Wild Life

I've had ample opportunity to photograph the wildlife around my mom's place and the places we are visiting. We went to the Big Obsidian Flow one day and these butterflies filled the air.

Mario caught one for me so I could photograph it and we could figure out what it was. We were suspecting it wasn't good and we were right. It is a Pine Butterfly and they are causing defoliation problems here in the PacNW.

Then we pulled over for me to get some photos of the mountains and to try out my new camera. Apparently when we did this we disturbed this badger.

I whistled and got it to look up.

Totally makes me think of the line from UHF, "Badger? Badger? We don't need no stinkin' badger!" (An obvious homage to Treasure of the Sierra Madre which I've also seen).

My mom lives in a forested area and has a swampy meadow sort of area for a backyard. Not much of a place to stand so she and one of her brothers built a wide deck that makes a great place to watch the deer.

There are two doe that frequent the area with their twins. I don't know what the statistics are but two doe with twins seems unusual to me.

These fawns though! Sooooooo cute!

We went for a boat ride and I caught the tail end (no pun intended) of some geese taking off from the water.

We came back from the boat trip and hello! Look who is lounging in the back yard!

Gorgeous. Also tasty but these deer are not for eating. :)

As I sat on the deck this THING kept trying to land on me.

I've since identified him as a pine beetle. Next time we meet pal you are going to meet the bottom of my shoe.

Enough with the creepy thing - back to the cute!
They were curious about the pond/fountain.

So cute and fuzzy that I admit to a moderate amount of squealing when they do things like get hyper and jump and prance around the yard.

I stole - okay I seriously just typed "stold." I would make a disparaging remark about the area, the number of teeth I have and my new IQ but I won't. ;)

So I stole my post title from a book title by Molly Gloss which I will be reading quite soon. I ended up with one of her books since we both share the awesome name and have now collected three. This will be my first time reading them though.

Blog neglect

I have been away, could you tell? I made sure to write several posts in advance and schedule them to post so I wouldn't look completely gone, but you may have noticed they were heavy on the photos and not so much the projects. It also meant I couldn't visit you back when you left me lovely comments.
I have been here:

A panorama shot from both sides meeting in the corner at the same mountains.

I have also been here:

And I'm headed back. But I have several more things to share with you! Like some of the fantastic wildlife I've seen and all the wildflowers and a fantastic plant nursery.

Happy birthday to me! Coupon code for you!

Yep, today is my birthday and I'm giving you a present - of course it is a tad silly, but that is very like me.

So have a piece of cake...

(source)

Before I remembered my original 1980's Rainbow Brite cake pan was in the lost land of storage where I just don't know if I can find it, I was totally going to have the cake I had when I was a little girl. I like this one too, though!


And get ready to do something crazy...

(source)

Mosaic Monday - lace

After I'd gathered all my photos and gotten the collages made I realized I used the same photo in both - I must really like that one!

It amazes me that this weed is just as beautiful from the "wrong" side as it is the "right."



Be sure to visit Little Red House to see all the beautiful mosaics!

Flowers in space

I recently discovered the "space textures" on picnik - they are soooo much fun! I hope they keep them.