First time visit by a fox

I looked out my back window this morning and spotted this fox in the back yard. I'm not happy about this because we have a bunny rabbit that we keep outside during the day. It acknowledged the feral cat that hangs out but then walked around to the front yard and headed down the street.

Just look up

Sometimes you just need to look up

Hey Lady!

Collision with this cicada



This cicada ran into me two evenings ago. Seems I fared better than it did.



17 year cicadas emerge

Young Praying Mantis

I do not like spiders

Hornet

I've never seen one of these so had to do a Google search. As far as I can tell, this is some type of hornet. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Are ladybugs good luck?

Spent the weekend clearing my flowers beds. Spotted lots of ladybugs in the process.

Bread snatcher

I threw some old hot dog buns out in the middle of the back yard last Saturday. Later on, I watched this rat run to grab it and then run back to it's hole in the fence. It struggled to get it through the fence but finally made it after a few tries.

One of six

Temps were close to 60 at lunchtime today so my office mate and I went for a walk. Halfway through the walk we spotted six deer across the stream. This always makes my day. Unfortunately they wouldn't get close enough together so I could take a picture of all of them.

Three deer

With temps in the mid-60s today, my officemate and I couldn't resist taking a walk at lunchtime. We didn't have to go far before we saw these three deer.

Warm weather

It's the end of January and it was 60 degrees when I woke up at 4:30 this morning. If this warm weather keeps up, we'll have spring flowers blooming soon.

First snow of 2012

What a glorious sunrise today

Never-ending beauty

My Nandina continues to provide never-ending beauty

Venus and the crescent Moon

Have you been watching the sky the last two evenings? Venus and the crescent Moon have been putting on a show. If you looked out by 8 PM you would have missed them as they fell below the horizon. My photos don't show how beautiful is really was but I'm posting them anyway. This first photo was taken December 26. You can see Venus to the left of the Moon.

This photo was taken on December 27. You can see that Venus has moved below the Moon.

Views from the State Arboretum of Virginia

We drove through the State Arboretum of Virginia at dusk yesterday on our way home from Winchester. We'd seen a herd of deer as we neared the entrance so thought we'd see what we would find.

All soaked

Sparrow on dogwood