Nests

What's that in the canopy of the tractor??

It's a bird nest, and it's been there since Spring 2007. This is its second year and I swear I think it's grown, so I think it got used again this Spring. I don't know how a bird can get into that nest, or how it likes having its home moved around. Spring is a busy time for a tractor.

This is a bit of my garden, one of the beds I haven't yet yanked the weeds out of and planted. I *should* have cleaned up last fall but I didn't and this is the result. Yuck! But look what's tucked into the cattle panel by the T-post (I use cattle panels as a trellis for my peas, cukes, and tomatoes).

It's a newly hatched baby house sparrow, with three eggs still to hatch. Needless to say, this garden bed will stay weedy a while longer - or at least this section will!

A cropped version of the above pic, that I didn't scale down. You can click on it to see a larger version. The little bird's leg is clearly showing and its head is in the shade. Before I ran to get the camera it was sitting up with its tiny mouth wide open, waiting for mama to bring it some food.

More Snow Prints

I know these photos are very blue. They were taken at twilight and, well, it was blue!
I love seeing rabbit prints in the snow. We have quite a few wild rabbits around here, plus an escaped domestic "yard rabbit". To me, rabbit prints look like little rabbit faces with big ol' ears.

Frequently the front feet hit separately so the rabbit face is kind of messed up. But they're still very rabbity looking prints.

This rabbit went and hung out under the tractor for a while. Walking outside in the mornings and seeing all the goings-on from the night before is a bit like reading a book. You get to see little sub-plots unfolding all around.

This is a deer track. They have split hooves. The deer frequently cross the creek between the house and the chicken house, so I see them or their prints a lot in the mornings.

Eclipse

Last night was a total lunar eclipse. Totality was around 10 p.m. so we didn't even have to stay awake late or get up at insane hours.

We thought we'd miss it, because yesterday was cloudy and snowy all day long. We gave up and watched a movie right after dinner. Then when we poked our heads outside after the movie, LO and behold, the skies had totally cleared and the beginnings of the eclipse were evident!

We dressed warmly and went outside with binoculars, telescope, and camera.

It was cold. 14F when we came in a little past 10. The battery in the camera gave out pretty quickly, but my clever and always prepared husband had a spare in his pocket. The second battery gave out just after totality, and so did we. Apparently batteries don't like extreme cold much more than people do.

Still, it was lovely being outside. We stood in the back yard and everything was brightly illuminated because of the full moon and all the snow. Then as the moon became eclipsed, more and more stars appeared, and the snow quit sparkling and became somber rather than festive.

My husband took photos with the telescope (it has an attachment for the camera). I stood there with my gloved hands making encouraging noises while his hands turned numb and his fingers fell off. We retrieved all but one, which we hope to find in the spring thaw if the dogs don't find it first.

After the eclipse reached totality and the second battery died, we went inside and thawed by the wood stove and sipped hot chocolate. Turns out that last finger was in my husband's coat pocket all along, so *that's* okay.

Prints in the Snow

I love going out in the morning with snow on the ground. I get to see who's been by during the night or pre-dawn hours. Most of our tracks are pretty tame. Take this determined path, for instance.

The straight line of prints was made by our neighbor's cat, Winston. He comes by regularly to check on the rabbits and chickens. He doesn't hurt them, our dogs don't hurt him, and it's nice to know he's on patrol, keeping things in order.

This odd arrow in the snow wasn't made during the pre-dawn hours.

It was made when I let the chickens out for the day. In the evening I'll have a regular chicken highway in the snow near the chicken house.

Rain

Mother Nature is doing her best to make up for the drought we suffered this summer. We've had rain, snow, and lots more rain. We awakened to a downpour which, on our metal roof, filled our ears and chests with vibration.


These attractive overflow pipes (NOT sewer pipes!!) grace our yard. They carry excess rain water under the old logging road so the logging road doesn't wash out. We use that road to get to part of our property where we, appropriately enough, collect firewood.

The bottom pipe gets some action when it rains but the upper pipe is usually dry, partially because it's higher up and partially because until recently it was clogged with mud and debris. My delightful husband undertook the task of cleaning out the pipe and boy, are we both glad he did!


As you can see, steady rain has been enough to cause water to overflow the logging road, despite the two drainage pipes. Bummer.

While we were on the porch taking pictures, a new waterfall developed! Spectacular... and a bit unnerving. You can see it to the left of the drain pipes, just pouring off the logging road.


