Hiking Weather.

 It's hiking season! We went out for a good trek this weekend, warming the boys up for our upcoming visit to Yellowstone National Park. They're good little trailblazers, running in short bursts down the path ahead of us, and always excited to look for "treasures" on the way.

 We have a Nature Shelf in our dining room china cupboard, for just these sorts of finds. The rule is that if you carry it home yourself, then you get to keep it. I haul no booty for the crew, only my own treasures. But I am generous with my shelf space and allow any little feather or rock or stick a place if it is lovingly hauled back in the pocket of a young collector.

 We saw a few live creatures on this hike...like this beautiful little orange Eastern Newt...the only newt we have in our state, apparently! He held perfectly still while we all crept up close to him for a good look and then, Dee even stroked him with an outstretched index finger and he still sat stoically. We'd have stayed longer and tried holding him if the mosquitoes had allowed it.

 We saw a whole bunch of mating pairs of sexton beetles, like this one, on a tree stump. After I little research at home I found out that this meant that the beetles had found a dead animal somewhere nearby and the males had sent out pheremone signals to attract wives and all the new couples would now fight it out for ownership of the corpse where the winning pair would lay eggs and raise young. Just a little woodland drama for you! They are really pretty insects, if a bit macabre.

 Then we saw this snake....just about to cross our path when we startled it into high-tailing back into the woods. It's a rat snake, and was pretty long although very slender. A and I guessed it was between three and four feet in length...longer than Ru is tall. Handily, it is non-venomous, and also shy. I'm pretty certain I saw a rat snake one other time when we lived at the condo, last year or the year before....it was whirling it's way up a tree, looping around the trunk in quick spirals. Apparently this snake is an agile forest dweller that is adept at both climbing and swimming, able to get around cleverly wherever it finds itself.

Just before we finished our walk, Dee sat down to rest on a rock by the trail and found this little, glinting dragonfly wing. Quite an impressive souvenir for a three year old to spot! My inner outdoors-woman was very proud. I'd say the boys will do just fine Out West.

Garters and Goodbyes, With A Side of Roses

Yesterday was perfect weather for all the outdoors gallivanting we did. I did a little garden exploring, catching up on what I'd missed since I took to my bed and buried my nose in all the roses that are indeed blooming. So lovely to see them all flourishing! I really was wincingly nervous that all this rose anticipation and hope and apparent incoming blossom avalanche would somehow manage to come to nothing but, instead, I'm happy to report we are enjoying a regular storm of rosy petals. When you step out onto the patio it smells like a perfumerie that specializes in old rose scents. Mmmm...

And then...tiptoeing past the garden bench I noticed this little garter, all curled in the sun, pretending earnestly that he wasn't there and hoping I'd think he was only a leaf. I ran in and got the boys, hoping I could show them but he was too nervous and quick for two rowdy little men and had managed to dematerialize quickly by the time I had them both on the bench, peering over the side. Oh well. I thought later that I should have taken them back indoors and read them the poem that kept rattling through my brain after the encounter. Note to self: when poems in my brain insist on being heard over and over, maybe they will be satisfied if I read them aloud to small boys. Dickinson would be good for us all, I think.

Little Bird was exhausted after the errand running because part of what we did was take him to the pediatrician for his first basic exam. This visit is always kind of fun...they weight, they measure, they tell you how incredibly gorgeous he is and you sit and chat congenially about parenting. He's a little big for his age and he's gaining weight beautifully (totally impressed the nurse with an 8 oz gain since birth) and he scored perfectly normal or above average on all the checklist points so, now its confirmed...our newest son is practically perfect in every way! What else would we expect?

And then of course the saddest duty of the day was saying goodbye to our dear Grandma/Mama at the airport. Ru cried as we drove out saying, "I just want her to stay with us! Why does she have to go?!?" He's a rambunctious little boy who can be a real handful but he is a lover deep inside and he does hate goodbyes. Good thing we're headed to Michigan to return the visit in just a few weeks...July, here we come!

What Do Cleopatra and Medusa Have In Common?

Snakes. That's what! Yesterday afternoon our kind neighbor Mr. Wilson, stopped by and mentioned that he'd keep a close eye on the boys when we're all out romping in the yard if he were me, someone had just run over a copperhead at the top of our drive. *shudder*

Surprise! We have copperheads here. I had no idea that we had any venomous snakes although apparently it appears that we have not one but two (the much rarer timber rattler also can be seen here one in a blue moon too) And yes, we have accidentally settled in perfectly ideal Copperhead country, right here at our condo. Wikipedia says they like moist, swampy lowlands (hello!), mixed decidious forests and rocky ledges for sun bathing (about those stone-walls).

The pictures are not a live snake of course, but just some shots of our snakeskin we found last year as you may remember from this post. I dug it out of the back of the nature shelf after Mr. Wilson left though and had a good hard look at it to see if had any copperheady signs about it...its a bit unnerving to know that we found it on the edge of the driveway, strangely near where this latest sighting was.

I actually feel just a little jello-legged about this new discovery and although I had kind of thought of gardening that afternoon and this morning, I still haven't been out. Handily, it turns out that copperheads are one of the least venomous pit vipers (a family of snakes with heat pits on their heads for sensing prey) so you're quite likely to live. Or at least I would be. Not so sure what Dee's chances would be.

I have a feeling some serious lessons about reptilian manners are in order and some careful coaching about not playing on the stone walls on those balmy sunny days. Good thing the walls belong to the neighbor anyhow...I have a reason to try to keep them off now.

The reverse of the old saying goes, "There are not gains without some small losses." This is the price one pays I suppose for racking up higher growing zone numbers. Shoulda known there'd be some little hitch. Lets hope we can just learn to live with the snakes and stay out of their way. Its good to note that there has not been a death from copperhead bites in the last 100 years in our area, that the snakes are actually rare enough that they are a protected species and that they are intensely afraid of humans and will generally avoid us at all costs. Now if only they didn't have that habit of freezing when danger is very near. The easiest way to get bitten by a copperhead is to accidentally step on it. They're stinking well camouflaged.