Tag: Nature

After a cloudy, rainy and dreary day, the sun came out through the broken clouds just before sunset. I walked past the window and saw that the neighbor’s tree was lit up from the sun.

We had a nice and really red sunrise this morning. I just happened to catch it walking past the East-facing kitchen window when I was getting more coffee this morning.

This autumn, the leaves around Mount joy are seemingly more colorful than usual. They are much more vivid than I have seen them in this area since I’ve lived here.

We got out for a walk this evening. It was nice to enjoy the weather and we were outside just in time for today’s great sunset..

The hurricane moved back out over the Atlantic after wrecking Florida. The moisture and clouds from it are working their way in here today. We got one of those outstanding Hurricane sunsets out of it.

We had a nice fall sunrise this morning.

Today we had to go to Lancaster to get a hose to water the garden. We ran into a short delay when a flock of geese decided to waddle across Harrisburg Pike right in front of us.

This morning we had a line of thunderstorms approaching from an MCS last night. The timing was right that the tops were out ahead in time for sunrise. It gave us a pretty bright pink sunrise.

We were leaving a ball field close to sunset today and some cool iridescent clouds caught my eyes. I don’t notice them nearly as much in the summer as the winter, so it was nice to see them.

I have been noticing tons of the common white butterflies around the past week or two. Today was the first time that I had my phone on me to grab a picture of them.

We have our first rose of the year blooming on the rose bush. I smelled it when I was outside so I had to get a picture to share it.

We were walking home from Joy’s this evening and noticed the white tree that had been planted on Main Street is blooming. It’s a neat tree that’s different from the others along the streets.

We were finally able to get out for a nice walk this evening. There’s just been too much going on. We saw some dogwoods blooming at Memorial Park.

There are a bunch of various types of bulbs that someone planted in the vacant lot across the street. They’re in full bloom now. I noticed them this morning.

We got out for a nice walk this evening after supper. The trees are blooming, and some bulbs are starting to flower.

Today I noticed or at least took the time to go get a picture of some of the trees that are blooming. This year they’re not going all at once but instead they’ve been more one at a time.

This evening I noticed a pretty nice sunset for a change. Those are harder to see here in the winter because of the neighbors’ houses mostly blocking it.

I looked out the back door to see if it was snowing yet. I was reminded of Nan and Pop telling me when they saw robins when I saw four of them hopping around the tree stump.

This morning we had a nice sunrise but it was more about the clouds glowing pink off to the north instead of the horizon..

This morning we had another good sunrise. It was a bright and colorful one with the clouds off to the east and overhead.

This morning it was very clear outside. Not even a single cloud formed before sunrise and it made for a less colorful but very nice and clear sunrise.

The sunrise this morning that I caught was cloudier than the recent ones but still was a nice colorful one and a great way to start off the day.

Another great sunrise this morning. At least I thought so.

It’s another cold morning with the temperature in the lower teens but I had to go outside and grab a picture of the awesome sunrise.

One single cloud first appeared in front of the sun giving that awesome winter irreverence effect that you see at times when the clouds are ice crystals

As I was getting another cup of coffee this morning I noticed one of those super deep red sunrises out the window. As always I had to stop and look at it a for a couple of minutes.

As long as we’ve lived here, there have has been no shortage of squirrels around the neighborhood. It’s funny to see them sitting in odd places sometimes, or even normal places, such as on the tree stump.

Recently we’ve been hearing a bald eagle in the evening. Earlier in the summer I thought I heard one but never did see it. We’ve been hearing it on our evening walks daily now but haven’t been able to spot it. I also hear it in the mornings and same deal. Never looking in the right spot at the right time. We were in the car this morning ready to go out caching when it finally landed on top of one of the Amtrak power poles.

I didn’t work out today. I was too busy watching the tree guys do their thing. That sort of thing is always very intriguing for me to watch.

We have been seeing many cicada killers flying around and also lots of them lying around dead. I don’t remember seeing them like this before.

Our milkweed hasn’t been doing all that well this summer, so it hasn’t attracted many butterflies. Today was the first that we actually saw one there. I moved it from the scrawny milkweed plant to a larger one.

