I like taking close up pictures of bugs with wings because I like seeing their wings, and bugs seem to be a little more...forgiving with proximity to people than un-domesticated animals. Although I don't know what this bug is, I wasn't able to find out anything bad about it, so I don't think it's too dangerous.
Most of the bugs I take pictures of happen to land on me while I'm out mowing, and sometimes, it gets really difficult to take a good picture with an actual camera when I have only my left hand to use, so I wasn't able to get this one very close.
This one looks kind of like a really small moth, but it was the middle of the day, so I really doubt that it was a moth, from the shape of the wings I might think maybe a Leafhopper, but it seems a bit too chunky for one of them.
I didn't know frogs had a habit of being so cool. I keep a little Grabber-Arm tool with me on the mower while mowing to move branches out of the way or other things, and I don't know how long he was there, but he was just hanging out, I guess enjoying the ride. Which is weird since the tractor was on pretty close to full power so it was rumbling and making lots of noise. I ended up dropping him off near the tree I noticed him at, since I had to go mow in the sun, and I doubt frogs like the sun much.
Our pecans are coming in very nice, these are some of the bigger ones. A lot of the trees we have are still green, but some of them are already starting to brown and open up. I think this will be a great pecan year.
I'm going to start taking some landscape-type pictures from now on, these won't necessarily be 'of' anything, and for a while they might be a little bad until I get the hang of taking this style of photo, so I'll start off with my favorite one, the one I think came out best, of the bayou across the road. We get all sorts of birds, nutria, gators, pretty much every type of animal in Louisiana is over there at some point in time.
This one is just a picture of the, mostly, mowed yard, the picture might not do it justice, and this is only about half of it, but it's actually really big. And while you can't see it right now, it's incredibly wet out there, no standing water at the moment, but pretty much all the dirt is mud right now. We've had some pretty serious raining over the last couple months, and yesterday we had some more rain, so the ground is pretty saturated.
And this last one is the tree in the background of the previous picture, it's a pretty big tree. Not terribly tall, but really wide. This one is not one of our pecan trees, almost unfortunately, one that big could drop a whole heap of them on it's own
Thanks for stopping by, and if you'd like, let me know which one of the pictures you liked the most, or share your thoughts, I'd be happy to hear them. Until next time, have a great day or night.
My first photo today is a bit of mystery, these look a bit like un-ripe Elderberry's, while they are still green, but the plant itself doesn't look like an Elderberry bush, and I don't actually know what this plant is, I believe these are actually nuts, because they look a bit more hard to me, rather than soft like a berry.
And here we have some of our actual Elderberry's. We have a couple of scattered Elderberry bushes around the yard, but I am thinking about maybe harvesting from some of them, and using them for re-planting, and maybe trying to make some Elderberry jelly or Elderberry wine.
This one is just a bit of a closer photo to accentuate the look of the leaves and berries of the Elderberry bush as opposed to the unknown one in the first photo.
Got a couple of really nice photos of an Egret that was happily following along as I was doing some mowing out in the pasture. The Egrets around here really love following the mowers and tractors around because it causes
all the big grasshoppers and other bugs to go hopping around like crazy, making them easier to for the Egrets to catch, and the Egrets are more than comfortable with following the big machinery around, it almost doesn't even seem to bother them at all.
Pecans are a really big deal around here in Louisiana. When Pecan season comes, there is, almost literally, someone on every corner of the city buying pecans, we have a few trees out in the yard, most of which look like the pecans are coming in quite nicely. These one's are from a tree in our yard that I think wasn't producing yet last year, but has so many that some of the branches are being weighed down.
If you do happen to know what that first plant is, please, leave a comment and let me know, all my google searches just bring up articles about Elderberry's. I have a few more good photo's that I will be uploading tomorrow, or, at least in another post, to try and make sure this one doesn't get too cluttered. Have a nice day, and thank you for stopping by.
Took a few more pictures out in downtown Alexandria today, this one is at the Alexandria City Hall, the flags being flown at half-mast is a tradition performed when mourning fallen soldiers and police officers, this time in particular for three fallen police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
I don't know any of the information on this piece, but this is a piece of 'modern art' outside the Alexandria Art Museum in downtown Alexandria, which also includes many other shops, bars, and antique stores.
On the wall of one such antique store, is a wonderfully detailed mural of a train and horizon.
My last few are of something I put together here on the farm. This is one with the screen rolled back. Even though it's just thrown together really, and it's a bit too late to help the tomato plants that are in there now, but I think it will help out quite a bit with the next things we decide to plant in this tub garden. I am thinking of putting something somewhat similar together for our other tub/table gardens, with a few modifications for each piece.
And these are with the screen rolled forward, to help shield the plants inside from the direct sunlight, which I think was doing some real damage to them.
Thank you all for stopping by. If anyone in the Alexandria area plays the phone game, Pokemon GO, there is some sort of pokemon related thing near the Red River, where the photo of the Alexandria City Hall and the Alexandria Art Museum were taken, as there were a lot of people there doing it when I was walking around taking pictures.
So, the egrets are back again, they love to come around, especially when we're mowing, since all the bugs are riled up from the mowers. They're not terribly afraid of them either, since they've been around them so long, I guess, they will get right next to them and run along with them, or follow right behind them, with no worries.
I don't really know what these are, the smaller seeds/fruits/nuts look kind of like the Elderberry plants, but the plant itself is more tree-like than the Elderberry, but it's pretty prominent in one small area near one of our fences.
My next two photo's aren't from around the yard, but from out in the nearby city of Alexandria.
This was a photo of the sun setting over a nearby medical center, and I thought made for a pretty good photo.
This river is known as the Red River, it is, in my opinion, a rather large river that runs right through Alexandria, or, technically in between it and the neighbor city of Pineville, which is right on the otherside of the river. During another time of year the Red River is the sight of quite a few different festivities, one of them being the Alexandria River Fete, usually during March I believe it is.
