Creatures

A quick post, mainly to show some photos.

It's still been raining every day here. The usual pattern seems to be thunderstorms in the afternoon, and by mid-to-late evening the stars are out again.

Friday was mostly sunny, but some clouds built up during the late afternoon. Suddenly a huge storm appeared. We had gone out to find something to eat and ended up in La Salsa, in the mall next to I-35. During our meal, the heavens opened. I have never seen so much rain fall, and so quickly. The parking lot turned into rivers feeding a lake (guess where we were parked?!) Making a dash for the car got us soaked of course, but luckily we had brought the Jeep rather than the Golf. Driving home was interesting to say the least, as every road was waterlogged, some parts with water cascading over the road surface. We had to make a long detour home as a train decided to park itself over the level crossing. And of course there's always some twat who wants to go faster - not content with my bimbling along, mindful of the atrocious road and weather conditions, a red truck caned past me. He didn't get past the train either though so boo sucks to him!

We spent the weekend shopping for homebrew components. Unfortunately Alan's brew barrel lid cracked open so the current batch of beer has gone flat as a pancake. We had to go and buy a keg and CO2 system (Happy birthday Alan!) in an attempt to rescue the beer. We'll need to force carbonate it to make it drinkable. We've got a chest freezer on the way too so we can cool the keg properly and now we will be able to do lagering also.

Saw the film 'Transformers' over the weekend, it was very good.

Anyway, on with the photos. In the grand ongoing vein of 'Things spotted in the garden', we have:

A Turkey Vulture! Alan spotted this on the electric pole yesterday afternoon. We see these quite often, soaring around, but don't often see one landed.







All the rain has brought out these weird creepy mushrooms all over the mulch in our flower beds. Eeew.


Here's one of the frogs I was on about the other day. We noticed a big hole had appeared under our gate post. Next time it rained I investigated and found this chap inside it. He's been there a good few days now. I think it's either a Texas Toad or Gulf Coast Toad, not sure.


Here's one from a few days previous, in the flower bed. This guy later burrowed into the mulch. This is a different species, this looks almost more frog-like rather than a toad but I'm still unenlightened as to exactly which type.


And a gratuitous deer shot; there had to be one!


We've also seen Painted Buntings in the garden, these are tiny bright coloured birds; red underneath with blue and yellow on top. Will try to get a picture soon but they're hard to catch.

Here's a giant cricket. He's about two inches from head to tail.


Remember the rain I keep talking about? Here's a storm front moving in, the other day.


Here's the sunset later that night. You do get some big skies around here at the moment.