We had a pretty good thunderstorm here this evening. On top of that, there was a nice double rainbow this evening as the storm moved off to the east.

Today, I spotted the first monarch butterfly that I am one hundred percent positive that I saw.

There are lots of mushrooms growing out of the neighbor’s lawn this summer. They’re large white ones with flat tops.

Just for shits, I stuck some of the milkweed plants I started from seeds in pots that we had lying around the other year. They’ve come back up in those pots since. This spring they seem to be doing really well in the pots.

I was getting read to head out to the garage when I heard what sounded like weak gunshots. At first, I didn’t notice it when I looked out the window, but later I saw that a large branch had split and fell from our tree.

It was a nice day today, unlike yesterday was. I got an older WOD done. After supper, we went for a walk and saw some flowers.

It’s always nice to see wildlife on our patio. First I saw a robin hopping around. Shortly after the robin flew off, I saw a squirrel out there.

I have always felt the need to stop and look at a awesome shows nature gives is and I don’t see that changing any time soon. Lift is too short to not enjoy the free things. We were out for our evening walk and arrived near the train station with nearly perfect timing for both sunset and moon rise today. It’s pretty open up there so you can get a decent view of it.

A Mourning Dove On Our Hanging PlantHere is a photo of a mourning dove that was sitting on our old hanging plant right at the door. I walked into the garage while I was eating a hard boiled egg and heard a dove calling much more loudly than normal. You normally can barely hear them inside unless they’re close by but this one sounded like it was right there.

I noticed a bird was flying back and forth between the tree and our dormant milkweed plant. It was pecking at and pulling fibers from the dead milkweed and flying off with them.

I woke up and knew today would probably be the best day weather wise of the week to take my barbell outside and complete the running version of this week’s vault WOD. It’s essentially Isabel then run 800 meters then Grace. I did the row version of this last night at too light of a weight but it made sense to try a lighter one and complete the WOD rather than get bogged down by weight.

It seems like just a few weeks ago it was still pretty chilly with snow on the ground and the threats of more of the white stuff in the forecast. We had to go pick a few things up and I waited in the car while Molly went into the store. They tend to have boxes everywhere and people everywhere so I decided I didn’t want to go in. While just looking around I noticed a patch of bulbs blooming near main street just to the side of where the car was parked.

I was grabbing another cup of coffee and as I always do when it’s starting to get light I walk over to the only window in the kitchen which happens to be east facing. Unfortunately it’s most a blocked view due the the neighbor’s house but still you can see the south east sky which is perfect for sunrise here in the deep of winter. Today’s sunrise was another exceptionally deep red one.

I just walked into the kitchen to get some more coffee when I noticed the red glow coming in the east facing window. Really it’s the only window but that’s not a big deal. Due to the neighbor’s house you can only see to the southeast. The horizon was this deep almost lava red or even the red color when metal starts glowing a bit from heat. The clouds above it were darker gray with some red or purple mixed in but the real show was the deep red glow nearer to the horizon today.

We’ve been meaning to get back to the Conewago falls area when the river was low. We finally made it there today.

I haven’t seen many monarch butterflies around our house this year. Other years I saw them most of the day.

We finally made it to Conewago pothols when the river was low enough to see them. We spent some tikme enjoying the nice weather out there.

We spotted a monarch butterfly hanging out near our rose bush today.

I saw the first monarch butterfly of 2020, or at least the first one that I am positive that I saw. I thought I saw one out of the corner of my eyes before, but today I was certain.

This evening, I happened to catch the moon near sunset glowing brightly above some clouds that were glowing bright from the setting sun.

our rose still has clusters of flowersThis is a photo of some red roses blooming on our rose bush. I looked out the front door this morning to see if we had any monarch butterflies flying around yet and the rose clusters caught my attention. The sun was hitting them just right that they were glowing super bright. I wanted to get a picture of it to post here but naturally my phone was dead and on the charger this morning.

I have been smelling honeysuckles for days now but didn’t see them. Turns out they must have been in the deep shadow in the trees the other evening when I went to see if I could find them. These always remind me of our house in Andalusia that had many trees in the large yard. Right outside my bedroom window was a holly tree. Honeysuckles grew on that tree so I’d smell them every spring.

