A Second Look--Feb. 1, 2012

For variety, I did a Second Look in our garage this week. Some of the things you'll see were left by animals that visited the garage and some of the things are from our nature shelf.  Our nature shelf holds items that we find in the yard that we think are interesting.

A couple of notes: (1) The items from the shelf were photographed on our recycling bin if you want something for scale. (2) The bird nests we found were on the ground with no eggs in them. We think they were probably blown out of a tree during a storm. Songbirds are protected by law and this includes their nests. Rest assured that no song birds were harmed in the preparation of this post.

Here's what I found this week.

Fungus dug out of the ground

Bird nests-Cardinal?

Hickory nut that something has eaten

Deer jaw bone

House sparrow nest in cubby where light bulbs are stored

Yellow jacket nests. These were found in the ground with the 3 layers on top of each other. And yes, I did get stung.

Snake skin. We found this in front of Ward's work bench. We think it belonged to the black snake we had been seeing in the yard.

Ponderings from Theodore-the Early Years

Theodore has always been a thinker--meaning long after I have moved on from a subject, he is still pondering it. Occasionally, we are going to visit some of his questions and observations from his earlier years. 

    
    Mama, can God count to infinity?

Puzzles

Ward loves to work puzzles. When the weather turns cold, the puzzles come out--several a week if other responsibilities don't interfere.The reason he likes to work them so much is that he's good at them. The rest of the family can put a few pieces in after studying a puzzle for a while, but Ward can put pieces in almost as fast as he can pick them up.

And the cats can take them out almost as fast as he can put them in. You see, the cats love puzzles too. Puzzles provide lots of "toys" for them to play with. The cats bat loose pieces off the table. They pick them up with their mouths and carry them to the floor. They take their paws and remove pieces that have already been put in. And the list goes on with many possibilities. So much fun for our feline friends.

And so frustrating for Ward. Fortunately, he's good at reworking puzzles too.

One of our feline friends (Leo) at work.

Food Waste Friday--January 27, 2012

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money. 

Here it goes for this week.

We didn't have any current waste* this week. However, it's been about six months since I have carefully investigated the condiments on my refrigerator door. Here's are some of things I found when I gave it a look.

Two jars of strawberry preserves. I combined these into the smaller jar.

Six jars of hot sauce. My son seems to think that we need another one every time we go to the store. I'm going to remind him to look in the refrigerator before we buy any more.

2/3 of a jar of tahini. We got this to make hummus. However, there's a lot more here than we need for our hummus making. Does anyone have any good suggestions for using tahini other than hummus?
I would like to use it up before it goes bad.

This mayonnaise was just too old, so it went down the drain. I can never seem to use up a jar even when I buy the small ones.










*Current waste--I use current waste to mean no leftovers or produce or food that we fixed went bad this week.

A Second Look--January 25, 2012

This week, we had weather that made the outside pretty to see but miserable to visit. Therefore, I stayed mostly inside and watched the world through our windows. One of the things I discovered while doing this is that the tufted titmouse can raise and lower its tuft just like a cardinal can. I saw both a tufted titmouse and a male cardinal with smooth heads at our feeder this week.

Recently, I have been enjoying a Second Look (even from the inside) because I am learning such interesting things about birds. Without the Second Look, I'm not sure I would have spent long enough watching the feeder to notice the subtle differences I am seeing.

Here's What I Saw This Week

Snow and ice in the upper backyard.

Chickadees

Pieris japonica

Squirrel enjoying a treat on icy ground

Something opened the door and ate the entire suet cake. See above picture for prime suspect.

Female and male cardinals. Notice the male cardinal's crest is down.

Tufted titmouse--one smooth and one tufted. It can raise and lower its tuft like a cardinal.

This week's pictures were taken through my windows because it was too cold for me outside. Also, I didn't want to slip on the ice. Gotta protect my new camera, you know.