Garden Visitors

Our summer garden is starting to come to a close, partly because the harvest season is winding down for the things we planted and partly because the farmer girl is not here to tend to it anymore.
But have enjoyed it and benefited from it...

 from squash, potatoes, onions, peppers and a few zucchini, to cantaloupe that we thought were watermelon at first, to enough tomatoes to freeze lots of tomato sauce and even some spaghetti sauce.  It has been fun for the girls of the house to see the fruits of our labors.

The boys,
well what's been fun for them were the visitors we had!

Deer!  Sorry no pictures, but there have been several.

A snapping turtle!  Did you know those little creatures are mean?  And will stand you off?  A make a weird hissing noise?

A skink.  Not to be confused with a skunk!  Again, no pictures...those critters are fast!

Lots of caterpillars.  One of which CJ finally talked me into bringing inside in the bug catcher.  And can you believe it, it actually lived, made a cocoon and turned into a butterfly!  I have paid companies to do this little experiment in the past.  No more!  There is a garden full of those wonders.

And then just recently, some kind of snake!  Luckily for me, the skin was all that was around to see at the time.  I jumped down into the garden bare foot and landed on it.  It took me a second to register it was the shed skin and NOT the actual snake, but I do think that in those few seconds my heart may have jumped into my throat!  While I am not terribly distressed over snakes, I prefer NOT to step on one!

This is minus about three more inches of skin that tore when I picked it up.

I am sure there have been more, like the raccoon we saw the wildlife protection people carry away in a trap last week and even possibly the fox we saw wandering the neighborhood at the first of the summer, but for now these will do for entertainment.