We were walking out the door to the car and I thought I smelled flowers. I want to think honey suckles bit I didn’t see any where they typically grow. I could have sworn that’s what I was smelling but didn’t notice them. They could have been hidden in the shadows. My nose is also still a bit stuffy so it could be messing with my olfactory sense. It’s also under a constant state of irritation these days between the fire pit smoke and chain smoking next door neighbors.

Our rose bush normally blooms sometime around new years for what ever strange reason but it didn’t get to do that this year. It used to change colors when we first got it but it never really grew that well for us. We assumed it was just dead. One winter we had to have the yard dug up to fix the sewer. That was a shitty day. Thanks neighbor’s tree roots!

I haven’t noticed it lately but he’s obviously still alive and well. I thought the feral cats might have gotten him. Molly was doing her WOD today and I was watching her and helping count reps when the chipmunk darted past the sliding glass door to the patio. I think he lives under the neighbor’s patio since. It’s easy to miss him since his brown blends in pretty well with the color of the pavers in our patio, especially on a rainy day like today.

We decided to give the grocery store a shot today to see if it may be less busy than the weekend. We pulled in and parked and there in the middle of the Giant parking lot is a duck waddling around without a care in the world. I just had to take a picture of this. duck looking straight at me in the parking lot when I take his pictureThis picture contains a duck standing in the middle of the driving lane of a parking lot looking straight at me while I took his picture.

I haven’t yet had any like identifying what these are for sure but I really haven’t put a ton of effort into discovering it either. It’s really just a curiosity but I thought I’d share the picture of some spring positivist. Purple flowers across the streetIn this picture there is a plant with small four petaled purplish pink flowers that are blooming. They come up every year and every year I wonder what they are but then forget to look deeper into it.

Our pink swamp milkweed that we finally picked up last summer seems to be coming up again. We thought the original white one we got was the pink one but it was apparently mislabeled. It sucked that it wasn’t the one we got but the butterflies loved in none the less. We weren’t sure it was even going to come back up considering we didn’t buy it and plant it until August and the monarchs found it immediately.

Now that our bleeding hearts are fully blooming we know for sure they were a good choice for our shady front yard. The two smaller slower plants aren’t blooming yet but we had bought different kinds so maybe they’ll bloom later into the summer. Our bleeding hearts turned out niceOur bleeding hearts turned out nice. It looks like little green buds starting to emerge from the ground where the milkweed plants are too!

It was a very nice evening so I took the very short walk across the street to see what sort of flowers are blooming no. I noticed a few of the Daffodils are flowering. I always called them egg flowers when I was a little kid because of the yellow center and outside center makes it look like a perfectly cooked egg. Daffodil blooming at the curbThis picture shows a daffodil blooming.

I have posted before about the flowers along the street since the neighbor planted them. With all the negativity in the world and the not doing much of anything outside the house with the coronavirus happening at this time it sure is a nice break to see these flowers a few hundred feet away. He has all sorts of flowers planted so there is basically something in bloom at any time of the spring, summer of fall.

We decided to try bleeding hearts in our front yard last year, since they are perennials. They came back up and are starting to bloom now.

Trying to continue with the more positive posts with all of the bullshit going on right now. Maybe it could brighten someone’s day or something. Besides that I just like flowers. Yellow and white flowersThis is a picture showing some yellow and white flowers blooming. We were doing our typical once a week grocery store run when I noticed these flowers in the sun. They’re in an empty, unused lot of land.

Low ground level fog that was cool yet eerie a few weeks ago.This picture shows low fog rolling in along the ground during an early spring evening. With everything being so quiet the past couple of weeks I was reminded of this picture I took at a nearby park in early March. The skies had just cleared near sunset with ground fog suddenly appearing. I remember joking that it’s as if Stephen King and M.

It’s still March 30th and the trees along the street are blooming. Well technically they began blooming last week. They do smell good but they produce so much pollen that blows like dust everywhere and coats everything. I happened to notice the lower flowers today near the railroad tracks so I had to go grab a picture. A cluster of flowers on one of the trees across the street.This picture contains small pink and white flowers on trees.

We went to a nearby park to see if we could see the great horned owl that’s nested there with a baby.

