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Just let them come

Sometimes I am just to lazy to leave the back patio. So, I just wait for them to come to us. The lingering light was rapidly falling tonight, but not before a Deer wandered nearby.  The  night sky stood an inky canopy of darkness when it came back later on its journey home, a bit to dark for a good picture though.

 

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More Back Yard Fun

While rain is often desperately desired for home lawns and gardens, it can bring problems.  One of those ‘problems’ can pop up quickly literally overnight–mushrooms. The majority of mushrooms are nuisance problems, appearing repeatedly if conditions are right. They may have an odor. They are annoying but cause no damage to the grass or to our landscape plants. Most fungi in lawns are beneficial, because they decompose organic matter buried in the soil, releasing nutrients that are then available for plant growth. Never eat mushrooms growing in your lawn or garden. The majority are poisonous.

…….And one more thing, they sure are beautiful. Capture the image before things dry out

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Challenge Yourself

Grab the kids, put down the cell phones, pick up your camera and for a moment, sit still and just look around. A photographer can bring life what you thought was just your mundane back yard. As you can see, we just love the Cardinals.

 

 

 

 

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Summer Cardinals

Sunflower seeds, safflower seeds, suet or even broken up peanut, offer them, and they will come.  If you are lucky enough to have one, carotenoid-rich bright red berries from dogwood trees are also a favorite.  Diet plays a part of why they are red. So, why so red. You would believe that bright red would be a easy visible target  for hawks and owls.  However,  by responding to redness as a sign of a promising mate, females have encouraged the evolution of bright coloring in males. This process is called sexual selection. It turns out that male cardinals are probably bright and loud for the same reason: to advertise what good mates they’d make. Sexual selection is often powerful enough to produce features that are harmful to the individual’s survival. For example, extravagant and colorful tail feathers or fins are likely to attract predators as well as interested members of the opposite sex.   for more click here

Anyway, just sit back and relax and forget about all the science for a few minutes and watch and listen in your back yard.

“In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.”

Click on and image for nature at it’s colorful best

Louise: “How did you get here?”
Johnny: “Well, basically, there was this little dot, right? And the dot went bang and the bang expanded. Energy formed into matter, matter cooled, matter lived, the amoeba to fish, to fish to fowl, to fowl to frog, to frog to mammal, the mammal to monkey, to monkey to man, amo amas amat, quid pro quo, memento mori, ad infinitum, sprinkle on a little bit of grated cheese and leave under the grill till Doomsday.”

 

“You have to believe in happiness, or happiness never comes … Ah, that’s the reason a bird can sing — On his darkest day he believes in spring.”