
Last week I climbed the mountain. This week, I did nothing – or close to it. The only photos in my camera were of hoeing out crabgrass – and they were from last week.
What I did instead was to sift through more than 2000 photos from guest Sandra Spranger (the other lady in the mountain climbing party). She is an inspired photographer with a magnificent camera ( I Leica her camera !!!) and is also a professional gardener. I don’t know how she got the dramatic photo of our hills to the northeast above..

SANDRA’S SPiDERS
She found spiders I’d never seen. The one above has a suspicious red mark on its little belly. We don’t have Black Widows here (or any other highly poisonous ones), I’ll just call this baby a Black Stepmom..

This is a spider here.

Seei!

Spider on one eaten up leaf.

And this crazy creature – I wasn’t sure if it was a spider or some kind of crab or what. So I broke down and asked Dr. Smarty Pants. It’s a spider. The thing that looks like a shell is actually its abdomen and thorax, colored white – the perfect camouflage for this plant.

SANDRA’S FRUIT AND FLOWERS
A lone mulberry – I didn’t know the tree was fruiting.

I thought this was a wild orchid… but I think I’m wrong.

A cactus flower, or bud thereof.

No idea what this flower is.

And even more mystified by this one. (Sandra had lots of photos of flowers I know – but I can blog about those any old time.)

Betty Cat
SANDRA’S LOOK AT MY BEST FRIENDS (her photos are better than mine)
Betty, perched on the power box.

GoGo
GoGo, sitting above the ground – as always.

Po
Po, flying through a field.

MORE SANDRA CRITTERS
A green ladybug?

A moth in the daytime.

The yellow butterfly I noticed at the beginning of my blogging, and could never capture for a photo.

A water walker on our pond.

A flight of whatnots, and their shadows.

AND – What the GARDENER sees!

SANDRA’S DRAGONGLIES
I told you a little bit about dragonflies a couple of weeks ago, and had a few crappy photographs. Well, Sandra and Austin stayed up half the night one night getting MAGNIFICENT photographs of them. Prepare to be impressed!

This is the dragonfly larvae in the pool.

They crawl out of the water and then “back-dive” out of their skins.

Then they hang around for a bit while they adjust to life outside and start to stretch out their wings.

What amazing wings!
A huge THANK YOU to Sandra for sharing her incredible shots with us.
I close the photos with her dramatic view of the cottage.

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FARM NEWS – the only news is that Austin told me some fellow drove here from Naitasirii (about 3 hours away) with a snake he wanted to sell to Austin. Austin didn’t buy it, but he left the snake anyway. Austin tells me it is in a bucket. I have not opened the bucket yet. Maybe next week.
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