A few spring/summer flowers and critters

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.