A Sign of the Times

B brought my attention to this sign that was tacked to a tree outside a little country store. I am not quite sure whether or not it is a joke. It is that kind of place!

A Fieldtrip to the Tallahassee Museum of Natural History

I took my kindergartners on our last fieldtrip of the year on Monday. Our destination was the Tallahassee Museum of Natural History.  That is its official name, but it will always be the Junior Museum or the Junior MuZoo to many of us.

We enjoyed a program by a talented volunteer on alligators. 

After lunch and a quick 10 minutes on the cool playground, we went to explore the grounds where the animal habitats are. There is currently an exhibit of metal sculpture dinosaurs made from machine parts. Here are two, but they were all pretty amazing. 

We saw lots of animals, many of whom were in trees. Here is a fox.

A Florida panther was snoozing in his barrel bed. 

Not quite a bed of nails, but the bolts looked pretty uncomfortable to my unfurred back.

Then we got to the bobcats, our school mascot. It was the first time some of my little guys had seen live bobcats.

The otter put on a less-than-energetic water show.

There are the usual gray squirrels, but there is also a small population of white gray squirrels.

There were some wild turkeys.

And this great horned owl was checking  us out through the wire. Would it be insulted if I called it "chicken wire"?

And this last picture shows one of the bald eagles.

There are so many animals --many more than I tried to photograph-- and there is never enough time to see everything within the time constraints of a fieldtrip. We never even got to the farm. Or the caboose. Or some of the nature trails. One thing about going with a new class: it is always new and exciting to them.

There was lots of construction going on as they are putting up an extensive high ropes course that will run over most of the property--you know, zip lines, etc. It is nothing that kindergartners will be able to use, but it looks like a lot of fun for people who like to do that kind of thing. I think B's Boy Scouts will definitely need to check that out when it is done!

Stepping Lightly on a Nightly Walk

Besides our work, which is far from sedentary, B and I count on walking around our neighborhood to provide our exercise. One night last week, it had gotten dark before we were back home.  I had to do a little step-hop to keep from stepping on this smallish red rat snake that was right in my path--or was I in its path?  Either way, it surprised me. B was able to scoot it off the road and into the grass before we all continued on on our separate travels.

Raining Cats and....What?

We had had one of those hard rains we call Florida frog-stranglers when B looked out and saw we had a commotion going on in the little pond by our front door. Upon closer investigation, he found a box turtle trying to escape, but the slippery vinyl sides were not giving it any purchase to pull itself out.

B used a good-sized net to scoop it out of the water.

Then he carried it across the street to the wetland that will make a better home for it. 

It hissed a "thank you," and closed its door, like box turtles do. 

Mailbox Monday: A Charming Barn

Uber Moon and Other Lunacy

We had read about the moon event for Saturday night when the moon was to be the closest to the Earth --and full-- and reportedly would be the visibly largest of the year. Our home is surrounded by trees that limit our sky view and we have no horizon view. So we selected a road by a large open field where we waited for the moon to rise. We sat with the windows up to  keep the contained air conditioning in; even though the engine was off and the unit no longer produced cool air, we were comfortable. 

As soon as the moon came into view, I put down the window to start taking pictures, while resting the camera on the door. Once we got out of the car, we were immediately and viciously attacked by a variety of biting insects, especially no-see-ems, also known as sand gnats. They were just awful!

But we were there for a mission.

 I had to try out the zoom on the new camera. (None of these have been cropped or edited in any way.)

We stayed out taking pictures until we could not really stand it anymore. 

Unfortunately, in my haste and excitement, I had left my window down the whole time! The car was FULL of biting gnats! B had every right to be aggravated with me, but in his typical calm, said nothing. We cranked up the AC and put down all the windows as we went down the highway home, but we continued to be attacked. They especially love to get in my hair, but my arms looked like I had measles when I got into bed later.

So this morning it was Sunday and we got in the car and by, golly, it was still full of no-see-ems. We swatted and slapped all the way to church. We put down the windows and turned the defroster on cold as they seemed to have congregated in the crevices around the windshield. (So much for the groomed hair!) Somewhere along the way I told B: "You might be a redneck if your rearview mirror has a  sticky flycatcher coil hanging from it, covered in no-see-ems!" As we pulled into the church parking lot, B spotted the bloodmobile and remarked that we should leave the windows down and maybe the bugs would be attracted to it. Well, we did not leave the windows down, but we  only found one or two bugs still there after church. Thank goodness!

Mama's Gift

I have just celebrated a birthday this week and I decided to finally receive a gift from my mother. She had made it clearly known that she wanted me to have her wedding rings and my sister to have her diamond earrings when she died.  Mama died at Christmas in 2010 and I took possession of the rings last July, but I  was unable to even put them on without such grief that I put them away until the rawness receded with time. Christmas was a rough time for reasons in addition to it being the first year without her. And so as spring approached, I began to think of letting it be a birthday present. 

On the morning of my birthday, I had breakfast, showered, dressed and dug out the little box where the rings had been waiting for me to heal enough to be able to enjoy them.  I put them on. They fit  perfectly. 

The wide band is my own wedding band that has been in place for thirty-five and a half years and the slim band was on her hand for sixty-three and a half. The diamond ring was a replacement for the one that broke and the diamond was lost, much to her great sadness. But she wore this one for twenty years or more.

Thank you, Mama, for this beautiful and priceless gift! And for many others, both tangible and intangible,  too numerous to list here.