After our yard flooded our first year here, my husband got the tractor and dug the creek out with the backhoe. Now our yard doesn't flood (touch wood). We still have some work to do by the chicken house and the garden, but those areas weren't threatened by the creek as much as our home was, so we haven't done anything with them. We are firm believers in "just in time" (or "almost too late") methods.

Snow Apples

Here are a couple more photos from our recent snow. The apples on the apple tree had snow piled on them so high I don't think they could have held one more flake. We didn't pick the apples this year because they were awfully small due to the drought.


Here's a shot showing several "snow apples" hanging on the tree.

Today it's raining and we're expecting 50F. Yesterday it got up to 60F! This is December?!

Icicle Sculpture

We got lots of snow yesterday, probably five or six inches, and some of it melted and ran down and made icicles.

One of the horizontal bars of ice from which the icicles were hanging broke loose and one side of the ice bar dropped but the bar of ice did not fall. This made the icicles tilt crazily. Over time, more vertical icicles formed and the result is an odd formation of icicles.

Cool.

First Snow

We got our first snow, a dusting, yesterday and last night. It's melting about as quickly as it accumulates, but it's still peaceful and beautiful. I LOVE a new snow. It makes the world so clean and fresh. A new snow is full of promise.

This is our third winter here (can that be possible?!) and I still catch myself just gazing out the window whenever it snows. I wonder will my southern self ever consider snow as commonplace as rain.


A pair of gloves lies on a table on the porch, reminiscent of a sunny work day when a distraction called us away from a task.


The snows were preceded by LOTS of rains and some heavy winds. Our creek finally has water in it again, after seven months of being dry. This is a Very Big Deal because our water supply is a shallow (25 ft) hand dug well. The creek level is indicative of how well our household water supply is doing.

We're snug indoors with a fire in the wood stove and lots of coffee in the coffee pot. It's a good day.

First Frost

We had our first frost last night. This morning, the zinnias in my garden looked like a marzipan delicacy.

The marigolds were awfully pretty, but difficult to photograph because the greens were so dark and the frost on the blossoms was so pale.

Because I knew a frost was predicted, I picked the squash from my three sisters garden. A light frost won't hurt winter squash but I didn't know how accurate the forecast was. What if we got a hard freeze?

I grew butternut, acorn, and hubbard squash. This isn't a great harvest but considering all I did was plant them and ignore them (no watering, no weeding) in a drought year it's a fair return.

One more zinnia pic because they are just so pretty.

Big Green Caterpillar

The other day when I was walking through the yard I saw this HUGE green caterpillar lying in the grass. He/she/it wasn't moving much and I'm pretty sure it was dying. I put it on a sheet of paper and took its picture. I wish I'd thought to put something in the photo for scale.


I couldn't tell which end was the head. I think it's this end but there aren't any eyes that I can detect.


A close up of the other end. I have no idea what kind of caterpillar this is, but it looks formidable. I did a cursory web search and didn't find it. Anyone know what this thing is? I saw another one a day or two after seeing this one.

Weird Thing

First off, these photos are done my my husband with the "good" camera. I'm a happy-snap person, he's a photographer. As always, you can click on the image for a larger view. I've scaled these down but they're still about 1200x900 on average. You've been warned.

SO, I was walking down to the barn to get some hay for the rabbits (that's totally irrelevant to the post, but I like saying it because it sounds so country-farmy), when I saw this weird thing on the ground. I picked it up and stuck it in my pocket. I mean, that's what you do with weird things you find. You stick them in your pocket so you can ponder them later and share them with the important people in your life.

I didn't know if it was a plant thing (seed pod? fruit?) or an insect thing (eggs? larvae?) or a disease thing (gall?). I'm still not sure.


This closeup of the surface where the "stem" is attached sure makes it look like it's vegetable rather than animal. This thing is not very big. It's 1.5 inches in diameter. But maybe it's an immature weird thing.

Here is where the "stem" is attached to the twig. I'm not sure if the stem grows in multiple fibers like this, or if the bark has been shed from the stem, revealing an interior structure that would normally be enclosed.

Comments welcome.

Snow

Well we had snow for half of January and the first three weeks (or more) of February. I've never seen that much snow on the ground, nor snow for that long. My snow experience is a 1" accumulation that melts within 24 hours, or an ice storm that takes out power lines and makes evergreen trees explode like a rifle shot, leaving trunks splintered into toothpicks.

