A surprise giant pumpkin patch!

This pumpkin patch was a surprise! It was in the middle of a local park and these photos are from yesterday. If there had been a pumpkin patch there in past years, I hadn't been aware of it.

All the pumpkins growing there were massive! And it appears they're still growing. I wonder if we'll see any of them in this year's village Halloween display? I also wonder how much larger they'll get.

This one looked like a giant ghost pumpkin. I don't think I'd seen a giant white pumpkin before this one.

So far, there are five big pumpkins out there. They're being shaded and supported well. As you can see, the pumpkins had a nice wood support under them.

And the vines went on and on!

Making this area even more Halloweeny was the nearby flower patch full of black velvety petunias.

So, how about that? A little Halloween surprise a few months early!

In other Halloween type news, I got around to seeing Hotel Transylvania. After hearing there was a third one out, I figured it was time to see the first one. It was very cute and funny. It's one of those animated movies where it's fun to see if you can recognize the celebrity voices. I loved every moment of Steve Buscemi as the werewolf.

A Happy, Relaxing, Summertime Toad

I had quite a fun surprise at a local park last night. There's a little pool area where the koi fish swim. It's fun to watch the fish glide around. Well, this time I saw something plop in and kind of scoot along the water. At first I thought it was a chipmunk or small rabbit, of all things. I know how much sense that makes, but I'm just so used to seeing chipmunks and baby rabbits lately. What was actually there was this adorable toad.

Look at this toad, just lounging on what looks like his personal pool noodle. To give you an idea of scale:

I was of course curious to know what kind of toad this was specifically, so I looked up some toad identification charts. Turns out there are a lot more toads out there than I realized. After studying some toad photos and visiting Wikipedia, I found this is simply "The American Toad". Pretty exotic name, hey? Haha! Somehow I was expecting more!

Three types of toads fit into this category: The eastern American toad, the dwarf American toad, and the Hudson Bay toad. Since I don't live in the Hudson Bay area, and this toad was in the 3" range, I'm going to say my toad was of the eastern American variety.

You guys might be interested in reading more about this toad on its Wiki page:

American Toad Wikipedia

It's the standard toad stuff. This toad likes fresh water, living near wooded areas, eating a variety of bugs, and hibernates. But two interesting bits of info are:

1) It makes a sound much like a ringing telephone when looking for a mate.

2) Some of these toads have been known to live 30+ years! Wonder how old this one was?

It's funny, but it seems the best way to get some attention from the fish is to focus your attention on a toad! The fish kept swimming over to me while I was following the toad around the pool. At one point, the toad and one of the fish nearly collided. So long as they were there, I couldn't pass up having a fish photo shoot!

I think this one has the most personality:

I call this one "The Ghost Fish"

So here's where the toad and fish were swimming around. Isn't that pretty? The lighting features are new this year.

Have you guys been seeing any toads this summer? I often think I'm hearing them chirping away at night, but this is the first one I've seen this year.

Beautiful and Dangerous Nature

Hey everyone! It's been a while since I've been blogging, because it finally thawed out around here and I have to be outside! Can you believe we had snow in late April and today we had over 80° weather? Because I haven't been checking in here much, I've ended up with a number of things to share. So this is going to be one of those Justine's favorites kind of blog posts.

Something I wanted to be sure and share with you guys was a display from last month's Art in Bloom at the Milwaukee Art Museum. You might remember Art in Bloom from past years. If not, it's a wonderful show of flower arrangements that are interpretations of the art.

This arrangement was in the Haitian gallery space. Check out that skull!

This display had a lot of exotic looking plants in it. I actually took a photo of the plant list, because some of these were new to me. I was especially interested in the spidery or octopus looking one in front. This one:

After googling pics of every plant on this list, I didn't find it. So if any of you know what that plant is, please let me know! Here's the flower list:

This is the painting that goes with the floral display, Baron Le Croix (Bawon Lakwa) by André Pierre. If you read the "Designer Statement" at the bottom of the flower list, you'll understand a little bit about the painting and the symbolism. Although, I'm pretty sure you guys had a general idea of what's going on here.

It's worth reading this brief paragraph about Baron La Croix:

Baron La Croix Wiki Page

"The ultimate suave and sophisticated spirit of death" How about that?

Speaking of new and spooky flowers, I saw these little cuties in the woods a few days ago. I was told that these are Bloodroot, and from a google search it would appear that's correct. They don't look like they'd be called Bloodroot, do they? But from what I just read, the juice from this plant is both red and poisonous. And the flowers look so innocent!

If you'd like to read more: Bloodroot Wiki Page

If you read down to the "Toxicity" section on that page, you'll learn why you shouldn't mess with this plant! What I read here is actually pretty scary. To put it simply, do not apply this to your skin because it will destroy your tissue. Don't ingest this or you might vomit or pass out. And you might want to check your mouthwash for "sanguinaria" (another name for Bloodroot) because it could lead to oral cancer down the road. Wow! Nature can be pretty powerful and not always in the best of ways.