I always appreciate the brighter colorful things in life. That really comes from back when I had my last cornea transplant and everything was not only clearer but so much brighter and more vibrant. I guess the cloudy cornea blocks more light than you’d think and you don’t know what your missing if you can’t see it. Ever since then I’d have to stop and look and enjoy every sunrise or sunset if I was able to.

We’ve been out on the NW River trail working on stages for a geocache hide in the evenings. We were out a little later this evening and got to enjoy the nice dusk settling in.

Every fall I think of how since I moved to Mount Joy, the leaves are not nearly as vivid as they were where I grew up. I’ve always been curious why that is, too.

We went to do a few geocaches today, and it turned out to be a strange day. We saw strange insects and upon our googling we found out that they were spotted lantern flies.

It was a decent day and we wanted some fresh air today so we opted to go out on the riverfront trail and grab a few caches. It was a pretty nice day though. Pretty much the whole time out there we kept seeing these butterflies flying all around. Butterfly on plant along the Northwest River TrailHere’s a picture of a reddish brown butterfly that we saw many of on the Northwest River Trail today.

Lately I’ve been thinking I want to hike back out to Wind cave and see what’s changed since we were last there for geocaching and a CITO. I had read of it before geocaching but we never got there until the cache was there. Actually I’ve been wanting to go back there since last summer but with all of last year’s rain we never made it. Wind Cave is not like the caves most people imagine with stalagmites and stalactites, it’s a tectonic cave which means it’s not formed by water dissolving rocks, instead it’s caused by faults.

We have been wanting to plant milkweed for a couple of years now. We finally found some and planted it in our front yard. Last spring, we actually had monarch butterflies and caterpillars on it.

There’s been a monarch chrysalis hanging on my chair on the porch for a while. We’ve been keeping a close watch on it. Today it cleared up, and we actually got the opportunity to watch the butterfly drop out of it.

We spent the spring looking for butterfly weed last year. First we checked at Hostetters in Mount Joy but they didn’t have any yet. We found ourselves at Stauffers later for other plants and decided to check there. We found swamp milkweed instead so gave it a try. I grew well and did attract monarchs. It turned out to be white instead of the pink it was marked as but it was okay.

We were out at the shopping center where they’re putting Whole foods in Lancaster today and saw a bunch of ducklings walking along the building.

Last fall I gathered tons of milkweed sees from the pods as they dried out thinking it was worth a shot to try to propagate more plants from seeds because we had a few people ask us about where to get the flower that attracts the butterflies. I had no idea if the seeds were mature enough to harvest or anything like that but I got a baggy of seeds to try it out.

I came across some old pictures of Swatara falls recently. That was one of my favorite geocaches of all time because it brought us to the falls.

We have a bunch of phallus like mushrooms growing out of the old mulch around our flowers.

It’s been a while since the United States has had a total solar eclipse. I want to think their was one when I was in elementary school but I can’t be sure if that was a total eclipse or not. I just remember us going outside and it getting darker. This one was the first I could understand and enjoy though. It wasn’t total here, we only had a partial eclipse.

Today was a first for me. It was the first time I’ve seen a live cicada that I can remember. I’m sure I saw them as a kid but don’t remember it. I certainly remember finding the molted skins all over the place but haven’t seen one live. We just happened to spot something large and green on a tree today and upon further inspection it was this cicada that was in the process of crawling out of it’s old skin.

When I was a kid I had a venus fly trap and thought it was the coolest thing. The whole idea that plants could even be carnivorous was really neat to me. I’ve always been interested in thinks that are different from the norm. I got more carnivorous plants years later. If I’d have to guess I’d say that was 15 years ago or so. It came with 6 plants in a little plastic green house type of thing.

We were on vacation at Cape May and decided to walk to the end of the beach to see the sunset. We ended up being there at the right time, with it right near the Cape May Point Lighthouse.

Over the past several days, I have been hearing an odd banning sound. We finally discovered the source today when Molly saw a bird repeatedly attacking our windows.

It was great that my girlfriend had off work today. With the weather being so nice we went to the nearby trail for a walk and t o collect some sunshine.

