Tag: Outside My Window (Page 2 of 3)

Humming Bird Visit

September 12, 2010 / Jennifer Coleman / 1 Comment

Joel came in from walking Sally the other day and said that

our neighbors had 5 humming birds at their feeder.

I had been meaning to put our feeder out for months, but I couldn’t
find the directions for how much of the powdered food to put in the feeder.

Within 5 min. of being jellous of our neighbors I had some mixed up,

and it was hanging on the window. Hope I am not giving them a sugar rush or anything.

I walked over to take a picture for you a couple of minutes ago..

and a humming bird met me there so I could take his picture.

Wasn’t that nice?

And here he is hanging out in our tree..

just a little to the left of the suction cup holding up the feeder.

You can find one there often.

BTW I don’t think our tree is dead.

There are several trees in the neighborhood turning.

I think it really is fall.

I am not used to it coming so early.. or for that matter at all (FL, SA).

Labor Day Weekend

September 6, 2010 / Jennifer Coleman / 1 Comment

My poor sad tree thinks it’s fall. What should I do?

Saturday evening we got to go visit our missionary friends from Spain.

They recently bought a house here so they’d have one when they’re old.

Hal and their friend Jesso fly back to Spain today.

So they had a going away party for them.

Judi just loves Cloe.

Jesso doesn’t speak very much English.. He spent a couple of days with Joel and Josh to see how Americans live. They took him bowling and hiking and played video games with him.

Here are the guys hanging out.

The girls had their own table.

Jane made us this wonderful Spanish dish in a paella.. witch is a super large pan.

In Spain the usually include squid in their paella.. but Jane was nice and just used

chicken and bacon. She even went to the store for some sea salt ..

so it’d be corn free and I could eat it, too.

Ugly Duckling??

August 20, 2010 / Jennifer Coleman / 1 Comment

When we were in KS, and I got home sick

the thing I missed other than my 4 guys was our lake.

It’s my favorite part of our house.

I love looking out over it and

spend as much time as I can in the rooms with a view.

There’s a group of 5 ducklings that grew up on our lake.

The story goes that someone gave them to a teacher who lives on the lake.

She mothered them until they were old enough to live on their own.

They stayed close by the lake and to each other all through fall and winter.

When the lake froze over, they hid out in the large, cement pipes

that drain into the lake. I didn’t envy them.

Then this spring we started noticing that one of the ducks was falling

out of favor with the flock. At first, he was waddling a couple of feet behind the others..

then more and more.. until he was following more than 12 feet behind.

It was really sad. I nick named him the Lone Ranger.

Some days we didn’t see him at all,

and I would wonder where our poor, Lone Ranger was.

Then one day I noticed that he looked dirty.

I thought, “What happened to him?”

Then while walking Sally, I got a closer look.

He wasn’t dirty.. he had brown and black feathers!

A few days later I saw him hanging out with the geese

that fly around from lake to lake in the area.

Normally the geese and ducks don’t associate with each other.

The ducks just tolerate their presence on the lake and kinda ignore them.

There’s not much you can do about a group that’s bigger than you and out numbers you.

We normally have 50 to 100 Canadian geese visit at a time

from several times a week to several times a day.

I kept expecting them to fly South or back North..

The never did, so I am pretty sure they live here year round.

So our Lone Ranger has found a family in the Madison geese

and isn’t lonely any more. Yay!

Birds Around the Lake

April 3, 2010 / Jennifer Coleman / 1 Comment

The ground here stays pretty wet when it rains and the ducks and geese

found plenty to eat in our yard. I am glad Sally doesn’t mind them.

There are a bunch of geese that fly around to different lakes and ponds in the area.

The ducks live here. One of our neighbors raised them from ducklings up.

Love,

Spring Snow?

March 22, 2010 / Jennifer Coleman / 1 Comment

My poor little tree heard a rumor that it was spring and began it’s job of budding in the nice 70 degree weather that we had Saturday. Now it’s snowing again.

Walking on Water

January 9, 2010 / Jennifer Coleman / 2 Comments

It’s been snowing for a couple of days now.

Joel and Judi went out and took these photos for me.

See the foot prints on the lake?

Joel is wearing my flip flops.

Judi is wearing Joel’s shoes and the monkey face robe she got for Christmas.

Sally is fascinated with the water.

Do you think she wants to be a duck?

