For over a month now, there’s been a lonely voice calling out to us in the early evening. Sometimes a week will go by and I’ll think it has left, but then I’ll hear it again as I step out for firewood: “Who’s awake? Me … Too …” Yes, I’m awake, and I’m talking about a Great Horned Owl.

When I first heard the sound, it triggered a memory from a camping trip as a kid. One night at an Indiana state park, we joined up with a dozen people tromping around in the woods on a Ranger-led owl calling hike. Assorted poorly rendered owl calls broke the silence–futile attempts to lure in one of the puzzled birds. I don’t think we heard any actual owls on that occasion, but the call mnemonic is permanently engraved in my synapses.

Great Horned Owls range across all of the Americas, from the beech-maple forests of my midwest childhood, to the towering stands of conifers outside our window, and from Alaska to the Straits of Magellan. There’s probably one sitting in a tree near you right now.

The weather here has been a bit wild. First it’s warm and sunny and then it turns cold. Add onto that we have had a lot of rain. Two days this week we have seen almost an inch a day. I think Fall can’t decide what it wants to do. Something about the weather this year has made a huge crop of mushrooms sprout up all over the property.

In the first picture the mushrooms are huge. They are a little smaller than a dinner plate. Then in the second picture a puff ball looking mushroom grew up next to the dinner sized plate ones.

The first picture here reminds me of the coloring in some snails. The second picture I thought was neat. One big parent mushroom and little baby mushrooms gathered all around.

When I look at this first picture I see a floating sting ray. Lee said he thought it looked like a jelly fish. The next picture looks like a sea shell to me. Like a Sand Dollar.

There were quite a few of these little yellow headed ones. My camera decided that it was going to pretend that it couldn’t take the color yellow. The second picture reminds me of a snail shell again.

I loved this little mushroom. It reminded me of summer and blowing dandelion seeds.

Of course I had Jack and Jasper following me around while I was trying to take pictures. Jack is getting much bigger. Her eye we think is also getting a little better. I feed her some Lysine mixed in with soft food. Lysine is supposed to help herpes infections and is what we used with Jasper and his herpes eyes.

Our holly tree is in full berry bloom. I like how many birds it attracts but I hate all the spiny leaves that it sheds. Too bad I couldn’t use it’s berries for something useful. I could make a berry jam that would cause extreme diarrhea but I suppose but that doesn’t sound fun. With the weather being so wet we haven’t got a good fall color in the leaves this fall. The rain and wind knocked them off early along with stunting the glorious color. Last year the leaves on the ground were awesome color. This year not so much…

We have this tree that Lee and I had been scratching our heads over. Actually we didn’t know that the tree was alive. I had been telling Lee that I needed to clear out this dead brush by our house. Then all of a sudden the dead brush leafed out. I looked at it and told Lee to come over quick and look at the leaves. To me they looked like marijuana leaves but not quite right. So we would go around joking about our unknown marijuana tree after that.

Lee tells me to look at the tree again one day. It had bloomed out in flowers. Here is what a close up of one looks like.

A few nights ago Lee was reading one of his blogs he keeps track of. There was mention of this tree that has leaves somewhat reminiscent of marijuana. That is the story of how we found out we had a Chaste tree. We are actually quite excited about having one on our property as the tree has a lot of herbal medicinal uses. For example, it can be used as a relief for symptoms of PMS or menopause.

The tree is rather tall. Here is our view from from the second story window of our house.

We have a lot of fungi that pops up here and there. I think I need to get a book so I can start identifying whether I have psychedelic mushrooms, drop you dead mushrooms, or just plain delicious mushrooms.

Lee said he heard something thumping on the window that sounded like a small bird. When he checked outside with a flashlight there was this enormous bug on the window sill trying to get in. It had wings also, but they are closed up in this picture. I wonder what it was.

When we bought this house my parents walked around and my dad said “Oh you have some sneeze weed.” My dad also referred to it as Arrowwood. The bush has been blooming for a really long time. Well I finally got around to taking some pictures of it. I wanted to make sure it was really called Arrowwood before I posted. All the pictures I found online weren’t quite right as the blooms were wrong. Finally I found someone who had a picture of it. They referred to it being called Arrowwood sometimes but gave a Latin name. After looking up the Latin name I was then bombarded with the bush that I was looking for. It seems as if this bush is more commonly known as Cream Bush or Ocean Spray.

I think it’s really pretty and am impressed with how long it has been blooming. It almost reminds me of a bridal tree in that I could see someone getting married under it. I haven’t noticed being affected by the pollen so maybe Lee and I won’t have to call it “sneeze weed” like my dad.

Lee got around to mowing down our fields with his tractor today. If we didn’t have rampant brambles trying to take over we probably would have just let it be. Before he went and mowed down the field he took some shots of the different flowers growing in it.

Sweet Pea

Queen Anne’s Lace or wild carrot

Wild daisys

Hawksbeard (the false dandelion)

Not sure what this flower is.

Not a flower but this lovely little bush is poison oak.

A few posts back I mentioned that Hazel nut trees don’t burn well unless they have some time to dry out. Lee took out a small Hazel nut tree about three days ago. Every day since that there is a wet spot all around the stump where the tree is still bringing up water. It’s a little less pronounced today but still there.

We have these trees around our property that we don’t know what are. They have small thorns on them and leaves that remind us of Mountain Ash leaves. Here is a picture of one of them flowering out. It’s rather pretty and fragrant.

Thing is the one that is in the picture is slightly different from the ones in a different area around our land. The one pictured has a straighter trunk while the ones not pictured have a twisted Africa look to them. But they both have the same leaf look, flowers, and thorns. Any guesses on what it might be?