Mosaic Monday #138: Jiggin' It in June

My goodness, my goodness, here it is July 4th!  The summer is flying past like a kite caught in a tropical storm!  You'll forgive me if we re-wind to June, right?  The usual topics -- animals, flowers, cooking.  But maybe you keep coming back because you enjoy my menu!  Bon appetit!

As most of you know, our 'neighborhood' is a mecca for wildlife - but June delivered some new species!!!  Always a thrill!  One evening, I heard a loud bang on one of the kitchen windows.  In the twilight, I could imagine a confused bird aiming for what it saw as a tree.  I went out and looked on the deck and was shocked to find a very young Pygmy owl.  I picked it up and its head fell forward.  Not a good sign.  I went inside for reinforcements.  

Spousal Unit and #1 Son gathered 'round and we discussed options.  As we talked, it started to wriggle a bit and click its beak.  We decided to put it in a shoebox with a towel for support, and place the box outside a sliding glass door. #1 Son could monitor it.  Within 30 minutes, it had recovered enough to perch on the side of the box, and not too long after, it flew away.  We were all massively relieved. In the past, Spousal Unit and I have talked about how to deter bird strikes, and this convinced him that we should at least place some decals on key windows.  I will keep you posted on the effectiveness of the method!

This past Monday, #1 Son spotted a critter on the patio, which he could not identify.  He took a picture and then went outside to check it out.  It proceeded to squeeze itself behind a tall plastic cabinet that we use for storing patio cushions. He had called us and sent pictures, and we couldn't figure out what it might be.  So, he let it be, and by the time we arrived home, it had disappeared.  I shared the photos with my Dear Neighbor Friend, and she suggested a groundhog.  Interesting - I didn't know Montana had groundhogs.  I went to the web and learned that Montana has two species of marmots, a relative of the groundhog.  Aha!  The yellow-bellied marmot is found at lower elevations than its cousin, the hoary marmot, so I surmised this to be the former.

And then there are the regulars - they deserve a spotlight too, right?  I saw this rabbit when I was walking to my neighbor's house.  It let me take video while it calmly ate grass.

It finally decided I was too close and took off.  But I managed this still picture (not the best quality - my phone doesn't do distance and zoom) and was amused to see the size of its feet, not to mention the color - still white!

Following a hike, Spousal Unit and I took a scenic route home.  A friend had told me the location of a field of blue camas, and Spousal Unit was kind enough to indulge my flower obsession.  It paid off not only with the flowers, but a sighting of a small black bear.

Closer to home, the trail camera yielded some special deer photos - a fawn and a young buck. 

 

As June approached, I told #1 Son about the turtle that shows up every year in early June. I am not sure he bought it.  So, on June 8, when I announced the turtle was on the leach field, he was curious enough to come out for a look.  As in past years, the turtle hung around for about three days and then disappeared.  Until next year! 

It always catches me off guard - how June accelerates from "brown" to "blooms" everywhere.  I mentioned the Blue Camas above - here it is.  This was a first for me.  

I also find it fascinating that one can find many different plants within a mile or two of each other.  Even an elevation gain of 400 feet can mean new species.  Around here, the plants on top of the ridge bloom first.  I always wonder about this:  the snow is deeper the higher you go, but I suppose it also melts faster if the ridge is exposed.  Whatever the reason, it's a sight to behold.  

June temperatures allowed me to run outside, and occasionally I can't resist stopping to take a picture or two.  I made a new discovery in the process.  Bog bean.  This plant was in the marsh, and to get a quality photo, I had to take it like a selfie - that's why you can see my leg in the background!  Doesn't it seem that this aquatic beauty deserves a better name than "bog bean"?

To add to the floral delight, I found this orchid in our own back "yard" - a spotted coral root orchid.

And then there is Spousal Unit, who surprised me with a rainbow bouquet!

This month, #1 Son collaborated with me to make Firecracker Chicken Meatballs.  So good!

We weren't quite as thrilled with the Corned Beef Hash Rustic Pie.

But the month sure had a sweet ending with this surprise bag of orange slices from my Spousal Unit!