This photo was taken off our front porch. Icicles hang all along the porch roof, because the downspouts are full of ice. Frozen solid. Knocking on the downspout is like knocking on a concrete pillar.

The ladder and 2x4 boards lie there, evidence of home repair interrupted by the weather. Again.

Feeding the animals in cold snowy weather is interesting. I go out at least twice a day (morning and evening) to break ice out of the water dishes and fill them with fresh water. I use plastic dishes so I can kick them, stomp on the bottoms, and flex them to get the ice out.

Each morning I can see what various animals have visited the farm overnight. I've seen prints left by deer, raccoons, rabbits, little birds, the neighbor's cat, and our dogs. Although we have coyotes, foxes, and bobcats I haven't seen any tracks down around the house or animal areas.

The chickens don't mind the snow - they left a little highway of chicken prints between their chicken house and the equipment shed where they like to roost and poop on the ATVs. They also leave insane meandering paths around the yard. They are allowed to run around during the day as long as the temperatures don't get too much below 20F and there is some ground visible. When the ground is completely covered in snow, or the temps are down in the single digits, I leave them locked up in their little house. They'd like to go outside but I figure they'd not really find much to eat and they'd be easy targets for predators (dark against white snow). Their combs did get frostbite but they don't seem to notice it at all.

The rabbits weren't bothered by the cold at all. The young ones stayed underground a lot, but the senior buck and three does were outside even in below zero temps. They don't seem to care even when there is ice on their fur and whiskers. Their area will be a delight when it thaws this spring. They create a nice layer of poop just in time for it to be covered by new snowfall. When that all melts and thaws it's going to be YUCKY to clean out. The garden will appreciate it, though.

We have been forced to sit indoors drinking coffee by the soapstone stove, browsing garden catalogs and listening to NPR. Life truly sucks here in the country.

Cold Weather

It's COLD here! It was -0.8 on Monday, the coldest I'd ever been in. Then it was -8 on Tuesday! It's amazing how much colder it can get than zero. A high of 17 felt positively balmy after that. We got about 3 or 4 inches of snow Tuesday night and our pond is frozen. I've never seen a frozen pond. Mud puddle, yes. Pond, no.

Area schools have been closed due to cold and snow, and today they finally opened on a two hour delay (it was 1F this morning). I think when it gets real cold like that it takes a while to heat up the building and get the buses started. Plus I guess it's safer to have the traffic on the roads after sunrise, when folks can see.

The little rabbits stay mostly underground but the big ones don't care. I go out in the morning at daylight and break the ice out of their water dish and give them water, and they come over to say hello with ice on their whiskers and eyelashes.

The chickens have been locked in their house and they're getting sick and tired of it. Poor things, their house is not insulated and though we've made improvements it's draftier than I'd like. They have frostbite on their combs but seem perky and busy. They're still laying eggs, even. Stoic little buggers.

We're going through firewood at an alarming rate. We're staying toasty warm, though, and discovering which drafts we want to attack next.

Frost Heave

It was about 20F when I woke up this morning. It dropped to around 17F before the temperatures started to rise for the day. We usually get a little dip just before dawn.


We have had TONS of rain recently, so the ground is saturated. It's nice walking on it now that it's frozen, because I don't slip and slide everywhere I try to walk.


The chickens don't seem to mind, either. They walk around on the ice crystals barefoot and even wade in the little creek that's running strong now due to all the rains.

Milkweed

When I was a kid I somehow "learned" which plant milkweed was, but it was the wrong plant! Thankfully, my husband was quite familiar with milkweed (just like I was, except he was right) and he taught me what it looks like. The above photo is milkweed. It grows about one to five feet high. This plant was growing in one of our fields and we saw it on our Explore.


The milky white sap is where milkweed gets its name. Clever, no?


Monarch butterfiles looove milkweed. We had a few in the field but they were skittish and flew away when I approached. This one was focused on the task at hand and let me get a decent photo before fluttering off.

Of Things Tree

On our explore, we saw lots of trees. This is not surprising, considering the fact that most of the land we live on is wooded.

Burlesque?

Not sure if it will show up well (clicking to view large might help). This was interesting because the hollow interior of the trunk was riddled with insect tunnels.

Clicking to view large might help here as well. I like the way the ferns were growing on the soil pulled up by the fallen tree's roots. Circle of life in action.

