Gourds

I'm thinking of making a birdhouse out of a gourd for this upcoming cold season.

"Gourds continued to be used throughout history in almost every culture throughout the world. European contact in North America found extensive gourd use, including the use of bottle gourds as birdhouses to attract purple martins, which provided bug control for agriculture. Almost every culture had musical instruments made of gourds, including drums, stringed instruments common to Africa and wind instruments, including the nose flutes [GROSS!!!] of the Pacific." -- Wikipedia

Mackerel Sky

 

One for Skywatch Friday (above)

And one of what I guess I would call pond watch. :-)

Trail Nuts

Virginia Capital Trail

Soybeans

Over on Governor's Land, farmers have once again planted soybeans.

One of these days, maybe I will be lucky enough to find out how these soybeans will be used. 

Mushrooms!

 

 

It has not been too long since I last hiked at Greensprings . . .

 

 

so I was quite surprised

 

 

 

to discover such a trove of mushrooms that had popped up since.

 

Squirrels

 

 

Don't think this little piece of wisdom applies as much to dogs as perhaps it does to humans. :-)

Question Mark?

You'll just have to take my word for it about the question mark. Unfortunately, this particular butterfly wasn't interested in showing off his/her (?) underside. 

"Polygonia interrogationis, commonly called the question mark butterfly, is a North American nymphalid butterfly. It lives in wooded areas, city parks, generally in areas with a combination of trees and open space. The color and textured appearance of the underside of its wings combine to provide camouflage that resembles a dead leaf. The adult butterfly has a wingspan of 4.5–7.6 cm (1.8–3.0 in). Its flight period is from May to September. 'The silver mark on the underside of the hindwing is broken into two parts, a curved line and a dot, creating a ?-shaped mark that gives the species its common name.'" -- Wikipedia