Red Potato Harvest

 This year has been great for Red Potatoes.  We planted seed potatoes in four 20 gallon containers and are harvesting a great crop.  These are the potatoes from the third container .  It's quantity and quality are similar to containers one and two.  We are getting about five pounds of potatoes from each container.  Meanwhile the Orange flowers are blooming like crazy in front of the shed again.  They create a nice color display in front of the Elephant Ears.

Hawk Grabs Frog for Lunch

 The camera captured a picture of a very bad day for a frog.  In the first picture is the Hawk flying over the pond with something in his left claws.  A few seconds later, he lands on the side of the pond and you can clearly see he has a frog in his claws.  I suspect he had just grabbed the frog off one of the pond rocks and stopped on the side to make sure he had a good grip before taking his catch to lunch.

Giant Turtle Assistance

 Last week we saw a large turtle up against the fence in a couple of different locations and it looked like he was trying to get to the stream on the other side.  It appeared he was having trouble finding the spot he crawled under the fence to get in the yard.  I picked him up and took him to the other side of the fence and he promptly starting crawling toward the stream.  He seemed pretty happy to be moving on.  I'm not what kind of turtle this is but it is about a foot long. 

Mimosa Tree & Elephant Ears

The Chocolate Chip Mimosa tree we moved to the middle of the front yard two years ago has taken on quite a sculptural appearance with long spreading branches.  The location has proven to be perfect for giant Elephant Ear plants to thrive.  They fit in nicely with the tall Mimosa and smaller plants around them.
But behind the tree a huge weed has also loves this location.  This week the weed will go so it doesn't compete with the Elephant Ears.

Some Fish are Still Here

We are pleased to report that some Goldfish are still swimming in the pond.  For the past couple of weeks we have seen the black and orange Goldfish hanging out under the filter.  He is hard to see with the rock almost on top but your can see some orange and his flowing tail in the water.  In addition to him, we have seen a several all black Goldfish swimming around.  We suspect these fish survived the predators because their dark coloring made them hard to see.  In addition to these fish, I saw a turtle about 6 inches long in the pond.  I don't know if the turtle was just visiting since I only saw him once or if it has taken up residence.

Lightning Strike Very Close

 Yesterday afternoon we had a violent thunderstorm pass through the area.  We were sitting in the dining room watching the downpour in the back yard when there was a sudden bright flash and immediate boom.  It sounded like a cannon was just outside.  After the storm we found a 100 foot tall Oak just behind the fence in the back yard had been hit by lightning.  A line of bark was blown off the tree from top to bottom with some pieces landing 50 feet away.  With luck the tree will survive but at least it has a slight tilt away from the fence so if it falls - hopefully it will follow that tilt.