Whether it's a winter walk or a warm-weather walk, or maybe a one-time hike, I'd like to hear about or see interesting sights you want to share with us from along the beaten path or from your nature hike........
Here are a few ibis we encountered this morning on our walk in the misty drizzle.......
Is that your house, Louise?!!
Definitely NOT, Victor! LOL Ours is a modest house. This house is on our route every morning as we turn inland from along the River. My family home was at the other end of the street from this house, and I have known the family that lives in this house all my life. This neighborhood has a broad range of housing stock from mega-million mansions to much more modest homes like ours. Simple as it is, we do not need more house than we have and find it just perfect for the two of us.
sigh--this is what I saw on my walk this morning to get the mail....
3G - That may not be a welcome sight to a NE gardener right now, but it looks pretty to me! Love that first snowfall!!
Snow - ugh. I never welcome the first snowfall or the last, in between maybe.
I took the dog for a walk taking house pics today.
It did brighten things up, but there's a good base of ice which now can't be seen (as i rub my ankle)
Is this your house Louise?
Why do all these great houses have such crappy landscapes??!
Way off, Al!! But I'll take that porch!! I LOVE wrap-around porches! Our house has a small front porch with a nice view of the river, and that is something I'd expand if I could.
The one on the first house is pretty good - that is the back of the house. The landscaping on the Chatueaesque one is not to scale of the house for sure.
Not sure I have any with much plant interest for you, I have done work at this house and it was funny because I could walk under the 10' yews.
Very interesting roof on that last one, Al! That must be some neighborhood you walk your dog in!
Victor - isn't it amazing.....the bigger the house, the more mundane the landscaping, it seems! I don't get that. Many of the McMansions here have very trite, repetitive (boring) landscaping. They look a lot like the entrance to a gated community....rows and rows of all the same plants. Or - just the perfunctory green shrubs around the foundation.
We haven't done much yet to the plantings in the front of our house. They are the original ones from 1952 when the house was built. I lived in a house up the street when I was a small kid, while my Dad was building our house a couple streets away. We had the very same ixoras at our house. They were the standard shrub. We have both the orange and yellow flowers on the ixora.
We are growing some cuttings of gumbo limbo trees to put along the sidewalk in front of our house. Their bark is very interesting and the limb configuration is very interesting too. We also want to do some other plantings in the front. We lost a coconut palm and two Royal palms in hurricane Charlie, so that opened the door a bit.
This is a gumbo limbo tree down by the river. (The one with the interesting "branching" trunk........)
ooops, wrong photo......here's the gumbo limbo tree....
Shouldn't it be Gumby Limbo?? He should win every time.
Gumby Limbo!! LOL
Every morning I am met by 19-year-old Hilary the Cat, whom I call "MyFriend" instead of her real name. She comes out of her hiding place when she sees me coming. Lovely cat!
i would have never recognized those birds as ibises!
one of the things i was most obsessed with in Australia were the "sacred" ibis everywhere. it was totally like falling into wonderland to me. Honestly, if you'd have asked me before i went there if they were extinct, i'da given it about a 50/50 chance. Here are these birds that look like they stepped out of a temple in Egypt, or Cleopatra's barge wandering around the harbourfronts and parks in Sydney... Very surreal. But they are considered pests there - like seagulls or pigeons. Here is one demonstrating why in an outdoor mall in Brisbane:
but i think they're pretty magical:
(in a sydney park)
Wow, Amy - amazing how different the white ibis we have here is compared with those you are showing from Australia! The head on the big ones you are showing looks like a turkey vulture. I have seen a scarlet ibis at Ding Darling Wildlife Preserve on Sanibel Island, but the white ibis is very common here. They walk around our neighborhood in large groups. They have red heads and red legs and an all-white body. They are also much smaller than those you are showing. Thanks for showing those....they really are amazing!
Cool bird, built in straw!
Nice bird pics Amy.
I was out last night - forgot what time though.
I wanted to retake this one.
Finally found another green light.
Al - those are both fantastic pics! I really love that bridge shot! What was the temperature for your walk??
Great bridge shot, Al. Do you drag your poor dog out to get these shots?! Tripod or held against something? Did you use manual exposure? (I knew a Manuel who loved to expose himself).
That was a fast walk as it was 28 and windy. No dog for that one to keep moving. He does go on most of them though.
Victor - those were on automatic, I have tried to adjust the settings to help - but they come out the same usually. No tripod - the bridge pics have a lot of ones that didn't turn out well.
Gage went running at the dog park today.
Nice doggie! Don't you have to play with the white balance settings for those night shots?
I don't think I have that option on my Sony - I do on the old Nikon - never got it to help.
I was trying to intentionally blur a pic with the Christmas lights but couldn't.
I liked this one
Very nice!
Neat shot, Al! And I love Gage. He (?) is so pretty/handsome. How old and what breed? Very athletic dog!
OK, Victor........here's a shot of our modest house......
Not bloody likely!!! LOL
That little thing!? Maybe for the servants.
Not many other houses of that size in the neighborhood!
Look at that road.LOL You know how I make fun of places without curb and gutters.
Gage is 7, a lab/chow mix. We got him 4 years ago.
Here's where I was walking a few days ago: on the South Shore of Boston in the fog.
Now that's a lovely place to walk, Bebop....love that shot! especially with the shorebird. Very nice!
Al - I got a laugh out of the crummy road in that shot too. All of the roads in the neighborhood look like that, and we have to walk on them every morning. I don't get it. We are in the county, not the city, and the services are not great. We also don't have street lights, and I think that contributes to the break-ins starting here.
But you'd think the people in those mansions would scream a bit!
Wouldn't you think so!!! I guess you pick your poison to scream about!
Today we saw a crowd of 22 white ibis's lollygagging around the 'hood! LOL I forgot to take my camera with me this morning.
wow - that must have been quite a sight!
Don't you hate when you don't have your camera? The most interesting thing I saw without my camera was watching a racoon stealing and eating eggs from a turtle while the turtle was trying to lay and bury them. The turtle really tried to push the racoon away with her shell, but the racoon kept digging and digging underneath her, walking away, eating, and coming back for more.
