Ahhhh.... the passion

Passion flower vines have been growing in our field for some time, I guess. They weren’t here when we first moved in, so I am not sure when they first took hold and began to spread. But at any rate, they’re here now. We didn’t realize they were growing until we took a stroll the other day down the clear-cut area under the power line that runs across the field. Now that summer is at an end, this is about the last flower left and it is fading fast. Even so it is still quite beautiful. Little green pods of passion fruit dangle down from the vine. My cousin in Hawaii does things with passion fruit, makes jelly I think. I can’t imagine how one would go about doing jelly from the little fruit these produce. They are mostly just seeds with a little juice filled jelly. At any rate, the flowers are lovely. And we especially liked the spider. Guess it hangs out there ready to nab unwary insects that come to sample the flower’s nectar.

Thieves in the night...

In some ways I feel like we’ve been dropped into Wild Kingdom this summer. The bucket of birdseed that I had sitting near the back door became infested with “miller moths” – not sure what their correct name is but they leave their worms behind in just about every grain product we have in our house. So R said we had to put the seed bucket outside, with a brick on top. Before too long a mother raccoon with 4 (or maybe 5) babies arrived, proceeded without much trouble, to tip over the bucket and chow down. The seed had bits of peanut in it, which is what I assume was attracting them. R caught them in the act several times – fairly early in the evening too – and he says they were actually eating the seed. The seed is gone now, but I can tell when they have been here because they tip over the water that I put out for the birds. It would be very tempting to put out food for them – they are extremely cute when they are little – but I think that would be very big mistake.

The Bat is Back!

Because the slope of the land on which our house is built, the “first floor” of the east side is at the equivalent height of the second story. So my view from the kitchen window is mid-tree level, which is sort of cool sometimes. About half the house sits on top of a walk-in basement and fruit cellar, and R’s office, which is also on the east side and has a door into the dining area, is on top of the garage. We thus have to hike up quite a few steps to come in the house that way, and the stairwell is open to the roof. That wide-open garage door is inviting to certain critters – mostly birds, which have built nests -- and then there’s this little fellow (or gal). This little bat shows up every once in a while, spends a couple of days clinging to the drywall at the top of the stairwell, and then vanishes again until the next time. And then there is a funny story (well, fortunately, I think it is a funny story) to go with this. This last time the bat returned, which was several weeks ago (I’m running behind), I asked R to take a picture of it, which is what is posted here. I finally got around to asking him to transfer the picture to my "hold file" on the network. So he said sure and a few minutes later he called from the other room "the picture is in your hold file under 'old bat’.” Well, there was a picture there all right, but it was a picture of ME (the old bat!).