Macro Monday

After the recent snowfall, we had a very cold night.  I wandered around the yard the next morning examining all the beautiful ice crystals.

Ice crystals on the buds of the peach tree

Snow and crystals on pine bough

Fauna Friday

Today we have a couple more pics from Cades Cove, which really is a great place to observe wildlife:

And not-so-wild-life!

Rainin' then Snowin'

After literally days of nearly constant rain, rain, rain, this afternoon it transitioned into snow.  It began as a heavy wave of sleet that piled up on the cars, grass, and pavement, then big wet snowflakes took over.  We probably had about 2 inches of snow accumulation in our part of town. (Edit: the morning after - I walked around outside just now & it was deeper than I thought, more like a bit over 3 inches.)

Pretty!

 


Then the skies began to clear and we had a bright pink, stormy sunset - what a wild day!

Fauna Friday

I'm instituting a new weekly feature here on the blog!  Welcome "Fauna Fridays", wherein I will post a few pics of the creatures I've seen during the week.  Enjoy!

This week's fauna were all sighted on Wednesday while hiking in Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was a cool, dreary, misty/drizzly day - my favorite kind and the best for hiking off-trail!

Red-tailed Hawk (I think) - we saw many hawks while driving & hiking.

The only things we saw more than hawks were deer - lots!

....including a handful of lovely bucks.

11 deer in this field near the Elijah Oliver cabin.

Bulbapalooza

Prepare to seethe with jealousy (if you're into seething).
I hit the bulb jackpot!
A couple weeks ago, I stumbled across these bulbs on sale for $2.00 a bag at MalWart, which was a good deal as they were originally $3.98/$4.98 each. They're clearing out the last of the fall-planting bulbs and I snagged these 3 bags for me and a couple other bags that I gave to my mom.

A few days ago, I went to a different MalWart & they had many of the same/similar bulbs that weren't labelled on sale, but I grabbed a bunch & took them to the price-scanner machine and they were.......
*drumroll*..... *wait for it*.....

$0.02 each.
!!!

I bought 136 bulbs for twenty-four cents. Wooohoooo!

Now I have to get them in the ground ASAP because some of them are already sprouting - big time.
Namely the dutch iris mix (which is supposed to be late-blooming!):

The red hyacinth is also peeking through:

Warmish temps right now feel very Spring-like, maybe even hitting 70 on Saturday!  But the weatherpeeps are saying we'll be cooler again next week......

Clingmans Dome sunrise

It's that time of year - the leaves are changing, the nights are turning cold, and the Smokies are as beautiful as ever.  Today we drove out before dawn (it was about 30 degrees and very windy in the higher elevations) to catch sunrise at Clingmans Dome.  Us, and a bunch of other people!  The mountains are *packed*; there are tons of "No Vacancy" signs in Pigeon Forge, Sevierville and Gatlinburg; traffic is a nightmare; people are everywhere like ants.  But if you can fight your way through the madness, you will be rewarded with some exceptional sights.  Here are just some of the 125 pics I took today:

We blazed up the Clingmans Dome trail to beat the sunrise - felt like Dracula racing against the light, and we made it onto the tower about 2 minutes before the sun peeked over the horizon. Then we hiked part of the Appalachian Trail, then headed over to the Shot Beech Ridge Quiet Walkway & followed that out the ridge as far as we could. We finished up with a loop around the Courthouse Rock lower trails.

Garden's growing great

I've been excited about our little garden patch, this is the first year I dug an official one out in the yard.
So far we have tomatoes, pumpkins, sunflowers, bell peppers, jalapeno & banana peppers and watermelon.  The corn.... not doing so good due to the harsh heat and drought right after I planted it.
I have some new corn sprouting in starter pots that needs to be put in the ground soon.

The pumpkin vines are growing like crazy, taking over the whole patch. I may have to extend the sides a bit so I can plant the rest of my veggies.  Either that, or I may do more 5-gallon bucket gardens on the patio like I did last year, they were pretty successful.

Here's a baby pumpkin in the works......

.....and here is my 1st healthy pumpkin!  It's a beauty :-)

Our Mr. Stripey variety tomato plant is growing very well.  It was touch-and-go during the drought but now it is thriving.
We bought this one at the garden center, but I do have a few plants doing well that I started from seeds.


How is your garden growing??