A Smattering, a Hodgepodge..

Are you prepared for a helter-skelter ride through the Phoebasaurus Brain? Hold on tight!
Did you know that the Otter Graduated!? He did! Its the truth! He certifiably a BSer, just like me! Look at  him, all official-like. Anyway.
Some one left a comment on a previous blog about the hippie hair-washing method I've been practicing. When I first started reading about it and wondering if I could switch from my deliciously coconuty and chemically shampoo to baking soda and vinegar, I found this blog exceptionally helpful. Its a little girly, the blog, but it is very informative, with multiple follow up posts answering any questions you might subsequently have.

Before everyone left for the holidays, the office NSEA staff took treats out to our WCC crew out in the chilly outdoors. Soup, hot cocoa and cookies (+frosting!) were delivered to the hardworking folk who do most of the heavy lifting for NSEA, planting, building bridges, removing culverts... A coworker lent me some cookie cutters that definitely made the cookies special; a gnome, a unicorn, and a mushroom got added into the holiday spirit mix. And they loved it.

I made  short excursion to California and the farm for the week of Christmas, and mostly took pictures of... birds. They were having a hayday feasting on overripe persimmons. Mmm-mmm good.

 Mockingbird

 American Robin

 Cedar waxwings, such neat looking critters

A woodpecker working away 

 Can you spot this one? Its sort of in the middle if that helps.

 I wanted a peek at the hive that my brothers split and which requeened this summer. The bees weren't too thrilled with our nosiness.

A hard frost (or a series thereof, I'm not sure) knocked back the growing citrus operation.

 Some of the berries have yet to drop their leaves

 Pruned and retrellised, the berries are neatest in the winter.
Young lettuce awaiting planting out later in the year.

Thoughtful as she is, for Christmas Torch got mom some redbuds. Torch knows how much mom has been wanting some trees to shade the west side of the house, which positively swelters in the summer heat. Here she is digging the first hole. She even caged them to protect them from the wandering dogs, and watered them in! Good old dog!
And that, in a nutshell, was Christmas at Tyson Hill Farm.
This is my Mango Tree. It has five leaves. Its a swell little tree.

In a more linear form of thinking, I went on two adventures this weekend looking for delightful birds.

 Plenty of ducks

Spent a while stalking this flock. I am out of shape, not as stealthy as I once was.

 They are rather amusing to watch.

 The Otter and I went for a wander around a lake and found these tiny winter woodland ghosts. I keep being surprised by the mushrooms popping up, its been chilly, not totally conducive to mushroom fruiting.

 More of that Cotton Candy fungal thing, we've been seeing it all over. Ice crystals forming in the top layer of saturated soil, over an inch long.




Yesterday we went adventuring to find bald eagles. We found a few, and had a grand old time looking at salmon spines discarded by the scavengers.

 Brandon found a smattering of eggs, probably spilled during a feeding.

 Like some macabre work of art there were spines, fins and other inedible salmon parts strewn across the flood channel.

 Why a dapper little dipper!

 In the shade, frost doesn't melt, it grows in its perfect crystalline structures.

 Clearly these two are buddies.

Be the most marvelous you can be, Happy Monday!