Another find in the park was this "Tree Bracket Fungus". I would have called it Seashell Fungus. Don't these look like shells?

From what I've been reading, some of these are not super healthy for trees, but people have turned this bracket or shelf fungi into art. Evidently, it's super hard and makes a good painting surface. If you google "Tree Bracket Fungus Art" you'll see some pretty cool examples.

In other nature news, some of you may have seen this little zebra spider when I shared it on Twitter.

I blogged about these once before. Some fun trivia about zebra spiders is that they don't make webs. Instead, they sneak up and pounce on their little insect victims like a cat! By the way, these spiders are much smaller than this one appears! They're like half the size of a normal ant. Ah, the magic of cropping.

This next picture was scary for me only because I didn't see more than one deer with my eyes before taking it. Then I looked at my camera screen in surprise! There were six deer that I could see, standing out in the open. But those behind this obvious deer totally blended in to the trees. Deer aren't exactly scary, but not realizing there are extra eyes upon you is!

Now that I'm studying this photo, I don't even know if I'm seeing more eyes in the woods! I think I may have just spotted a fifth head back there. I ended up seeing a good 10 in this herd, but who knows how many were actually there.

Onto a view of the outdoors at night. These are pics of the last two full moons we've had. They appeared very differently!

March 31 ~ The Sap Moon:

April 29 ~ The Pink Moon:

It's worth reading this page: Full Moon Names if you'd like to learn why each full moon has the name it does. I hope you guys enjoyed seeing my past month or so in little pieces. I'm finding it fun to write this way, with a little of this and a little of that. Let me know if you guys are seeing any new and interesting plants or insects. Everything is popping out now!

Happy Spring!

Happy first day of spring! I'm going to call this the first robin of spring, even if I took this pic a couple days ago. Isn't this a cute robin, with those little eyebrows? I swear, sometimes it seems like birds are posing as I photograph them. I'm enjoying seeing and hearing the birds. It makes me feel like there's some life out there! Aside from the birds, it doesn't exactly feel like spring around here, but at least there's no snow on the ground.

I haven't been around the blogosphere much lately or on the internet in general. I had a nasty accident with a craft knife a few weeks ago and that made typing difficult. But now I'm back and typing nearly close to normal!

Some of you who follow me on Twitter might know that I was planning to cut some Papel Picado. I picked up a few books from the library for inspiration:

I picked up those books shortly before having that accident, so I haven't been physically or mentally in the place where I wanted to do intricate paper cutting with little knives the past two weeks! I might end up using scissors. We'll see. In any event, I picked up some colorful tissue paper from Dollar Tree today, so I'm ready to go! If this project turns out well, I'll blog about the results. The plan for now is to frame them.

So back to spring, in celebration of the new season, here are some photos from Sunday's trip to the park! These pics will give you an idea of what March is like in Wisconsin. There's not a lot going on, plant-wise. But if you look closely, you'll see that those plants that went to seed or dried out over winter can form some interesting shapes. Like these thistles:

Interesting how those parts curve around where the flower was. And this, whatever it is...

If you use your imagination, you could see this as a super furry caterpillar. Those pieces at the bottom could be seen as legs. But my guess is that the "fur" has some seeds attached to it. And then there's this mysterious object:

I had been thinking it was either the one hunk of ice that was somehow left in the forest, or maybe a weird type of fungi that was new to me. I poked at it with stick and flipped it over. It was styrofoam!

This looks like a barn owl, doesn't it?

Speaking of birds, there were some seagulls and geese swimming in the pond. Just as I was taking a photo of this seagull, it dipped under to catch something, and made this cool display. This is the kind of picture I probably wouldn't get again if I tried! See what I mean about the birds posing? 😉

There's a wooded area up the hill from this pond and if you really pay attention, you can witness some interesting things there. Like that tree candling last year. This time, there were all kinds of little popping noises coming from the trees. It sounded like popcorn popping. I assumed it was bugs at first, but I couldn't see any. I stood very close to the trees and it sounded like the popping was coming from inside the branches or pinecones. Anyone know what I was hearing? It was like the trees were waking up after winter. Pinecones expanding? Sap dripping? I just don't know. These were the trees that were popping:

Another tree definitely had some sap going:

Isn't that color beautiful?

These are like tiny little tree roses:

Curling birch bark:

Looks like a nice place for a picnic, doesn't it?

Back on the road:

I'll end with some pics of what was one of the more relaxing parts of this walk.

The sun was sending these sparkles off the water, making it look like glass.

Now that I'm looking over these photos, I'm thinking it was looking a little more like spring than I thought. I'm just ready for some warmer weather and plants popping up! How's the beginning of spring where you all are? I've heard weather reports of everything from 70° to blizzards from you guys this past week!