I've got more pictures from our explore, which I'll post next week. Some milkweed and a super duper surprise. I'm talking SUPER DUPER.

I'm Lichen This

Okay, no great font of information 'cause I ain't no botanist. But I do have some purty pitchers. The lichen above was actually more richly colored but I had to use the flash to get an image (it was in deep deep shade) and the flash washed it out a bit.


We thought this little mushroom was interesting because it was growing in an unusually rocky area. Our property is quite rocky but this little guy looks like he's trying to set up housekeeping in a gravel pit.


The leopard mushroom :)


Super bright yellow mushrooms.

Virgin Tiger Moth

In the morning we open up the doors and let in the cool air before everything gets stifling. This morning, this beautiful Virgin Tiger Moth was on our door waiting to greet us. He was folded up so the orange part of his wings didn't show. I poked him to get him to fly away (outside the house rather than in through the doorway once I'd opened it - no screen doors here) and instead of flying off he spread his wings and showed off his glorious self. He may be a she, I don't know.


My husband put him on a sheet of printer paper and took his portrait. We thought he was close to death because he didn't mind being scooted onto the paper but after his photo session he flew away. Perhaps he was just sleepy in the daylight.

Black Rat Snake?

The kids found a pretty large black snake by the back of the house today and called me to come see. Then they saw another peeking out from under the back porch. Then they saw two more hiding behind an old non-working gas heater that's under the eaves of the house and against the wall while we figure out how to get rid of it. I had to explain that bit about the heater in the yard, lest anyone think we are trashy junky people. We just don't want to have to drive over an hour to the nearest dump. Anyway, we saw four snakes and they were all pretty big. All the images can be clicked on for a larger view.
Above is a closeup of his body. He's not solid black but has some yellowish speckling on him. It looked random, not strongly patterned.
This shows a teeny bit of his belly near his head. It looks like it is yellowish.This shot shows the shape of his head better. He doesn't have the wide "jowls" that many venomous snakes have.

I think, after Googling some images, that these guys are black rat snakes. I'd welcome confirmation or correction. I told the kids he's probably perfectly safe to pick up but I'd prefer they leave the snakes alone until we get a positive ID. If he *is* a rat snake, I'm glad to have him and his pals around.

Don King, eat your heart out

Well we had a cold snap and the flycatcher spent more time on her nest. We were relieved to see her spending time there because we thought she'd abandoned it due to the high traffic (human and canine) in the immediate area.

This morning, we saw this little guy perched on an old brick on the back porch immediately beneath the nest. He was very still and very quiet. I was surprised to see him so big and well feathered. I've been listening for hungry peeps from the nest and haven't heard anything. I don't know if the other eggs have hatched or not. I don't want to mess with the nest or get too close right now.

Retarded Toads

We had about ten days of rain recently and so our gravel-and-dirt drive and turnaround had some generous mud puddles. I was outside working when out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw some frayed and ravelled strands of carpet or perhaps yarn.

Upon closer inspection, I realized these were frog or toad eggs. A Google image search soon told me these were toad eggs, not frog eggs. Toads' eggs reside inside a protective tubelike casing rather than a single gelatinous blob.
Below is a closeup of the above mass.

Eggs from a second puddle:
The eggs aren't always in a corkscrew tube. Sometimes the tube lies out straight:

Most of these are worth clicking on to enlarge. I wanted to "rescue" the eggs, but my husband observed that perhaps the desire to lay one's eggs in a temporary mud puddle are some genetics that shouldn't be passed on. So I left them alone. About three or four days later they were completely dried up.

Ghost Plants

I'm still building my garden beds. The soil has been dug a couple of feet deep with a backhoe, amended, and now I'm marking out what will be the beds and what will be the paths between the beds. I'm shovelling dirt from the paths onto the beds.

While I'm not out there actively shovelling, my dirt-yet-to-be-made-into-beds lies covered with a couple of sheets of plastic. This serves a couple of purposes. It warms the soil and it keeps the spring rains from making the soil too wet and heavy to dig when I get a chance to work in the garden. Kudos to my husband for this idea, it's working out GREAT.

This weekend I pulled the plastic aside and saw that some of the plants beneath had been killed and bleached. Above is clover, and below is ground ivy. I think it's cool the way the veins still show up so clearly. The ground ivy is worth a click so you can see the large version.