Happy Fourth of July to all my fellow U.S. citizens!

A note to my fellow bloggers: I may be late commenting this week with family in town.

A note to all Mosaic Monday participants - I am taking a break NEXT WEEK; there will not be a post on July 11.  See you on the 18th!

Mosaic Monday

Welcome to Mosaic Monday, a weekly meme where we get together to share our photo mosaics and collages.

Please include at least one photo mosaic/collage in your post.

The link will be open from 1 p.m. Sunday until 11 p.m. Tuesday (U.S. Mountain time).

Remember to add the link to your Mosaic Monday post and not the one to your blog.

Please link back to this post so that your readers will be able to visit and enjoy more wonderful mosaics; taking the MM blog button from my sidebar is an easy way to link back.

As host I will visit every participant and leave a comment so that you know I stopped by.

Please try and visit as many other blogs as you can, especially those that join in later, so that everyone's creativity can be appreciated fully.

Thank you for joining in today and sharing your mosaics with us. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Mosaic Monday #87: Time

On Wednesday, I was volunteering at the historical museum.  On the paper desk calendar, I made hash marks, one for each of the 28 visitors that day.  Suddenly, I noticed “183/183” printed in the upper-right hand corner of the square for July 1.  Really?  We are at the halfway point of the year?  (I paused for a moment to consider 183+183 = 366.  What?  Oh yeah, it’s a leap year.)  I suppose this is one of the signs of being retired – the days and months tend to blur!  All in all, it got me thinking about time.

Time is an intriguing/complicated/contradictory concept.  The more it slips through our fingers, the more we try to hold onto it.  (Except maybe when we begin a 6-mile run, and we want the next 60 minutes to fly past.)  I would guess that all of us would like to have more time, and yet we find a myriad of means to spend it, perhaps in ways that are frivolous.  We might regret that half of 2020 is over, and yet many of us want the next 6 – 9 months to get behind us so that we have an effective vaccine for COVID-19.

I suspect that the pandemic has made most of us confront this thing called time, even if only subconsciously.  Questions come to mind, sometimes in the middle of the night, and sometimes while I am zipping along the 70-MPH highways of Montana.  They usually start with “What if?”  This type of thinking can be slippery, leading to a real downer of a day.   When I was in the midst of one of these spirals, I heard a song that stopped me in my tracks.  “Keep Me in the Moment,” by Jeremy Camp. Check out this video.

Ever since, when I find myself getting caught up in “doomsday” scenarios, I remind myself to engage all my senses.  When was the last time you thought about the wonder and sheer joy of a hot shower?  Do you inhale your meals, or do you savor thoughtfully, noticing the flavors and appreciating the effort of the person who made it (even if it’s you)?  Is there a pause when you leave the house, to breathe in the air?  To feel the caress of coolness, a slight breeze shaking the leaves of the trees nearby?  How often do you find yourself at a destination, only to realize that you noticed nothing about your 20-minute drive?  You can start today.  To be aware.  To be in the moment.  As you peruse my re-cap of pictures from June, it is my sincere prayer that it inspires you to consider the joy, flavors, inspiration, aromas, beauty, textures, and symphonies that you may have been overlooking.  

A walk on the ridge with Dear Neighbor Friend

Kevin adds a Travertine backsplash to the space behind the cooktop 

Celebrating "Padre" on Father's Day - a hand-made card from me, a card from #1 Daughter, calls from both kids

and breakfast in bed

A morning kayak with Dear Neighbor Friend

Top: Sent my Mom's squares to Violet Protest

Middle and bottom: Hand-drawn card for one of my brothers

Naturally occurring flowers and critters in our "back forty"

So, does this a picture of a sunset represent an ending, or just the beginning of a night full of possibilities? I am choosing to consider the possibilities.

