More Creek Crossing Pics!

Here are more creek crossing pictures.

We have a couple of pipes toward the right that have ends that are a bit crushed. They are now opened up. (Those pics will have to come later.)



This is a picture of the same side from above.





This is the other side.



This is looking across from the road side.






This is looking across toward the road side.

Praying Mantis - Little or Baby?

Elias found a very small praying mantis on our outside water faucet. It is not green like the other bigger ones we have seen (of which I have not been able to get any picture).

I took pictures of it on the faucet, on his hand and on his arm. These are some of the better ones. Some of them are very closeup.

Robber Fly Closeups!

OK...I am editing in here that I had to change the name of this post. I thought these were horseflies. They are not...they are robber flies!

I was outside the other day and heard this loud buzzing. These guys were the source. At the time, I did not know what they were, but I had my suspicions.

One was staying on the rail while the other one would look like it was trying to fly away. Then it would come to land, too. Next thing we knew, it was in the air again. I could not get pictures of it in the air, but I did get pictures of them linked together on the rail.












Then I captured them in a plastic bag.
At that point, they separated. I tried to take pictures of them in the bag, but the camera kept wanting to focus on the bag.

So, I have one fuzzy picture of the female.




For some reason, I was able to get it to focus on the male...once.

Stained Glass Window!

OK...here they are...pics of a beautiful stained glass window at our church. I so love the thought of Yeshua/Jesus holding the little children. It is a very comforting thought for the "little girl" inside of me!

This first one gives an idea of how it sits. The bluish green you see below it is the baptismal tank they have there. There is usually a huge bouquet of silk flowers, but I took it down to get the pictures!


These next two are closer up.

Excavating Glow in the Dark Shark Teeth!

Elias bought himself a kit for excavating two glow in the dark shark teeth. They were embedded in some of kind of plastery substance. He really enjoyed doing it.

The kit gave him what he needed to make two necklaces...one for him and one for Dave.

I took a short video of him while he was doing some of the scraping to try and release the teeth. This will be the first time I have uploaded a video here. Let's see how it goes!

Well, it seems to have worked! Woohoo! I had a longer one, but it kept bombing.




Here are a couple of pics of Dave's tooth on the necklace.

A Broken Dragonfly!

My son found a broken dragonfly. He held it up so I could take a picture of it. We are not able to get any of the living ones to stay still long enough for us to get any pictures. This is not exactly how I like to get pictures, but I figured something was better than nothing!

Here are some closeups...one of the "whole" thing





and two of the wings.

Doe in the Park!

Elias and I got to go meet a fellow homeschooling family in a park by the river. We had a very enjoyable time. He got to play with the boys and I got to visit with Sara, the mom! It was SO nice to be able to do that.

While we were there, Sara noticed a doe across the road from the park. I was able to get a few pics of her before she disappeared. She spent quite some time grazing there. We were hoping she would not try to cross the road.

Sadly, there are a lot of deer who get hit on the road along the river.



Thankfully, she did eventually go back into the woods. I got to watch her turn and go back in, fading into the trees, as if she had never been there.


These are pictures of that doe.

Beautiful Blue Butterflies!

I love the colors of these butterflies. They are very striking with a radically different coloration on the underside.


A friend thought they might be "Painted Ladies", but a search on the net shows otherwise. In trying to identify this one, I believe it is the butterfly shown here:

http://www.carolinanature.com/butterflies/rsp.html

Official name: Limenitis arthemis astyanax

Pics of a Swallowtail Butterfly!

I love swallowtails. They are so beautiful. Although Dave says that there are just as many butterflies this year as last, so far, I don't think so. I hope that more come later in the season. I hope you enjoy these pictures.

Brown Butterfly Pics!

I don't know what kind of butterfly this is.










I was only able to get pictures of the underside through our window.












This last picture my show a tiny bit of the upper side. It is difficult to tell.

Trenching to the Creek! Success!

Note the big rock in the foreground. That is what we were running into the closer we got to the creek.


There is water flowing through it!


Here the water is flowing down the bank toward the creek!

Meadow Trenching Pics!

This is actually not too bad. Usually, there is a huge "puddle" right here and it is fed from a drainage "stream" that runs through the middle of our meadow when it rains heavily. We have been working at both ends of the meadow to deal with the problem. At the "source" end, we have a trench to drain the water toward the creek and we started a kind of dirt "dam" to help block the water from going through the meadow.

This is the source end. The water drains from down the hillside and across from our neighbor. It usually creates a very large "pool" right in the middle of what you see in this picture. This nothing compared to what it usually looks like in a rain storm. The beginning of the trench toward the creek can be seen in the bottom right of this picture.



This is the beginning of the trench to the creek. Below are more pictures of the trench with the final one ending just short of the crest. There is a big stone in the trench preventing it from being dug deeper.

The "Blizzard" of March, 2008!Pics!

The view of our meadow from our "living room" window.





Birdwatching through the window.




Looking across the valley.

Looking down our creek.





Looking at the driveway from our pad.



Our creek crossing.