The beginning of August

Welcome August.
We saw our first buck in velvet close to home while having coffee in the morning. He was walking amongst several does who just stared at him as he walked through the neighbor's field and woods.

Something alarmed the gals and they took off to the west while the buck took off to the east. They look hazy because of the smoke and some fog.

I have 4 o'clocks blooming all over the place. Each year, I collect the seeds and then randomly drop them into different areas.

Some of them have grown to nearly 5 feet tall and others are being entwined with morning glories.

It's a mess in this spot, but I am enjoying the mess. I may chop it all down after a frost and see what comes up again next year.

Thankfully, Little Richard has been busy helping with the yard work. I put him in some spots that seemed to be growing faster than the rest of the yard and he did a nice job overnight.

Mornings are still the best to go look at things in the garden. The past few mornings are cool with fog and smoke.

The bees are really busy in the pumpkin plants I planted ... ahem, sort of ... by accident in front of the house.

Actually, having them so close is nice. I can see how the bees work the flowers and I can watch the funky pumpkins grow!

These pumpkins are a cross between some gnarly bumpy pumpkins I had last year and the original whitish-yellow pumpkins I had. So it will be interesting to see how large they get. 

I have several other pumpkins in another spot in the pasture that I fenced off. 

I have tossed pumpkins in for the mules to eat the past few years and it seems that they eat them and then stomp the seeds into the ground.

Here are some more flowers to enjoy. All of them taken early in the morning with dew drops on them.

I sure do love the morning glories!

 

Good bye May...

That's a wrap for May 2024.

We made it one more month!

Spring did its Springing and babies were born. I saw a newly hatched Sandhill Crane! I saw leaves sprout and come out in full force!

Yesterday, after checking fences, I saw a fawn standing in the pasture staring at me. When I pulled the photos from the trail camera in the woods, I saw another fawn. They are cute little buggers aren't they?

I found 3 morel mushrooms.

I found several meals of Golden Oyster mushrooms!

We saw some amazing lights in the sky with the Aurora Borealis.

We had rain. Rain, rain...

and for the first time in a year, we had water flowing in our creek again!

Our Ridge had a new human birth! Now the little ones out number the elders on the ridge!

We mowed our yard more often in May than we did all last year.

I took a sneak peak at my 'logged' hikes/walks which are not terribly accurate because I don't always take my cell phone with me when I go check fences and whatnot. This month I had 27 miles of hikes that I actually was mindful of 'logging'.  

I enjoyed 4 great hikes. Two at Duck Egg and two at KVR. All of those hikes were meandering hikes up and down hills while searching for spring flowers.

I'm looking forward to June.

Tomorrow I am doing a long hike which I've done before a couple of times. Two ladies from the gym are joining me. So this should be very interesting.

One youngster is a nurse who visits our local nursing homes. She is easily 20 years younger than me. The other lady is closer to my age. She raises show quality sheep. We kayaked together last year on the Mississippi River.

We aren't going to try and break hiking records, but are going for fun and I'm sure the conversations will be interesting. Put three ladies together on a journey and you each learn more about each other.

Goodbye May.

Welcome June.