Friday’s Farm Fotos

The Fridays keep coming around way too fast!  My weeks never seem to be long enough to get everything done I want to get done.  Oh well! 

At any rate, here are a few pictures from around our little farm this past week.  I’m just putting them up in the order they came out of the camera!

I saw this critter one day as I was walking back from the mailbox.

Maybe he was just looking for some sunshine, or maybe he figured out it was a good place to keep an eye on any snakes hanging around.

There are still lots of Eastern Swallowtail Butterflies hanging around on the Joe Pye weed.

Here’s our silly lady llama getting a drink from the water hose while The Farmer tries to fill up one of the drinking pools.

You can see Toby, the farm collie, in the background hoping The Farmer will turn around and spray water at him.  Keira wants sprayed too in this hot weather.

And I can’t resist taking more pictures of butterflies when I walk by the pond and see them.  This one is a female Eastern Swallowtail Butterfly.

It’s easy to tell the black ones are females, but harder to tell which yellow Swallowtails are male and which are female!

Here’s our female goat and a couple of ewe sheep hanging out under the big oak and walnut shade trees in the back yard.

And lastly, here’s a Blue Jay I saw at the birdbath this morning.  I don’t often see them around close to the house.

And there you have it, another week on the farm!

Friday’s Farm Fotos

Another Friday, and just a few photos from around the farm this week.  Well, actually, I just took these pictures this morning, while doing morning chores and then walking to the mailbox with my crazy gotta-love-him dog, Toby.

The phlox is finally blooming in the flower bed on the northern end of the house.

There are some daylilies hiding in the shadows along the steps.

By the pond, there are always dragonflies.  I like this picture because you can see how transparent the wings are.

There are also butterflies flitting around.  This morning a nice yellow and black swallowtail was sipping water off the leaves in the shadows.

And there was even a frog sitting on some pond plants in the swallow water near the bank.

And waiting on me to quit being so poky and GET OUT OF THE SUN was Toby in shade at the top of the steps.

When you’ve got a black fur coat, the sun feels really hot really fast!

And there you have it, the same old stuff here on the farm!  Hope you have a great week-end, and thanks for stopping by!

Thursday’s Thoughts: Thinking In Three’s

No deep thoughts today. My brain is too tired, ha! So here’s an easy one… thinking in three’s. I mean, if pictures are worth a thousand words, then there’s some serious thinking going on here, right?

This trio of bright orange fungus starting to grow on a rotten tree limb is likely Sulfur Shelf (Laetiporus sulphureus), also known as “Chicken of the Woods” because it is an edible mushroom that some people think tastes like chicken. (Just once, I’d like to hear someone say, “You know, that tastes like beef.” Or even pork. Just something besides chicken!)

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This threesome is our older peacock with two of the peahens.

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A trio of red roosters… they no longer reside here.  And we still have too many roosters!

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These three trees are in our woods. This is an older picture taken back on a beautiful winter day in December of 2009.

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These blooms, however, are on the plant right now. It’s a big Hosta ‘Blue Angel’.

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And finally, 3 blooms on a Chinese Sweetshrub.

Alas, that is not a tree we have growing here.  I took this picture when we were at a local nursery buying vegetable plants.

That’s it for today!  My brain is thinking more along the lines of Tired Thursday than Thinking Thursday, or Thursday’s Thoughts, or whatever.  So we have reached the conclusion of today’s post…

“A conclusion is the place where you got tired thinking.” – Martin Henry Fischer

Friday’s Farm Fotos

Here we are, another Friday, and time for some miscellaneous pictures from around the farm this week. Per usual, in the order they came out of the camera.  Here we go!

Here’s the retired matriarch of our Shetland sheep, Miss Coconut.

 She loves having her head scratched and is always looking for treats.  (I have NO idea how she got that way.  Must be The Farmer handing out treats, yeah, that’s it. . .)

This one is an interesting combination of beauty and the beast… beastly odor that is.