We got over to Chickies Rock Park for a geocache today. Sadly, the cache was a DNF for us, butt we did get to see some pretty spring flowers in bloom.

We got to play in the woods for my girlfriend’s day off.

I looked in the backyard and saw robins pecking in the snow. It reminded me a lot of Nan and Pop, who were always thrilled to see them in the spring.

We got out on the recently refinished NW river trail for a nice walk and some caches. We heard a train coming, like you hear so often along those tracks, but this time we were at a break in the trees at just the right spot to get a picture of it approaching.

We decided to go for a quick cache near Cove Park today. It was a near a neat area near an old dam. Nice quick walk and one couldn’t ask for a nicer day to do this. We happened to notice this woolly bear caterpillar on the trail. They remind me of he stuff my grandparents used to say. Of course things like this predicting weather is complete bullshit but still it’s was a nice memory Saw this little guy crossing the trail.

I am making more posts from our trip to the mountains as I come across some pictures. We had a great thunderstorm and I got this frame from a video of lightning over the mountain.

Last night, a meteor came down in Canada and lit up the night sky as it burned up.

It’s not something that happens all too often but an earthquake occurred in Illinois this morning. Of course my first thought was whether it was on the new Madrid fault but it wasn’t. It registered 5.2 on the Richter scale and doesn’t seem to have caused any major damage. It looks like there have been four aftershocks. one has to wonder how many of the people that live there are aware of the New Madrid fault

Last weekend we visited Bushkill falls in northeastern Pennsylvania. Our trip began on an ugly looking day in which it looked like it could rain at any minute. It was a bit of a later start than I would have liked but that happens some times. It’s only about a 2½ hours drive from here. When we arrived the sun came out and pretty much stayed out the whole time. That’s something we haven’t seen a lot of this spring.

Cassini Tastes Organic Material at Saturn’s Geyser Moon I saw some pretty exciting news from NASA. Cassini, the space craft out near Saturn detected higher temperatures than expected on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Cassini flew through a geyser like eruption and sensed water vapor and organic materials. I thought this was pretty amazing news. I only wish we had more space probes out there exploring

Space never ceases to amaze me. A gamma ray burst was detected from a start explosion. It became the farthest away object visible with the naked eye.

We went to a geo event at Blue Marsh today. It was actually pretty interesting getting some information of how search and rescue works and hearing about Middle Creek Search and Rescue. You have to really appreciate the work they do. It was really interesting seeing how the k9s do their work. Of course after the very interesting presentations we wandered off to find some geocaches. It was really a nice area to explore and we’ll absolutely have to return to Blue Marsh some day.

Today was the summer solstice. The sun is moving south now. Soon the sun will set in the arctic, and it’ll be snow time!

Last night on the news they were talking about Gypsy moths in York county.. I had forgotten all about them until I saw that. It reminded me of when I was a kid at the mountains near Hazleton when they were bad one year. That was interesting that year. Even though it was summer everything looked like winter because there were no leaves left on anything. with in a week or so they had eaten everything green.

Last Saturday we went geocaching along the Conestoga trail near Pequea. It was my first time seeing Suzies hole, and it was a great view.

We hid a cache at Chickies Rock county park a few days ago. Knowing where it is we can see the location from the overlook trail so we decided to stop in and go out to the overlook and see if any cachers were there. We ran into iBrew. It was nice to see him. We then headed out to the overlook to watch the sun set. Here’s a picture.

My girlfriend had been wanting to use her camera, and I remembered reading about the snow geese at Middle Creek. It was really cool to see them when we headed over to check it out.

We decided to check out the ice on the river today. It was really cool on the York county side of the river. There seemed to be lots of pressure pushing the ice against the western banks. We could hear the ice squeaking and cracking as the water tried to push it. There was also plenty of broken pieces of ice on top and pushed up along the bank. There were also a few louder cracks out further.

It’s been below freezing for a few days now. Actually it’s been getting into the single digits at night and teens in the day. We’ll be keeping an eye on the river for a while. Below will be a few pictures from today. Icy iceThis photo shows a couple of blocks of ice on top of the sheet ice on the river. River Ice Towards BridgesThis picture shows more ice on the frozen Susquehanna River.