May has been a busy month for me, which is good because it means I'm making money (that I quickly spend!) and that I've gotten to see a lot of the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes region of NY during a wonderful time of year.
While doing some sidewalk patching in Dundee, NY, I was getting water from a local stream in the mornings, and these fine fellows dropped by to supervise. They're hard to see in this photo, but it ended up being about a half dozen turkey buzzards, stretching their wings in the morning sun.
Of course, they quit showing off once I took out my phone and started paying too much attention to them, but they just sit on these branches and flap their wings in the morning, getting warmed up for a day of soaring and searching for dead animals. The pictures don't show their size very well, but true to their name, they are about the size of small turkeys. Fortunately, they stay clear of the roads (unlike the wild turkeys), and usually won't even go after roadkill until some other animal drags it away from the road and into the woods.
We've also been doing some sidewalk repair and finishing some installation in the town of Bath, NY, where the apple trees had a magnificent bloom this spring. There still aren't nearly as many honeybees as there used to be, but I've been seeing an increase in their numbers each year for the last 3 years.
Some of the repairs we're doing are because some inconsiderate utility workers were driving heavy equipment where they shouldn't have. Whoever was operating this excavator needs more training. Our own guys will do stuff like this sometimes. Usually, if you break it, you have to jackhammer it out, which helps ensure that nobody makes this mistake more than once.
We didn't have to replace this utility lid, and thankfully the sidewalk held, but I can't help but wonder what someone drove up this pedestrian sidewalk that was heavy enough to crack this lid. This was a road grade cover and lid, and can easily hold up to heavy truck traffic. I've been asking around, trying to figure it out, but so far it's still a mystery.
Some of what we're replacing is our own damn fault, like the shoddy workmanship on this handicap access ramp. In our defense, it rained almost every day last year, and it's a miracle that we were only a couple months behind schedule by the end of the season.
At home, the woodchucks have come out of hibernation. I already got one large one in the 'live' trap, though it was already dead when I got home and checked the traps. This is one of three woodchuck holes I've found so far this year.
The peeper frogs have been singing me to sleep every night, and this year, I finally got another photo of one. I tried getting some video of him in action, with his little neck all ballooned out, but it didn't come out very well. These little guys are normally extremely shy, and hard to spot, but every once in a while I'll find one that has climbed up something near the house. They really seem to enjoy this aluminum ladder.
The bullfrogs have also come out and started asserting their dominance. This particular guy was headed off the property, looking for greener pastures. He had no problem letting me take several close up photos while he picked which way to go. I was a little worried he going to steal the extension cord, but it was still there when he left.
The irises are blooming spectacularly this year, and have been a real treat to come home to every day. This variety grows and spreads like crazy around here. We got our first ones for free, as spoils of helping a family member clean up her flower beds, and we now have dozens of them blooming all over the yard. I really enjoy the ring of them around this old stump. This tree is what I milled into the wood that I used to build my first chicken tractor.
I've also seen a return of the snakes this spring, now that they've had time to recover from our roaming chickens. If you've never seen chickens go after a snake... it's like a horror movie. Chickens will literally tear a snake to shreds and eat it, and the loss of our snake population was the biggest downside of having the roaming chickens. We have a pretty good variety of non-poisonous snakes around here, and just a couple poisonous ones. This garter snake has continued to hang out around the compost, and has gotten to be the biggest of its kind that I've ever seen.
I have some other pictures, but you'll have to keep checking back, if you want to see them. I'll keep this short and sweet today, dear Hive friends... this post really only exists because I had some photos that were too good for the trash, but didn't really fit in with any of the other posts I'm working on.
I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope to see you back for more!