Sapphires or ……

Flies just being flies

Kiwi Calligraphy

Rufous Hummingbird Sequence – 8 photos

Tayberry Foliage

Tayberries are a cross between a blackberry and a red raspberry. Ours do quite well, producing a large fruit but have a problem of becoming very soft and hard to pick when ripe. This problem has prevented them from becoming a viable commercial crop. Great for the home garden though, not much care, disease resistant and a tasty aromatic berry.

Bark

This is just a tiny section of bark on the 750+ year old Douglas Fir that is just behind our house. The textures and depth is wonderful to see and feel. At the base the bark is probably more than 8 inches (20.32 cm) thick and has protected the tree from small fires, most likely caused by lightning strikes.

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Spring Cherry Blossoms

Spring Foliage – 2 photos

Banana Slug

To be more specific this is a Pacific Banana Slug (Ariolimax columbianus), one of three air-breathing land Banana Slugs. While they don’t have a large fan base they do provide a useful service (when not eating your garden) of cleaning up dead vegetation and turning it into compost.

Stretched out they can sometimes be nearly 10 inches (25.4 cm) long so they aren’t hard to miss. Snakes will eat them occasionally but it isn’t a pretty sight!