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.

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!

Happy New Year!

I hope you are all having a happy new year's day, and that 2018 is off to a great start for you. It is off to a very cold start where I am! It's 5° now and according to the internet, it feels like -13° out there. I'm not going to go outside to find out how it feels!

In keeping with the cold theme, and also the New Year theme, I'm going to share some photos I've been saving up of the fresh, clean snow. I thought fresh snow on a bright sunny day is a good symbol for a new year. And come to think of it, this bridge is a symbol in itself - a bridge from one year to the next.

So getting off to our fresh start here... I took this first set of photos on a cold day a few weeks back in the downtown village area. I was in a small park, across this bridge.

It was very peaceful, being the only person out there. I think the temperature had a lot to do with that!

Aren't blue shadows on the snow pretty?

This one is of the bridge railing. That snow doesn't even look real. It looks like some kind of fluffy dessert topping.

A creek runs under the bridge.

You can get an idea of its outline better here.

These rocks looked like a series of mushrooms or marshmallows.

A little bit of snow melting on the bridge:

This photo is my computer's wallpaper now. I really like the look of the red berries against that bright, blue sky.

It's fun to see any sign of plant life in winter. You might remember seeing these berries in one of my autumn blog posts.

This next set of photos was taken in a local park. 

This next picture was one I was hoping to get that day. The sun shining through this area of trees reminds me of The Nightmare Before Christmas, when Jack is walking through the forest, looking at different holiday doors on the trees.

What do you think?

A link for those who don't get the videos:

The Nightmare Before Christmas - Forest Scene

There was this cool situation where part of the water had turned to ice and part had not. We must have been at just the right in-between temperature for that to happen.

I thought it was so pretty when the sun came out and there was this warmth in the trees, next to that ice and snow.

I was trying to photograph the deer that was leaning over and didn't even notice the second one who was looking at me! After I took the photo and looked at my camera, I was like "Wait a second! There's another one?"

Here's something I've never seen - a waterfall that is partially frozen and partially moving.

Do you see the water falling on the right side of this picture?

This old house is near the park. As I'm looking at this photo, I'm noticing how there's very little color in it. It's nearly sepia. I feel like this same image could have been seen for the past century.

And in keeping with the snowy theme... I'm almost afraid to decorate with anything that says "Let it snow". I think it's some superstition that if I say this, a bunch of snow is going to fall. 😄 But these gel clings were too cute to pass up. I found them at Target's after Christmas sale. The after Christmas sale was at 50% off when I was there, but it's probably at least 70% off now. I'd be interested to hear about your after Christmas finds!

I'm not sure if you can tell, but I placed the clings on actual snow to take this picture.

I'll leave you guys with a little trivia gift from MeTV. It's a fun way to start 2018.

14 words and slang terms that turn 50 years old in 2018