I plan to start taking more photo's from out in town also, to add to photo's from the farmyard, so if you like the 'in town' photo's, please let me know, although the next ones will probably be from different places.
The apple trees we have in our little orchard in the back are doing well, but seems to be a bunch of bugs that think so too, but that's ok, at least for now.
These are some elderberries growing out near one of our pecan trees, I would say they're doing well too, but I don't really know much about Elderberry's, so I don't know. I will be watching this set for a while, so maybe I will figure out how they turn out.
This here toad is one of a few that lives in our Cow Bowl, which is really just a big bowl now, since we have no cows. The primary difference between Frogs and Toads is that with Toads their skin tends to be dry, where Frogs tend to have wet and slimy skin.
I think this is my favorite one, although the photo may look big, this dragon fly was actually really small, but I think it came out great. Depending on size, Dragonflies can reach speeds of around 20-25 miles/h, and some of the largest fossilized ones have been found with wingspans over 70 centimeters, or more than 2 feet. That would be a huge dragonfly.
Thank you very much for stopping by once again and I hope you do again.
So, I took some more pictures of one of the quite a few spouts of Elderberry bushes we have, because I think the flowering on them looks very nice
And these are the actual Elderberries, or, at least what will become them if they grow long enough. Elderberries are used quite often in pies, jellies, and even wines for their unusual taste. However, caution must be used as all parts of the Elderberry plant are considered toxic, according to the LSUA Agriculture Center Source Links to LSUA Ag PDF at LSUA site : http://www.lsuagcenter.com/~/media/system/f/7/c/8/f7c8e5621f22d1959b0c8f3f147a8441/listpoisonousornamentalplants.pdf
This poor wasp here got caught in a really big web, that spanned a good 7 or 8 feet from the ground to a tree branch, I assume it was made by a very tenacious spider, as the web at that location has been destroyed at least twice during mowing, but it keeps putting it back up. This time I decided to pay honor to the tenacity of the insect and left the web alone and just didn't mow that patch of grass at all.
This is a very small pink flower, the Shameplant, known by many names, such as the Touch-me-not, or the Tickle-me, 'The Sensitive Plant' is a plant which will actually move and respond to touching, though it's only similar to a muscular reflex, and not actual conscious response.
This butterfly here is known as a Black Swallowtail, a member of the Dark Swallowtail group, consisting of this kind and 3 other types. It is, to the best of my knowledge, a male. Swallowtails tend to fly higher and move faster than some other types of butterflies. They tend towards hosting with members of the Carrot family, such as hemlock (very poisonous, caution is recommended), Bishopweed, and Roughfruit Scaleseed.
Which of the pictures do you think was the best or your favorite? Personally, I liked the first Elderberry one the best, Elderberry is just a very photogenic plant, and looks great in pictures, in my opinion.
Got you, these are actually of a lizard, a Broadhead Skink, specifically. Pretty big one that hangs around my trailer. Here it is sitting on a normal sized pallet, you can see a little of how big it is. It's been around me long enough that it doesn't even worry about me anymore, I've stepped less than a foot from it, and it won't even budge, just hangs around, eats bugs, lives the life of a broadhead skink.
But I do have a couple pictures of some wild raspberries growing on one of our in-yard fences, I wouldn't try eating them, personally, but they add a nice little bit of color to the yard, I think. It looks to be just one vine for now, but given some time, who knows how big it might grow.
I am planning on trying to post more regularly, going to try for everyday from now on, even if it's just some photo's from around the yard or in the nearby Alexandria/LeCompte.
Took a few pictures of the new flowering various plants, and a couple of little critters around.
We have a couple apple trees in our back yard, and they seem to have some nice pieces coming in, hopefully they come through all the way to full size without getting snatched by some critter running around
This was a picture of some flowers on one of our Catalpa trees, taken by my mom. Catalpa trees are pretty well liked by hummingbirds, and grow pretty fast, for a tree, as well as having a pretty good rot resistance so get used for wood quite often.
This one, on the right, is a Canna Indica, it comes from in fairly large bushes, and the only real 'use' is that they look pretty, the seeds have been used in jewelry before, and they are not particularly aggressive plants, they dont spread very much past their bushes.
As promised, the first of the two critters, a toad living in our cow bowl, a large bowl that used to hold water for cows, but is now home to some minnows, some shiners, a catfish, and this toad.
Outside of my home, I have a walkway, made out of pallets, and this Broadhead Skink lives under it. The Broadhead Skink is the largest of the skink types natural to Louisiana, are adept at climbing, and are good at preying on bugs and other lizards. They prefer the heat and, like me, can be rather sluggish in the cold.
This two I think were my favorite, and I think they turned out the best. A couple of pictures of some magnolia flowers off of one of our Magnolia trees. In addition to being pretty trees, Magnolia trees are also very good as shade trees, and can provide a lot of it.
This was a picture from during the ladybugs mating time, they were literally everywhere, not as many of them now, but still quite a lot.
These are some pictures of a growth of mushrooms that took up the same size as a small tree stump, and the ant hill next to it is pretty big too, last picture is a bit further out to show how big the mushrooms are
This is a small mini-garden sort of thing my Mom is trying out inside an old, claw-foot tub, the bell peppers seem to be doing pretty good in it, or, at least surviving haha.
This picture I left mostly un-edited (just cropped it to see the Green Flame easier) and is a picture of some maybe hard to see Green Flames in our burn barrel, and, as I find out while doing this post, can be caused by one of quite a few chemicals, but for us it was likely due to maybe some Copper Wire or some sort of small bit of copper that was mistakenly put into one of the bags (copper sulfate is one of the chemicals)
