Garden Visitors

Two different days this week, we opened our front door to find visitors, just waiting to be welcomed.  First there was a turtle right on the porch, looking up.  (You can see the raccoon flower pot but right next to that is a turtle flower pot – maybe he recognized a friendly place for turtles.)

He was still there with head out even after I ran to grab my camera and came back.  And as I moved closer to take close-up shots, he remained watching as if to welcome a picture session.  From the beat-up missing parts of his shell, it was obvious he had been involved in a few difficult moments in his life.

The next visitor is actually someone who has maintained a permanent spot on the porch railing.  A spider who has learned to keep her web to one side of the walk-through as so she does not have to redo it every day as we leave the house.

This picture was taken with the sum shining through the web.  I tried it from the other side with the sun shining directly on the web, but it didn’t show up as well.

We delight in the interactions with our neighbors, human and otherwise.

 

 

 

Snakes in the Garden

Recently I made a knitted striped snake for my granddaughter.  She loves the colors of purple and blue, so that is what I primarily used.  Then she seemed to want a hat – a decorated, fancy red hat.  Maybe an Easter bonnet.  And of course, I included the process pictures as a 6×12 insert in my Project Life album:

Knitted snake Project Life page

This was fun to knit and great for working on while watching TV.  And such a cute example of a snake, similar to some of the pretty green snakes in the garden hanging from a tree and even found in one of my shrubs.

I remember, when I lived on 25 acres out in the countryside here in the Ozarks, reaching in to pick green beans we had planted in 4-foot-wide double-dug French Intensive style garden beds.  Hard to do with all the rocks in the hillside ground.  (We wound up with a huge pile of rocks that we then used for building walls, etc..)   In using this intensive method, the beans were planted close together than ususal forming a thick layer of green bean leaves making it impossible to see beneath.  I reached in and… grabbed a snake!  I jumped back but managed to see what it looked like.  Ran inside and got out my snake book and there it was, a black king rat snake – totally harmless for humans and actually good to have around in one’s garden.

Snakes have their place, whether as a knitted play/display snake or in the garden.