 

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 :)  

The Cardinal, The Squirrel and The Grackle - Oh My!

Do you know when you take a picture of something, and totally love it, well that happened to me today a few times today. Check out this gorgeous pictures of a male Cardinal that came for a visit today. The word stunning would be an understatement.  I love the black mask he has on his face, it makes him look like a super hero.

Then this fuzzy cutie showed up. I love this picture so much. The detail I captured is so amazing in this fox squirrel (I think that is what he is). I'm loving my new camera. I love how he seems to be creeping along, probably planning to rob one of my bird feeders, lol. Our yard is filled with these, so I'm going to have to come up with some good anti squirrel bird feeding techniques.

Finally I had a VERY unwelcome visitor today as my last guest. This here is a Grackle, and I hope to see as few of these as possible. The shame is I actual think these birds are gorgeous looking. They have an iridescent blue sheen on them that lights up in the sunlight and it makes them look very sleek. Unfortunately, they will gobble up your seed in a matter of a few minutes. I allowed this one to pose for a picture and then I promptly shoed him away, lol. Yes I was the crazy lady running across her lawn and up to her bird feeder screaming, 'Get Away Get Away!!!!'. 

That's a wrap for today. See yogis again soon! 

The White Breasted Nuthatch

I have a cute little White Breasted Nuthatch that has been visiting here a lot. The recent intense heat is keeping all of my birds well hidden. We are in the midst of a severe heat wave here in the Midwest! My birds really are not liking it at all, and neither am I. They are eating less and less at my feeders and are in hiding (the shaded trees). My food has been untouched.

The picture quality on these are not that fabulous as is usual these days, lol. I'm still working with my camera to get things right. I figured taking bird picture would be easy...point, auto focus, and shoot. I'm now realizing there is much more to it than that :) 

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 :) 

SNAKE!!!, Run as fast as you can.

I know I have mentioned in a past post the importance of keeping tall grass trimmed down from the base of trees in our yard. When the grass is too tall it is an open invitation for a black rat snake to come visit.  Well as  you can see by this picture, the grass at base of tree was way too high.  Of course since this incident, Kelly has done an awesome job keeping the base of trees clean of brush, but that is now and this was then. 

I was out just minding my own business at this tree checking out the bird feeder above attached to it. I think I was trying to determine if it needed refilling. I got REALLY close to the base of the tree and before I knew what was happening this snake popped out and whipped it tail and scurried back down. I must have startled it when I approached the tree, but in the process it's tail hit my lower leg. Oh boy did I freak out. I even called Kelly at work crying, LOL.  The feeling of the tail touching my leg haunted me for days. I still feel a bit queasy just thinking about it - HAHAHA :) I was smart enough to grab my cell phone and snap a few quick shots. I was so not going to have Kelly tell me I imagined it all. I also had never seen a black rat snake up close before, and the size and girth of it had me shaking in my shoes. Here is the tree with and without the snake hiding around it.

I highlighted in the red box where he was hiding. Look at how alarmingly thick it is. It looks thicker than a garden hose. I feel faint looking at the picture, lol. That nasty thing touched my leg. For weeks I could not hang my legs over the sides of anything (the bed etc) even in the car with my legs hanging over the sea without fear of something coming to get me!

That same day Kelly cut down the grass the surrounds this tree :) 

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...

Morel Mushrooms

Today was a busy busy day, and more than one post will be going up for the day, Actually there will be 3 posts!  Today was a lot of fun and I want to document it as best as I can. We are going to start with these Morel Mushrooms. When Kelly told me we were going mushroom hunting in our own back yard, I was pretty sure he lost his mind. In NY you DO NOT eat mushrooms you find in your yard unless you want a quick trip to the ER and some serious food posioning. In fact the only mushrooms you should ever eat in NY, is from the supermarket, lol. It took Kelly a lot of convincing to get me to try them, but once I did I was hooked! I'm still not 100% sold on this soaking them till the bugs come out thing...EEEEK!

They fried up really nicely and were super yummy. There were not a lot, but enough for a snack. It's thrilling to know I can find them in my own yard. 

Creating another new planting area

Today we decided to create a new planting area in a lonely spot in our yard. It faces the neighbors so we are thinking of doing some perimeter planting or bushes. My original thought for this area was Hydrangea bushes, but I think it's direct sunlight and too hot for that type of bush. We used our container garden pots to mark out 5 squares to dig up. 

We ended up planting butterfly bushes here that did well for a few years until I cut them back to the ground for winter. I killed those suckers real fast doing that, lol. I was pretty sure I read on the internet you were supposed to cut them down. Oh well, Kelly has called me a plant killer for ever and in this case I lived up to my nickname!