Nuthatch Hill Spa

Join us for a relaxing freshly mown grass wrap and a cool bath. It's free of charge as long as you eat your weight in grasshoppers.

Apple harvest

We harvested all the apples from our 2 small trees.

One variety is a nice rosy red.

This variety looks like a golden delicious.

Here is the chief apple picker.

The haul. Enough to make 10 jars of apple butter and still have half left for general eating. Not too bad for such small trees.

Short Visit

Father and son at a local pub after a morning of fishing. Jeff is on a plane home. It was too short of a visit, but wonderful to see him.

Visit from Jeff

Father, son and Cali on a hike up the hill this morning.

Jeff and Hubby are off to a Griz game this afternoon.

I'm home making huckleberry ice cream.

Cali's home taking a nap.

More of YNP

Everything seems to be oversized in Yellowstone. The ravens are the largest I've ever seen, the coyotes are so big they look like wolves, and these mushrooms are obviously on steroids.

What is with this tomato?

Um, these horny projections are just too funny. It's taking forever for this tomato to ripen and of course the little nub is the first to show any color.

more of YNP

A chipmunk eating grass seed heads. This pic was taken along one of the geyser boardwalks.

small critter in Yellowstone

We were able to hike the Mary Mountain Trail this week in YNP. It's closed most of the spring and early summer for the grizzly bears, but it's open in late summer. The trail follows the Nez Perce Creek and is just gorgeous. We only encountered one other couple on the trail and it was quite busy everywhere else in the Park.

This is a Blotched Tiger Salamander. It's a new sighting for us, but supposedly common in the Park. It was very hot and the salamander was crossing a large field headed for water or shade or both. He tucked himself in the shade from my boot.

You can just see it's little head poking out from under my boot.

I knew it wasn't chipmunk poop

Some critter kept leaving little droppings by the upstairs door. I would clean them up every morning and the next day there would be more. Hubby said it was from a chipmunk which I doubted until one morning I saw one up on the deck while I was reading the morning paper. It still didn't make sense to me because there's nothing on the deck for a chipmunk to eat. Yesterday I saw little droppings on the patio right by the spa. Aha! I looked up under the deck and saw these darlings. This is a terrible pic, but I didn't want to have the flash go off and scare them away. They could fly on my head and then I would really flip my lid! After careful searching I found four little brown bats. So small, only about 2-3 inches. They are really wedged in between these boards. We read in one of our animal guides that bats have a night roost and a day roost. Obviously, the night roost is by the upstairs door and this is their day roost.

Garden chores

This pic illustrates the importance of thinning.

Study in purple

'Islander' bell peppers and kohlrabi. The peppers, stuffed with risotto leftover from "Meatless Monday", were last night's dinner. The kohlrabi's destiny is unknown at this point.

(Hey J- Do you remember the purple shoes I wore when we were in college together? I think this is the same shade. What crazy fashion sense I had.)

Double rainbow

Right over Sienna's final resting place.

What a difference a week makes

I went searching for the 2 babies and ended up flushing the whole family from their nest. One chick flew with mom into the weeds and one flew up into the trees. The mom nighthawk has been teaching her chicks how to hunt and I suspect this is the last photo I will get. I'm thinking they will be gone in a week now that they can fly. I will be sorry to see them go. However, I won't miss the pre-dawn screeching from the mom as she hunts over the garden.

Such a shame

The bluebirds attempted a second brood, but unfortunately the eggs weren't fertilized. After 3 weeks of futile incubation and another 2 weeks after the parents left the box, I cleaned it out and found these gorgeous eggs. It's so sad that they missed this opportunity. We can always use bluebirds to eat all the grasshoppers and leaf-footed conifer bugs that have and will inundate us.

So pretty nestled in their little grassy bed.