That Monarch butterfly is on a Voodoo Lily.  It’s the only one I see growing this year.  *Someone* keeps mowing down the bank where they grow. . .

Here’s a closer look:

When that big bloom opens, it generally will lay down horizontal.  And smell.  And attract a LOT of bugs.  (There’s more pictures and info about this plant at Voodoo Magic.)

And of course, I have lots of hens and baby chicken pictures, so here’s a couple of those:

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Oh, and here’s another picture of the rambling rose growing up in a big oak tree.  I put a couple of arrows in there so you can see better how far it is up into the tree.

And while we have lots of bluebirds and Tufted Titmouse birds and robins and such flitting around, there are also still lots of cardinals to brighten up the place.

And speaking of bluebirds, we have some nesting nearby.  Here’s one after it took off from the nest. . .

And one of the bluebirds is looking down at the hidden nest here. . .

Their nest is hidden in a pipe that is bracing a gate post.

The nest is just below a hole in the pipe, so I can see it’s there, but I can’t see in it.  Can’t see down the pipe either, because it’s too close against the fence post.

It’s been raining this morning, so I wondered how the little Tufted Titmouse baby birds were doing since that’s just an open hole in the post.

They seem to be doing fine, in spite of the rainy weather!

The rain doesn’t keep the sheep from getting out to graze either.

And last for today, a picture of a bloom and buds on my Country Lady rose bush.

That’s it for this week.  Have a great week-end!

Friday’s Farm Fotos

Time once again for a look at miscellaneous pictures I took around the farm this past week.  This first picture is of Valrhona, one of our Shetland sheep ewes, bedded down in the dry grasses in the main pasture.

The grass is maybe 6-8″ long, and seems to be just perfect for nestling down into it for extra warmth.  All of the 4-legged animals seem to think it’s great!

Once again, the animals are out in the main pasture:

I took this picture from inside the house, looking out the window in the dining area.  The sheep are in the shorter grass areas, grazing the green stuff tucked underneath.  Our Maremma sheep dog, Neffie, likes to stick close, but keeps to the highest vantage point she can find.

Still looking out the window, I saw one of our Buff Orpington hens.

They love to scratch around in the leaves along the fenceline, looking for something tasty to eat.

One of the escapee roosters was doing the same thing around the base of a tree.

I sometimes throw crumbs out there, which they seem to enjoy.

The wild birds like the suet feeders.  Sometimes a Tufted Titmouse comes to visit.

And sometimes these little birds show up in bunches.

I’ve been trying to figure out what kind of birds these are, but can’t find anything that looks *exactly* like them.  The nearest I’ve come up with is an American Tree Sparrow.  But the colors aren’t quite right.

Here’s a couple getting a drink from the birdbath.

And one was sitting on the picket fence.

So, anybody know what this bird is exactly?

Now, I know exactly what THIS bird is.

That’s an immature male cardinal with a punky ATTITUDE.

And I do mean, ATTITUDE.

I think his mohawk “hairdo” looked pretty cool.  Bet he thinks he’s a read macho dude!

Our farm collie, Toby, isn’t so much macho as goofy.  The minute we go outside, he runs around like an idiot trying to find a stick to carry.  It doesn’t matter if it’s toothpick sized or a log.

Sometimes he gets sticks that are so big he can barely drag them around.

He and Neffie seem to enjoy grooming each other, each though they are both “fixed.”

Later in the week I saw a Northern Mockingbird getting a drink from the birdbath.

The cardinals also visit the birdbath.

Sometimes even the chickens hop up for a drink from the birdbath, like this little Golden Sebright Bantam hen.

Glancing through all these pictures, you might get the idea things are pretty fowl around here.  From the looks of all these guineas following our male llama around, I’d say you’d be right.

We’ve got all kinds of birdbrains outside and inside.   This one on the inside is hanging from the curtain on the back door. . .

And bidding you GOOD-BY!