Dandy Days

It's been beautiful here the last several days. It smells like heaven - a sweet meadowy smell. Potatoes just began popping up, peas are looking strong, and broccoli is starting to put out real leaves. I'm killing the tomatoes in the greenhouse, but the peppers in there are doing well.

We need rain. Supposed to get some tonight. Fingers crossed.

Newts

Our pond has newts in it! A couple of weeks ago it was infested - we walked up to the pond and saw tens (40, 100?) of the little critters hanging around in the water. They'd hang just below the surface, suspended motionless, daydreaming. Then they'd swim down out of sight and slowly float back up to the surface. I looked them up and they are Eastern Newts or Red Spotted Newts.

I went up to the pond yesterday and the numbers are greatly reduced. I saw maybe half a dozen at a time. Maybe the water is getting warmer? I don't know.

These pics aren't the best. For one thing, they're taken through cloudy pond water. For another, I took them with an unfamiliar camera. But they're still interesting.

This little guy is hanging out by the post supporting the dock. Eastern red-spotted newts begin life as aquatic gilled larva. Then they move to land where they are red, and they are called efts. They remain in the eft stage for 1-7 years. Sometimes they skip it altogether. I've not yet seen efts here but I'm sure I will, with a newt population like this.

The adults turn olive brown and return to the water. They have lots of spots on them. The photo above shows the spotted tail pretty well (better in large size). The spots on their back remain red. You won't see the red, however, unless the light hits them just right.

Millipede

I hurried out to the garden this morning to get a few things done before I had to go to work. This colorful guy was waiting on me. He's worth a closer look.

I googled a little and found a wonderful page about North American millipedes on the Stratford Landing Elementary School, Alexandria VA website. An elementary school, of all things!

You can click through yourself but here are some of the basics.

On the North American millipede, the first three segments will have one pair of legs, and the rest of the segments have two pair of legs. They move very slowly (this guy was moving slow as molasses).

I wasn't sure if he was a good guy or a bad guy, so I left him alone. Turns out he eats decaying plant matter and sometimes decaying animals (primarily earthworms and other insects). So he's pretty neutral in the garden.

They are nocturnal, and can live for several years.

Ladybug, Ladybug, Fly Away Home

I grew up calling them ladybugs. I've also heard them called lady beetles and ladybirds. When I was a kid, they were wonderful. Brightly colored, no stinger, didn't bite. One of the "good guy" bugs.

In Georgia we got a lot of them crawling around inside our windows sometimes. That was nothing compared to this old farm house.

The ladybugs that swarm and invade are Asian Lady Beetles. They overwinter in attics, siding, and behind baseboards. I vacuum mine up. They make the vacuum bag stinky inside. About the third time I vacuum up ladybugs, the vacuum cleaner is whooshing foul odors throughout my house.

They congregate mostly in my windows, but I sometimes see them other places. If you are infested with lady beetles, or think you are, you should read this excellent article put out by the University of Kentucky. It won't really help you get rid of them, but maybe your ladybugs won't bother you so much after you read the article.

Ladybugs don't carry disease, they don't eat wood or wiring or otherwise destroy your home, and they don't breed indoors. They're just hanging out waiting on warm weather and plotting their big escape. They eat unbelievable amounts of aphids. My garden is gonna love 'em.

Hyadaffolips

As frequent visitors to the Palazzo Blog already know, we've not yet been here a full year. Now that Spring is upon us, we are excitedly watching the new life and anticipating blooms.

Along portions of the drive way and the wet river creek there are some flowers coming up. Some of them have long, slender flower buds. Look at the top left "corner" of this plant:
Others have fuller, rounder flower buds.
I pointed out the different flower types to my husband, who was instantly intrigued and excited.
"Perhaps some are tulips!" he exclaimed.
"No, tulips have broad flat leaves, not thin ones like this. These are daffodils."
"Hyacinths, maybe?" he countered.
"Maybe. I think they're all daffodils."

Then I glanced at his face and realized that I was not being much fun. This was not an honest attempt to identify flowers; this was an opportunity for mystery and intrigue and I was letting him down.

I reconsidered the emerging flowers.
"You know, they do look different."
"Perhaps we have a rare kind of tulip that only exists in specialized microclimates." he mused.

Our conversation continued in this vein for a while, and now we are eagerly waiting for our Palazzo Rospo Hyadaffolips to bloom. It should be spectacular. I think Horticulture Today is going to feature us on their cover. It's very exciting.

