Although this looks only somewhat like the real thing, we did see two Blue Jays at our feeder almost every day this week. We're quite excited and hope they stick around for the winter.

I copied this out of my bird book, not from the real thing.

A Nature Walk Sept. 11/08

You'll find the story of this walk here.

If you know what these berries are would you please let me know?

An attempt at watercolour painting

CTM's cherry tomato.


K2's grass

BTG's cherry tomato (different one than CTM)

My little yellow flower--unknown type but K2 says it's a type of clover.

BTG saved up her pennies this summer to buy this book on drawing horses:



She then sat down and drew a horse following the instructions in the book. I was thrilled at the quality of her drawing. G'Bob and CTM and even K2 got into the fun and each drew their own horse too.

A trip to the wetlands

We found dozens of these dragonfly wings. They sparkled in the sun and looked just like pieces of plastic. But the delicateness of the leaves was fascinating. When we got home we glued them into our nature books and then I added the drawing of the dragonfly from the Insect book.

I got to try my hand at watercolour and here is the result. I was instructed that one should start first with a flat flower...oops. Magnolias aren't flat. The only choices in flowers that day were magnolias and clovers. The clovers didn't look any flatter! I did choose a magnolia that was past its prime so that it had somewhat less definition to it. The theory didn't really result in a practical difference.

The other difficulty with magnolias is that they are white--except that the white is really a number of different shades of cream. Add to that shadows from two different lights overhead and I now saw at least four shades of shadow. An hour and a half of painting in squinting, frowning, trying to keep my yellow paint as white as possible. The shadow contains the "yellow" and a dot or two of purple as that is the opposite colour on the colour wheel. I was pleased with the overall effect. Not bad for a first attempt.

Last year's bean field is this year's corn field.

Pretty Robin Redbreast

A full rainbow after a humdinger of a storm. I never tire of seeing rainbows.

We're not sure what tree this is but it's been fun watching the cones develop.

Same tree near the top.

While other blogs talk about their nature walks and show lovely photos of butterflies, flowers and birds, I look out my window and watch for the snowstorm that is blowing its way in. Will I get to go out to my meeting tonight or not?

This is what my daffodils and tulips look like.

Total Lunar Eclipse

The sky was beautiful last night as the earth's shadow made its way across the moon. I took pictures even though I knew they wouldn't turn out. They didn't.

At one point the sky was clear of all clouds and the stars sang out their accompaniment to the main event. Fantastic. We even got to see a few small Northern lights.

I loved it.

Green Frog Eater

Copied from A Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of Costa Rica