Ice Princess

January 7, 2010 / Jennifer Coleman / 1 Comment

After 4 years warm years in Tampa and 5 in San Antonio, Judi doesn’t remember much about all the snow we got in IL.

So what does she wish? In Montgomery she wished for and got a snow fall both winters when they only normally get one every 6 years.

Now in Madison she’s wishing bigger wishes. She wants to skate on our lake. Last year it didn’t snow here until March. She’s already had one snow fall and our little lake is starting to ice up.

Ground’s frozen.

The lake’s getting there.

The ducks found a warm spot.

Burrrr!

Some Photos from Around Our Lake

October 12, 2009 / Jennifer Coleman / 3 Comments

Mike and I have been hanging out at the house/lake quite a bit lately.

Here we are at the gazebo. The lot next to us sold and I guess we’ll be getting a new neighbor soon.

Pretty sun set.

These kids were having a ball catching little perch.

Most were about 3″ long. One caught a “big”one that was about 8” long.

Sun set/moon rise.

These guys worked through a thunderstorm/tornado warning on our roof until the last possible minute. I was praying that none of them would die so I wouldn’t have to run over and raise them from the dead. Most of the storm went North, but at the last we heard the rain coming and quickly went for the car while our roofers jumped off the roof to find shelter in our window sills.

These ducks are very friendly.

They hang out at the lake most days.

Pretty sure these geese are on their way South.

It’s starting to look like fall.

I love this pict.

I love these water lilies.

Think I can get some to grow on our side of the lake?

Here’s the lake from our bathroom window…

When they put the block window in we won’t be able to see it any more.

Here it is from our back porch.

See the L shaped plot of mud. That’s basically our back yard.

Not a lot of grass to mow.. especially after they put in the 10×25 ft. back patio.

Happy Columbus Day!

Jenny

December Garden

February 5, 2009 / Jennifer Coleman / 1 Comment

Warning… boring post below… sorry.

This is a “Christmas Cactus” that a sweet neighbor gave me last year. It has these beautiful blooms each December. It’s very easy to care for… what’s not to love.

This is what happens to banana trees in the winter… they turn to an ugly brown mass. You have to cut them down to the ground each year. They have squishy stalks (up to 1.5′ in diameter) and smell like rotten bananas. You have to winterize them by covering them with leaves and tarps. In the spring they pop back up and gain their 6′ of height in just a couple of months. Kinda amazing. Right? Banana trees aren’t really trees at all. They are a herb… believe it or not.

This is one of our camellia bushes. Our yard guy trimmed it up and made it look more like a crape myrtle tree. It does look better than when it was an over grown bush. I like it.. Here are the rest photos I was able to get..

Biology

December 27, 2008 / Jennifer Coleman / 2 Comments

I still haven’t gotten my family photos printed or my Christmas cards sent out. I planned to work on them this morning but my teens did something to my computer and I can’t get my new photos to upload.

These photos are from a few months back. I was so excited when Mike brought home this hummingbird feeder for me.

Months went by and no hummingbirds came to visit; my princess suggested that maybe hummingbirds don’t live here.

The general reasoning was that if they had feeders for sale here they must have hummingbirds. I wasn’t too sure about that. Obviously ‘some’ people would buy them not knowing if or not they had hummingbirds here. So I looked in my trusty bird guide book… no hummingbirds were listed for our part of the country. Then I googled them… still couldn’t find any.

Months later during our biology lab one appeared at my feeder.. I googled again and found that there were several types of hummingbirds in our area.. Hurray!

It was a couple of weeks before I actually got a picture of her. I think she is a ruby-throated hummingbird.

A few weeks later I went to visit a friend who had 5-6 feeders and over 20 hummingbirds buzzing around them. So much fun.

The three youngest and I are doing Apologia Biology together this year. The vocabulary words in the first module were pretty rough.. but we’re getting the hang of it.

We found these mushrooms/funguses in our yard the day we needed them. Isn’t God good?

Most of the time I love seeing stuff in the microscope. Recently we looked at some banana cells. They were so beautiful!

Seven or eight years ago when we first got our microscope we looked at some leaves from a tomato plant we had growing in the back yard and found tiny little spiders and things living on our tomatoes. That tomato plant didn’t live much longer and I’ve never tried to grow anything else to eat. I haven’t admitted it out loud but some were deep inside I believe pesticides are good.

🙂