Pesky Black Widows Yet Again

Archive for the ‘Nature’ Category

Pesky Black Widows Yet Again

By Carol on Sunday, August 29th, 2010 | No Comments

I went outside yesterday to throw some stuff in my garbage can and noticed a sparkly spider web attached to it. All my mental alarms went off because I know that web when I see it. Another dang-blasted black widow wanted to take over the area.
If I hadn’t seen it, I easily could have grabbed [...]

What Do You Do With All The Shells?

By Carol on Sunday, August 1st, 2010 | No Comments

Every time I took the kids to the beach this year, we always came home with a bag of shells. Morgan wasn’t too picky about which ones she put in the bag – just about every one was ‘take home’ material.
Gavin and I had a ‘thing’ for beach rocks. We even played catch in the [...]

One Big Toad

By Carol on Friday, July 30th, 2010 | No Comments

This is one of those bufo toads that get so darn big. They also secrete some kind of nasty poison stuff that you wouldn’t want to lick.
I don’t intend to be licking ANY toads (or frogs either) but I did used to worry about these things being in my barn and my dogs trying to [...]

Weeki Wachee Mermaids Still Swimming

By Carol on Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 | No Comments

We went to Weeki Wachee on Gavin’s birthday. Yup, just what every 6 year old boy wants to do – have a mermaid birthday!
The promise of swimming in the springs that’s now called Buccaneer Bay made up for the show. He liked the turtles and fish that kept swimming around the mermaids the best. Probably [...]

M&Ms – Monarchs and Milkweed

By Carol on Sunday, June 27th, 2010 | No Comments

For some reason I always thought milkweed was like a weed and that you couldn’t kill it if you tried. Well, apparently I’m quite able to kill it in my butterfly garden. But not before I had a lot of monarch butterflies come visit and lay eggs.
I think I have too many birds in my [...]

One Tall Sunflower

By Carol on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 | No Comments

Gavin planted the seed for this sunflower in March after the nasty winter freezes were over. I give him flower seeds and he randomly plants them wherever he feels like it.
This one tall sunflower is in the small bed by my garage and is well over 5′ tall now. Gavin didn’t believe it was taller [...]

I’m Hungry Mother!

By Carol on Monday, June 21st, 2010 | 2 Comments

Between April and June every year, the birds that stay here year round raise their babies… and I go through about a TON of birdseed. They can really suck it down. The babies grow to adult size pretty fast but still demand to be fed – even when they’re sitting on the feeder!
I can always [...]

EPA and the Oil Spill

By Carol on Friday, June 18th, 2010 | No Comments

I had the chance to hear a director from the EPA’s Gulf of Mexico program speak on June 14, 2010. His name is Dr. Byron Griffith.
He was very happy to speak to the meeting I was at because it was a sea kayaker’s monthly meeting. Big relief for him to speak to us paddlers rather [...]

Black Widow Update

By Carol on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 | No Comments

I was right about that black widow laying more eggs! The day after I took the pictures there was an extra egg sac in the nest.
Then she got busy finishing up eating the roach and a fly. How creepy is this?

After having nightmares about a zillion babies invading my front porch, I sprayed the nest [...]

Black Widow On My Front Porch

By Carol on Friday, June 11th, 2010 | Comments Off

I used to find black widow nests on the fence posts out on the farm. They like tight little corners. I’m certainly not on the farm anymore but I still find these little creepies around my house.
Here’s one that’s currently living on my front porch up in the corner. (At least it’s living right at [...]

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Archive for the ‘Nature’ Category