This Week and Last

A few pictures to share though for Tom's Willy Nilly Friday Five and for Eileen's Saturday's Critters:

1. A sad week of remembrance for the tragedy seventeen years ago, Sept 11th:

2. Our grandson working hard the week prior (and before he started school again for the year) re-staining our deck!  He did a great job!  So grateful to have him so willing to help.  He's a great young man.

3.  A couple of recent shots of our cat:

4.  Raiders in my compost heap early one morning!

With the sun behind them this isn't a good shot, but shows the moment I approached them and they aren't aware of me yet.

They take off, looking back to see if I'm still watching.

A closer shot of Mom and both fawns.

Mom looks back at me.

5.  I believe this is a mayfly:

Pausing....

It's been between 90 and 95 degrees here for the last two and a half weeks!  I will be so glad to leave this heat!  Of course, it's out of the frying pan and into the fire...or the ice, so to speak.  We will be arriving in Oregon in WINTER! :-)

I will be taking another break...this one pretty substantial.  The packing is at a serious phase now.  I will check every couple of days for a post by my Mom, and may make a comment or two on someone else's blog post or previous comment as well, but that will be it for about the next three weeks.  I won't be posting anything.  Hope you all don't forget me! :-)

I leave you with three shots of the Texas sage in my Tucson yard.  Soon to be a memory....

 

Critters That Didn't Stay :(

Nearly two months ago I was very excited to find THREE Giant Swallowtail Butterfly Caterpillars on my tiny little lemon tree.  Well, worried they were going to eat all the leaves and stress out my cute little tree, but happy that I knew what they were and that they might make their chrysalis soon and become Giant Swallowtails!  I was hoping for the experience of seeing their transformation.  I decided if they started consuming too many of the leaves I would transfer them to someone else's orange tree.  I really don't want to lose that little lemon.  But, on the other hand....nature was at work!

 

 

 

Alas, one day after about a month I noticed they were gone.  I don't know for sure, but I can only assume they must've been eaten by birds.  I was disappointed I wouldn't get to see them become butterflies.  Here is a really great video I found on the internet about the Giant Swallowtail.  Maybe next year!

 

Joining in with Eileen's Saturday's Critters.  Thanks Eileen!

 

 



Best Friends & Moms, Critter Style

Eileen at Viewing Nature with Eileen has a wonderful Saturday's Critters meme with lots of great critter shares.  Check it out.  I don't always have a critter to share, but today I have to show you the funniest (cutest) moment in my front yard from over a week ago....

"Let me tell you 'bout my BEST friend..."

And, at my daughter's house, a sitting patient Mom....

Timmy Lizard's Down the Well!

For Saturday's Critters (join in with Eileen to see critters of all kinds!) I have a few more lizard shots to share, but I have to start with the funny one.  I put this orange bucket out under the eaves to catch rainwater until we get our system set up, and look what I found inside!

He had his photo shoot, and then I let him go.  There have been a lot of these tiny ones around, because the lizard eggs hatch in later May throughout June.

[update: this story actually had a sad ending...after my company left I checked the bucket which I had not done in four days, and discovered a dead spiny lizard inside, a full grown one.  I feel awful!]

Here was a surprise near my back fence, a full-grown spiny!  SOOO colorful!

And finally another one...I see these spiny lizards all the time, and they are terrified of people.  They dash off if they see the slightest movement...survival. They are about eight inches long. [I am so sad about the loss of the one in the bucket!]

Orange You Happy It's Friday Again!

Now for the color orange!  Joining in with Tanya's Willy Nilly Friday Five (thanks Tanya for hosting this awesome meme!) and Amy's Five on Friday (thanks Amy who hosts this meme from her blog.....)
Uh oh...I just learned that Willy Nilly won't be on in July...Tanya is taking a break.  So please check it out on Amy's Five on Friday!  If you keep scrolling, you will also find my contributions to Skywatch Friday and I Heart Macro.  I haven't been on Skywatch for quite a while, and I Heart will be a new one for me....Thanks to the hosts of both these memes as well!  And of course, Today's Flowers!

1.  Lots of orange things in Tucson!  First of all, oranges!

I'm re-posting this photo because, amazingly I can't find any other photos in my archives of orange trees, and there are orange trees EVERYWHERE here! :-)  I guess I am so used to seeing them, I don't think about photographing them...gonna have to remedy that!

2.  An orange slice on Orange Grove Road....and a bus stop orange too!

3.  Orange dragonflies...

4.  Orange skies....

5. Orange flowers (and pumpkins)....

I grew ONE enormous pumpkin the summer of 2012!  It was great come Halloween! :-)

And I have to go for one more this time, making 6, because there is so much orange in Tucson!....Orange odds & ends of.......quilts

and all the wonderful architecture from the terra cotta stucco....

 to the terra cotta pottery....

Orange you glad you visited my Tucson post today!

Another Drive North of Tucson

For Wild Bird Wednesday, Bird d'Pot,  and Saturday's Critters I am sharing today some photos taken on a drive about two weeks ago:

This is the way the sky looked as we drove out of our neighborhood.

Not far from Twin Peaks there were entire fields set up for future development, but which looked like the projects had been abandoned.  In one of the fields we saw a roadrunner hunting for his dinner.

He dashed off before I could take another shot.  In retrospect the sunlight glinting on the grasses made an interesting photo.

This fellow was on the pavement...a first for me, a Horned Lark.

Fluffing up his feathers.

A Spiny Lizard

Another cute rabbit