Mosaic Monday

Welcome to Mosaic Monday, a weekly meme where we get together to share our photo mosaics and collages.
Please include at least one photo mosaic/collage in your post.
The link will be open from 1 p.m. Sunday until 11 p.m. Monday (U.S. Mountain time).
Remember to add the link to your Mosaic Monday post and not the one to your blog.
Please link back to this post so that your readers will be able to visit and enjoy more wonderful mosaics; taking the MM blog button from my sidebar is an easy way to link back.
As host I will visit every participant and leave a comment so that you know I stopped by.
Please try and visit as many other blogs as you can, especially those that join in later, so that everyone's creativity can be appreciated fully.
Thank you for joining in today and sharing your mosaics with us. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Mosaic Monday #23: Anticipation

When we moved into our new house on April 14, 2018, I began taking notes about wildlife we saw around the acreage, including information such as date and location.  And, of course, digital photography is a superb record-keeper since it embeds the date the photo is taken.  My blog is another source of historic information about the last 12 months.

So, as the anniversary of our move-in date approached, the idea of a retrospective on flora and fauna deeply excited me, and mainly as a reminder about what we can expect as spring continues to unfold.  I plan to maintain my journal, and in the years ahead I can envision a running dialogue such as "the bluebirds are late this year" or "flowers will be delayed because this winter slammed us with 5 more feet of snow than normal".  Won't that be interesting?

For now, let's focus on what we can anticipate in the next 90 days.  Maybe in a future post I can tell you if it happened or not!!!

APRIL

As the saying goes, April showers bring May flowers, so this month delivers more in the way of fauna than flora.  Last year, April meant turkeys passing through our yard, but we have yet to spot any this year.  The chipmunks, on the other hand, emerged from hibernation at the end of March and have been scampering around ever since.

Birds that have been absent for the winter have begun to appear.  Both the Mountain Bluebird and Sandhill Crane have arrived at Hodge Lake, earlier than last year.  I find it particularly interesting that I observe a mating pair of bluebirds in almost the same location as last year.  I read some material that suggests these birds bond more to a nest site than to each other.

Sandhill Crane

Last year at this time, the bluebirds and swallows were considering our bird houses.  This year, as I mentioned in my last post, we have already noticed the bluebirds examining the nesting quarters, but the swallows are still in absentia.

April also witnessed the return of the Red-Winged Blackbirds at our bird feeders.  This year, the first one showed up on March 14, and now my feeders are mobbed by males and females alike on a daily basis.  The sunflower seeds have also attracted an occasional house finch, a new visitor.  On Friday, I almost fell over myself when a Red-Naped Sapsucker perched for just a few moments on our porch railing.  (I knew it was a woodpecker, but I had never seen it before and had to look it up in my Montana field guide.  SOOOO exciting!!!)

Other new sightings have included two otters.  On April 7, in the early evening, Spousal Unit spotted something dark on the remaining ice of the lake, and he examined it through the binoculars while I deployed the spotting scope.  Over the next few minutes, we watched one and then two otters slide in and out of the water onto the ice.  At one point, they shared a fish that one of them had pulled out onto the ice.  How cool is that?

On April 10, Spousal Unit (yes, he has sharp eyes) detected movement on the far side of the lake, and we soon determined that it was four wolves.  We must have observed their activity for 20 minutes; they ran up and down along the edge of the lake, and at times acted almost like puppies in the way that they gamboled together.  Of course, I have reported wolves before, but this is the first occasion that we have seen them in real time.

That same evening, I noticed something white moving around in the tall grass near the lake.  On closer examination, it turned out to be a bald eagle eating something on the ground.  Being this close to Hodge Lake is certainly a boon for wildlife!

MAY

May 2018 was a thrilling month since we witnessed the moose down at the lake, and the beaver pair moved into the neighborhood, building a dam and lodge lickety-split.  After those initial sightings of the moose, it disappeared for parts unknown.  We continued to see beaver activity in terms of changes to the dam, tree cutting and the occasional tail slap, but over the winter they have been entrenched in the lodge.  Hopefully they will be more visible once the ice clears out.

The flowers surged last year during this month, and here are some of the beauties we can anticipate emerging first.

