Nature all around us

I'm sneaking a quick post in between getting ready for our somewhat-aborted camping trip. We were supposed to leave this morning, but there was a mix-up about campsites and Rocket Boy got the flu, so we're going tomorrow instead. Just one night away -- that's a lot of putting up and taking down of tents, but at least it will get us out of Boulder.

Which is not to say that we haven't been having plenty of outdoor experiences here in town. Our wild and untamed backyard has been providing lots of entertainment.

First, a few days ago, after it had rained and rained for a while, I looked out my office window and saw a tiny green thread down near the cellar door, waving in the breeze. I studied it, because tiny green threads do not usually wave in the breeze from my window, and after a while I decided it was not waving in the breeze, it was just waving. That is to say, purposefully.

This needed to be further investigated, so Kid A and I went outside in the wet and the muck. We located the waving tiny green threads and each picked one up. This is what they looked like.

The tiny wavy thread on the leaf (and mind you, this is a very small leaf) was actually alive. Left to its own devices, it lifted about half of its body up and waved. But when I picked it up, it tied itself up into a little knot (when I put it back on the leaf it lengthened again and resumed waving). When Rocket Boy came home I showed him the little wavers -- he said he'd never seen anything like them. So I went online, googling something like "weird tiny waving worms" and sure enough, I found them. They were grasshopper nematodes, according to the Colorado State extension website, and they were probably trying to mate and/or lay eggs that grasshoppers would then eat and become parasitized by. Ick ick ick. 

The next day, I was looking out the kitchen window when I saw something moving in the maple tree across the yard. "Hey! What's that! Ohmigod!"

One... no, two... no, at least three little raccoons were climbing the tree. We watched them go in and out of view, as they climbed up up up through leaves and over branches. It's a very tall tree, and eventually they were out of sight. I'm quite sure they were half-grown kits, not adults, or maybe just mama and two little ones. Oh joy, first we had crow babies and now we have raccoon babies in the yard.Later it began to rain heavily again, and Rocket Boy was worried about the raccoons in the tree, but I wasn't.

I realize that raccoons are everywhere in suburbia, but at the same time, I don't like worrying about running into one every time I step out into the yard during the day. Raccoons should be more discrete.

Below is a shot of the tree from afar -- not far enough, though, because you still can't see the top. Suffice it to say that it's very tall and very wide and very leafy -- lots of places for raccoons to hide.

 Oh, and here are the crow babies, from last week.

 

Crows sitting on the empty bird feeder, honestly. So silly.

Our garden is doing well, not that we can take much credit for that. We had several more rainy days this week (swim lessons and baseball were cancelled on both Monday and Wednesday), and the plants just grew and grew. Here are the rest of the radishes, a row of carrots, and some flowers:

Here is our little cornfield, terribly choked with weeds -- I need to get in there and pull them, but I haven't done it yet. I had just pulled a bunch of other weeds in the garden before I took these photos.

And here are the cucumber plants, which have two little cucumbers growing on them, plus lots of flowers. The tomato plant is doing pretty well too, though only a few little green tomatoes so far. We need some steady warm weather.

Readers who don't know me well may wonder why we aren't growing what everyone else in Colorado is growing, and the answer is -- well, why should we? We're growing radishes -- don't need two crops I have no interest in. I suppose the boos will want to grow that someday, and we'll have to discuss the matter then, but for now, no.

Our backyard is an awful mess of unpruned bushes and trees, and I don't know when we'll ever manage to do anything about that, but it is fun to look at all that green. I'm looking forward to being in the mountains this weekend, too. Hope it's a fun time.