Deer in the Yard

I love where I live. I took this photo today from my back porch. These two deer were right across the driveway from me, just munching away. The grass is really starting to green up. It was odd- we had snow last night and today when it melted the grass was *bright* green beneath. It doesn't look bright at all in the photos. Maybe it was just bright compared to what I've been looking at all winter. :)

There was a third deer with these two, but it was off by itself so I didn't get a shot of all three of them together.

Spring!

Today is the first day of Spring in the northern hemisphere. Spring begins on the day of the vernal equinox, usually March 20 but on March 21 in some years.

Equi-nox means "equal night." On the equinox, the day and night are of the same length. In the northern hemisphere, the short winter days have been getting longer. Today the days are as long as the nights and tomorrow we'll have slightly more than 12 hours of daylight per day.

In the southern hemisphere, today is the autumnal equinox, as the long days have been growing shorter and after today the days will be shorter than the nights. It is the beginning of Autumn in the southern hemisphere. I have a friend in Australia who makes a point of gloating as she plants her garden and watches blooms popping up in October. I think I owe her an email.

Carpenter Ants

We were out cutting a standing dead tree last week. We like to cut those for firewood, for a couple of reasons. One, we don't yet know enough about woodlots to make an intelligent decision about which living tree to fell. Two, we'd have to have twice as much wood storage room - enough for what we're burning this year plus enough for the green stuff that's curing for next year. So for now cutting dead standing wood suits us.

There are, however, drawbacks. One is that sometimes the wood has begun rotting and it's soft and crumbly and not worth cutting and stacking. Another is that sometimes carpenter ants have moved in. I was splitting wood and opened up this nest of carpenter ants. I read that it takes two or three years for a carpenter ant queen to build a colony strong enough to make more reproductives. If you see several reproductives in a colony (the ones with wings) then the colony has been around for a while and is well established. Thus, we had a fairly strong colony in this tree.

You can't just leave the split pieces lying open on the ground until a good freeze kills off the ants. They will go dormant in a freeze and be just as busy as ever when the temperatures warm back up. In fact, you can put ants in your freezer and they'll look dead and lifeless. Take them out and let them thaw, and they'll run around like nothing ever happened.

So now we have to figure out what to do with these pieces of wood with the pesky little invaders in them. My vote: burn them right away! Don't leave them lying around so the ants could infest the wood pile, the wood shed, or -- heaven forbid -- the house.

Snow!

We got snow! By the time all was said and done, we had about four inches of accumulation here at Palazzo Rospo. We played in the snow and watched movies and huddled by the fire. It was glorious.

This is an apple on a tree right beside our house. All of the other apple trees lost their fruit long ago, but this one still has some dessicated fruits hanging on it. They made wonderful apple butter in the fall, and now they're withered. I thought the juxtaposition of harvest and hibernation was nice.

The Ice Man Cometh

We had some unusually warm weather in January and very early February. Temperatures in the mid to upper 50's. LOTS of rain. There was so much mud we couldn't get to the fields up at the top of the ridge.

But now Mother Nature has remembered it's winter, and we've got temps in the teens at night and highs around freezing. BRRrrr!

The old farm house has rain gutters, but they are in poor repair. Many of the downspouts are missing. Maybe all of them are missing; we haven't done an inventory. It did have downspouts at one time because one of them was lying on the ground when we moved in, and you can see where the supports were attached to the siding.

Here is a huge icicle that has formed at the end of one of the gutters where moisture has been slowly dripping out of the end. It's worth clicking on the picture to get a better look. I like the way the water flows right out the end of the trough.

Bits of dirt and leaves are suspended in the icicle; click for a closeup

Mystery Tracks!

Taking a cue from Walter at Sugar Mountain Farm, I thought I'd post some mystery tracks. He does a great job of photographing intriguing tracks in the snow and having folks guess what the tracks are. Well, we've had very little snow this year and until this week I've only seen one set of tracks worth photographing, and of course I didn't have my camera with me.

But THIS week, I saw Mystery Tracks on my front porch in the snow! What could it be??? I ran inside and got my camera.

Here is a closeup (you can also click these photos for a larger version). Note the huge pads, the vicious claws. What fearsome creature could have left these ominous prints right on my front porch??

I don't have a large readership, so I don't really anticipate many guesses, if any. Still, I think I'll wait until tomorrow to spill the beans.