Lower left: Glacier Lily; Center: Blue Violet; Lower right: Aspen

Upper right: Kinnikinnick

Upper left: Serviceberry; Upper Center: Heartleaf Arnica; Upper right: Wild Strawberry

Lower left: Oregon grape; Lower Center: Not sure; Lower right: Lodgepole pine

On May 28, my trail cam documented the Columbian Ground Squirrels, but I am fairly certain they were scrambling about earlier.  Just as I was wondering when they would leave hibernation, I spotted one yesterday on the slope just below the kitchen window.  He was frantically eating the short grass; we shouldn't be surprised since he has been underground since mid-August!

May 29 brought a coyote loping through our leach field around 9.30 pm.  At the time, it was a novelty that had me jumping up and down.  Twelve months on, I have become accustomed to a sighting (at a distance) while I am running, and I have certainly captured plenty of them on my trail cam.  Don't get me wrong, I am still mesmerized, but they are not as rare as I first imagined.

At the end of the month, we planted our flower pots.  While this does not relate directly to my chronicles of native flora and fauna, I can use the reference as a safety net - generally, I don't have to worry about these plants suffering a snow storm or ravaging frost if I wait for the final days of May to set them out.

JUNE

 Middle left: Narrowleaf Collomia

Middle right: Rose

Lower left: Starry Wild Lily of the Valley

Reproduction systems kick into high gear in this month.  Fawns begin to appear, and as many as six elk with a baby in tow wandered the edges of Hodge Lake.  A painted turtle crawled up the logging road and seemed to be digging a hole for eggs.  This occurred twice that I witnessed.  Each time, I placed rocks on either side of the area to enable monitoring (incubation is 72 days).  Nothing came of it as far as I could tell.

Not to be outdone, the swallows were nesting in both bird boxes.  (But by mid-June, the gnawing squirrels had kicked them to the curb.)  I also glimpsed the occasional Western Tanager high in the pine treetops, and male and female crossbills chose our rock steps below the kitchen as a favorite hang-out.  I still have not determined what drew them to that spot - something in the soil?  Microscopic bugs that I could not see?

Of course, not all wildlife is welcome.  This month also brought the carpenter ant infestation, which we were able to fend off quickly.  That was a relief, and now I am constantly vigilant for bugs attempting to make a warm nest out of our house.

Abundant wildflowers danced in the meadows and nodded under the shrubs.

Upper left: Cinquefoil; Upper Middle: Blue Violet;

Upper Right: Butter and Eggs

Lower left: reflection in lake; Lower right: Shooting Star

Left: Yarrow; Upper middle: Pink Wintergreen; Upper right: Blue-eyed Grass

Lower middle: Self-heal; Lower right: Bog Orchid

I would be hard-pressed to choose the highlights from June, but the black bear on the logging road (captured by trail cam) and the badgers I observed would land at the top of the list.

JULY

Early July brought much of the same with an occasional surprise, such as the afternoon I glimpsed a small black bear on our driveway as I returned home from a run.  Or the weasel that caught my eye from the window of our master bathroom.

As I sit here now, looking at barren tree branches and muddy ground, my mind struggles to grasp the life that is waiting just below every surface.  I am dreaming about the wild grass and wildflowers that we sowed in the fall, immediately before the snow took over.  Will it sprout?  What kind of wildflowers will we see?  Can we defend the new growth from the deer and the bunnies?  Of course I am also keen to observe our formal landscaping.  Does it come back?  How much self-seeding occurred?  Will our apple trees bloom and cross-pollinate?  And then we have the pines and aspens we transplanted at the end of the summer.  Did they survive the process?  When can we expect the aspens to leaf out?  So much anticipation.  All I have to do is wait.

Mosaic Monday

Welcome to Mosaic Monday, a weekly meme where we get together to share our photo mosaics and collages.

Please include at least one photo mosaic/collage in your post.
The link will be open from 1 p.m. Sunday until 11 p.m. Monday (U.S. Mountain time).
Remember to add the link to your Mosaic Monday post and not the one to your blog.
Please link back to this post so that your readers will be able to visit and enjoy more wonderful mosaics; taking the MM blog button from my sidebar is an easy way to link back.
As host I will visit every participant and leave a comment so that you know I stopped by.
Please try and visit as many other blogs as you can, especially those that join in later, so that everyone's creativity can be appreciated fully.
Thank you for joining in today and sharing your mosaics with us. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Another Day in the Neighborhood

When we moved to the country, I fully expected to encounter wildlife in all its forms, and this post is testimony to that dream, fulfilled.  And we've only been here 60 days!



