Snow Day!

Ok, not really, considering I work from home and therefore have to work everyday no matter what the weather. BUT! Snow in Raleigh is still pretty exciting, since it doesn't happen very often.

{Nature Photos} 3 Bucks!

Man, I love our yard!

While sitting at my desk yesterday, I spotted a beautiful juvenile buck out my office window. As he walked around the side of the house, I grabbed my camera and had the perfect vantage point out our bonus room windows, above our garage.

Look at the cute little horns!

 But he wasn't alone, and a moment later two other young bucks appeared next to him.

I've never seen this many male deer together before. The family that has been coming by a couple of times a week usually only has two bucks. I wonder if these are the same ones, or a whole different group. Either way, I appreciate them trimming our weeds, at least until we get around to landscaping our backyard!

Baby Deer Wishes You a Happy Friday!

Happy Friday!

We have a family of 7 deer that have been visiting us the past two weeks, ever since they discovered the new salt lick I mounted on a tree down by the old access road that runs behind our property. There are 3 babies, 2 juvenile males with little nubby horns, and 2 adult female deer in the family. But this morning is the first time I've been able to get a picture of one of the babies, because usually they're running around like crazy, chasing each other, jumping over the creek and being silly, while the older ones take turns at the salt lick. This morning though I finally caught a shot of a baby!

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. We're in for another tiring and dirty weekend, working on the bathroom, removing the rest of the damaged sub floor, scrubbing/sanding any surface mold on the joists, pulling a thousand nails out of all of the studs to prep them for fresh drywall, and a whole bunch more tedious prep work. But I hope we'll have a bit of time to watch some of the Olympics this weekend too. What are you guys up to this weekend? Any home projects planned? Who is excited for the Olympics?

 

Lightning Bug Flash

While cleaning up my desktop files earlier this week, I came across this little 8 second video I took last year, but never shared.

Before moving to North Carolina, I'd never seen a firefly before (or lightning bug, as they're called in the south). I was fascinated by them, and just like a little kid, I just had to catch one in a jar to see it up close.

If you've never seen one either, here's what they look like when they flash.


(don't worry, I released this little guy outside right after filming him)

The lighting bugs are just starting to come out for the season, and it's so neat to sit on our deck after sunset to watch for the little flashes between the trees. I'm sure we'll be doing some of that this weekend, while we rest in the evenings after long days of hauling paver stones around to build our fire pit area!

Hope you all have a great Memorial Day weekend. Hopefully I'll be back next week with the good news that our fire pit is finished, and we got to enjoy it Monday evening, but we'll see!

Why Can't My Cats Do This?

Make friends with a deer!

I'm so in love with these sweet photos I saw on Reddit of a deer and a cat being friendly, that I had to share. Now my kitties need to step up their game, and make nice with our own backyard deer so I can see them more!

Photos from Imgur via Reddit

So stinking cute! Maybe I need to start rubbing salt licks on my cat's heads, to entice the deer to lick them, LOL.

Happy hump day! 

A New Kind of Backyard Friend!

Y'all know by now how much I've LOVED spotting wildlife in our yard ever since we moved to NC. Well I found a new type of animal to watch in our new backyard!

Do you see it? Between the slats of the deck?

How about now?

It's a gorgeous hawk! We've seen this guy a couple of times a day, flying through our yard down to the little runoff creek and up along it, searching for food. I've even seen him flying with a little snake in his mouth!