I’d like to share just a few photos with you from my yard from spring of 2022.
First photo up was really fun for me. I walked out my front door one morning, after my sprinkler system had been on earlier in the morning, and found these little foot prints across the blacktop. Some little person had walked from my planting area outside my front door and then over to my big white truck. Notice that the foot prints go under the front of the truck. Believe me, before I moved that truck, I made sure no critters were under there.
Here (below) is a closeup of two of the clearest foot prints. The critter was a Raccoon. They sometimes walk somewhat pigeon toed, with the “ring” finger (#2) of each foot sometimes pointing forward. Toe #5 in the photo below is their “thumb”, whether a front foot or a hind foot. So you can see how the right foot points a bit to the left … and the left foot points a bit to the right. I’m told this is not unusual for Raccoons. In the photo below, the Raccoon was walking from the right directly to the left. A friend of mine tells me these are prints from a Raccoon’s hind feet … he says the shape is different than a front foot, and he says they usually keep their front feet clean, so it’s usually the hind feet that leave prints.
I know there are Raccoons hereabouts because I’ve seen them, and because the land that my home is on used to be a dairy farm with a creek running through it (and a little bit of the creek is still there above ground), and because there is a pond on the property, and because we are just a block or two from a large lake. Water = Raccoons in this part of the world.
Several weeks later, I watched this “hen & chick” plant (below) grow, and grow, and GROW, and GROW!!! I’ve never seen them do this, but I’m not an educated or life-long gardener like some of you folks are. It was just an inch or two shy of 3 feet tall. I’m told they grow tall when they don’t get enough light, but this area in front of my home gets full afternoon sun. Who knows? I don’t … and the hens & chicks aren’t talking. 🙂
Photo above taken from the side of the “head” of that plant. Photo below taken looking directly down at the “head”. Click on photos to enlarge them.
So then, behind my house … the photo below is what neighbors behind me see of my house. Heat pump on the left, kitchen window, patio with firewood storage for my woodstove and for camping firewood, patio doors, then my computer/office room/windows, then a bedroom.
Photo below. Under the bedroom window is a large, healthy fern. It was tiny when I moved here three years ago. I must be doing something right. 🙂
And then there’s the Yucca just around the corner to the right. The first spring after I moved here, it did nothing. In 2021, it had one small flower stalk. But this year, 2022, the flower stalk grew taller than I am (I’m 5’8″). I feed it and water it and talk with it.
And I talk with these folks too …
And I’d LIKE to talk with these folks (below) too … but they scamper off so quickly that I can barely snap a photo of them, much less talk with them.
A few weeks later, a mom and her teenage son (spots all gone) were in my back yard. I managed to get the video below of them eating the leaves off the tree right behind my home. They often do that, reach up and eat those leaves. I like that. Saves me from needing to prune the branches, and the deer never send me a bill.
Seems that young deer thought he needed to tidy and clean and prune himself up, too, when he realized he was going to be in my video. 🙂 They are nice neighbors.