My trail cam is the gift that keeps on giving … like a kid on Christmas morning, I retrieve the SIM card every few days and practically jog back to the house to see what has been wandering around the 'back 40'.

On May 23, the beaver(s) worked from 7.53 pm to 2.30 am as

documented by the trail cam.  A couple of days later, the trail cam

captured the lower right hand shot of mist rising off the lake as    

the sun rises.  I call it "Swimming Home from Work". 

If you read my May 23 post, you know that an active beaver pair has dammed the lake on the edge of our property.  At that time, I did not have any of my own pictures of the beaver … a situation that has now been rectified!

In my six months with the trail cam, I have learned that it can capture changes in the environment in addition to candid shots of animals (such as snow disappearing, in my May 10 post).  While the trail cam was focused on the beaver dam, it documented the sunset and the resulting reflections in the lake.

And I love this picture of the 'bubbles' on the lake's surface, created by large raindrops.

You may be wondering how I decide on the location of the trail cam - mostly it involves observing events (beaver is building a dam) and positioning the camera accordingly.  From my blogging perch on the deck, I noticed a dead tree frequented by Columbian Ground Squirrels.  Turned out to be a good choice for a photo studio!

Good morning, madam!

Flicker

Let's see - safe to take a snooze?

Oh, this sun feels SOOO good ...

Yeah, baby, this is the life …

Until that TURKEY shows up!

Of course, some forms of wildlife are not welcome, and can be a downright nuisance or problem.  Within a 24-hour period, we discovered a carpenter ant invasion (not a good thing in a log home) and a squirrel that had set up house in the bottom of the barbecue.  The latter was easily solved (remove the nest - no babies, folks!) but the ants will require ongoing vigilance ….

(And now I have an inkling who was scratching away at my patio cushions … could it be the squirrel in search of nesting material?)  We now have our cushions safely stored in this handy dandy shed!

(And then there was the recent episode with the fan in my 4runner, which was making flapping noises.  Upon servicing it, the technician showed Spousal Unit a large hole that had been gnawed in the air filter!!!  Apparently, this is a frequent event with vehicles that are parked outside in Montana.  Good thing that our garage now has space for both cars to be inside!)

Swallows had won the nesting boxes from the mountain bluebirds, but then the squirrels came along and made the entrances larger by gnawing around the circumference of the hole.  Exit the swallows … Grrrr.  (Are you noticing a repetitive villain here by the moniker of SQUIRREL?)

When I need to calm myself (how dare those carpenter ants chew MY logs?), I go for a walk.  And I find plenty to distract me.  First, geese flying overhead.  Listen for the flapping wings …

And the flowers always put me in a better mood!!!

Upper left: Cinquefoil; Upper Middle: Blue Violet;

Upper Right: Butter and Eggs

Lower left: reflection in lake; Lower right: Shooting Star

Top and lower right: Painted turtle -  I ran into

this turtle on the old logging road on our

property, and was amazed to see it several

days in a row, including an episode of 

apparent egg laying not too far from our

deck … Middle left: Narrowleaf Collomia

Middle right: Rose

Lower left: Starry Wild Lily of the Valley

And there's almost always some sort of surprise, like this turtle in the middle of the road!












Last year, we had no rain for over 90 days, spanning most of the summer.  So, although I haven't checked the stats, I know we have already accumulated more rain in June than we had all of last summer.  I love watching the sky as the storm clouds move in.

Spousal Unit, from his chair near the great room windows, had observed the lone coyote loping by in the dusk, so I moved my trail cam in the hopes of capturing more shots of this iconic hunter.  So far, no luck with the coyote, but maybe I got something even better … (please note that the trail cam was only 20 yards from our house for these shots.)

Robin

Buck

Hare

Black bear

Linking to 

All Seasons


I Like Thursday

Mosaic Monday


Nature Notes


Saturday's Critters

Skywatch Friday