Nature

[Kitsa]

when to plant what all depends on where you are. I start pea seedlings indoors in late April, and I transplant them outside as soon as they outgrow the seed starter. I string bird netting between two stakes and let them climb it.

Everything else, here, goes in around Mother's Day because that's when the big risk of frost is over. Everything I have growing now went in the ground the weekend before Mother's Day and everything's growing like crazy. I just harvested 6 yellow squash and zucchini the size of those souvenir baseball bats.
I have hundreds of tomatoes that aren't ripe yet. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with all of them because they're not all sauce tomatoes.

My mom grows a lemon tree in a small pot in a hot, humid room and she gets 2 or 3 full size lemons off it every year.

My great-grandmother used to mix something she called "panther piss" up and dump it on her plants, and her backyard was like this amazing jungle where everything was supersized. I wish I'd asked her how to make it while she was alive. I know they used to call whiskey "panther piss" and that you can buy real panther pee to keep deer away, but I think this was something my great-grandmother invented in her kitchen.

[Aaarg]

[Kitsa]

eeeeeee. So cute.

I wonder whose hair that is?

[Aaarg]

yeah they're adorable. there's always one sticking out of the middle like that. i like to assume it's always the same little guy. he's my buddy.

also i thought it was thicker than hair, some type of plant fiber or something. it totally does look like hair, though, and my girlfriend does have long black hair.

[Kitsa]

At least you know now that they're almost certainly barn swallows.

[Aaarg]

the birds are out n about now

i guess they prefer to perch on the rack on top of my jeep

as evidenced by the mass amount of birdshit

[Kitsa]

I saw a society finch today whose head was plucked completely bald. It was definitely a weird look...little black pinhead on a big ball of feathers. Poor thing

[Zhukov]

Bumping. Highland lakes. The water is perfectly clear, although it looks brown since that's what the bottom is coloured.










I spent a lot of time just sitting on that tree.

[Zhukov]

I almost trod on either a tiger snake or copperhead around here. My first thought was to get a picture of it, but as I raised the camera I thought that that was a dumb thing to do and I proceeded to take several loud steps backwards instead. I wish I had gotten a photo though.

[Aaarg]

that's a pretty awesome tree. EDIT: all that stuff is awesome actually.

it's gotten cold outside and i never want to leave the house again as a result.

[Zhukov]

It was pretty freezing up there, otherwise there would probably be pictures of me/companion swimming. It's summer everywhere else, but there's still snow up that particular mountain.

[Aaarg]

yeah, it looks pretty cold.

[Amber Kush]

Something I caould walk naked through.

[Aaarg]

HUBBA HUBBA

[Kitsa]

These are from Jekyll Island, Georgia. It was a privately-held island until 1948, I think, and then it was sold by southern bigwigs to the state as a tax writeoff. Because it's not very touristy, it hasn't been ruined yet.

Sunrise over the Atlantic:










Some colorful dunes flowers...I believe some might be datura relatives...



Mermaid Purse (skate egg) and whelk- the beach was full of whelks.


Fresh loggerhead sea turtle tracks...the island is a protected loggerhead nesting area.


A nest found by the "turtle patrol", people from the Georgia Sea Turtle Center who prowl the beach all night with red floodlights to mark the nests.

[Kitsa]

I did a lot of beachcombing and found some really cool stuff.

Mystery skull. Duck? Pelican?


Off-roading at low tide:


The place was full of horseshoe crabs, more than I've ever seen on a beach. They ranged from tiny to a foot across. A lot of times a wave flipped them over and I had to turn them back or a gull would get them.











Whelk eggs:

[Kitsa]

I swear the first thing I thought of whenever I saw a jellyfish washed up was chojin doing the u jelly thing, and I was like dammit chojin, out on some remote beach in Georgia's Barrier Islands.



Salt marsh grasses and cluster oyster beds.






Another skate egg.


Sea whip.


Sargasso.


Sand dollar. I collected about 50...about 30 made it home in one piece.


Lots of hermit crabs doing their hermit crab thing.


Sea urchin.


dessicated sea cucumber


mystery bone.


Yet another horseshoe crab:


A little blurry, but this giant ancient (it was thick and old, most are thin) pen shell is about as big as a football. It was my prize beachcombing find. I've got it soaking now to get the sand crust off, then I'm going to find a display case for it.

[Aaarg]

awesome pictures

[Zhukov]

Who knew dead things on the beach could be so interesting?

Also... can't tell if that is a toy car off-roading at low tide, or not... it's weirding me out with my perception of things.

[Kitsa]

Yeah, it's a toy car that washed up on the beach. I sort of liked the illusion.

[Kitsa]

I have a bad nature story.

I'm allergic to honeybees, right

I had to take a picture of an outdoor sculpture for something. Got a ride there, sculpture's out in the middle of a field. I am totally not thinking, have jeans and sandals on, leave my purse (with epi-pen) in the car and just go out with the camera, la la la la la.

I get out about 30 feet before I notice movement out of the corner of my eye. I look down and realize that I am standing in a field of clover, and on that clover are more honeybees than I've ever seen in my life. There is honestly a bee on every single fucking flower. So I freeze in my tracks, thinking "oh shit".

It takes me a full half hour to retreat 30 feet through a series of dumbassed tai-chi-looking moves. I had to balance on one foot and wait for the next place I could step down. It was sheer dumb luck that I didn't get stung on the way in, but I thought for sure I would get stung on the way out. I was trying not to hyperventilate because the CO2 would've riled the bees, and I knew if something happened to me I'd fall over onto a carpet of bees.

I finally got back to the parking lot, but I was in the middle of a full-on panic attack at that point. All I could see was bees. I got my picture, but for the next 50 miles or so I was paranoid that bees had flown up my pantleg and just hadn't stung me yet.

Had nightmares about it that night. I fucking hate bees and I fucking hate not being able to breathe and I fucking hate having to use that epi pen.

[Fathom Zero]

glad you didn't die

But I got mad stung when I was a kid living in Germany. I had to go home from school and get taken to the doctor because of it, even though I'm not allergic to anything. It was really bad - whole face bad.

[Aaarg]

this is where i am for 2 weeks

great

[Aaarg]

i feel weird posting a picture that i didn't take without giving credit, but to be fair the camera owner didn't take it either since it was on a motion sensor so whatever.

the point is... FUCKING CUTE

(also pretty big so spoiler tag)

Spoilers!

[Zhukov]

That looks like a dingo.

Not really.

Also, your first picture is AWESOME. Can you go swimming in there?