The Gluttonous Bee

I would like to introduce you to our gluttonous bee. I took this picture about 1.5 months ago when our garden was a happy garden. It was healthy and full of squash blossoms each morning. Now.....it's a sad pest-filled garden, but...that's another story.

This is our cute and fuzzy gluttonous bee. Granted, we had a ton of bees at the time but this guy was different.
He spent several minutes inside of this flower and then moved to another. He was COVERED in pollen. He tried to fly away but kept sinking as he flew. I KID YOU NOT!
He finally gave up and landed on this leaf.
He then proceeded to rub off some of the pollen from his hind legs. You can see some of the pollen in the picture, as well as his legs at work.
Liftoff!!! I tried to get video of him flying off but it didn't come out. He looked like a drunk bee as he flew off. He kind of went side to side whilst dipping down a few inches from the weight of the pollen.

Another turtle

This past week we looked out our dining room and we saw this....a poor turtle had somehow found there way into our yard and managed to flip itself over. To top things off, it was roasting hot outside. This is the second big turtle in our yard that we have found, the first one was in our pond.
We flipped him over and he went on his merry way. He moved pretty quickly into the bushes. Hopefully he won't come back and go into the pond like the last one.

Pointe Royale's Icy Duck Beach

We live in a Golf Community called Pointe Royale out here in Branson. Sorry Mom...she hates when I post things like that. Please don't come over and kill me...you'll just prove her right and I just hate when that happens. It's no secret for most locals anyhow. Andy Williams and some of the Lennons also live in here, as all people that Ride the Ducks are told as they drive by on their way to the Dam so...really, I'm not telling you anything that the typical tourist wouldn't know. In addition, there is a guard shack at the front entrance and well....please don't forget that we are in the Ozarks...Most people out here own weapons so...yeah, you've been warned. Better mom?

Near the front of the complex is one of several ponds. In the winter this turns into an icy beach of sorts for the ducks to gather. I got a few strange looks as I pulled my car over to take a picture of this. Granted, it was pretty stinkin' cold so they were probably wondering why I was getting out of my car in the first place. Anywho, enjoy the pic.

Turtle Soup anyone?

This past weekend we were working near the pond when Adam noticed a big ol' turtle in our lower pond. Normally this would be ok, however, we now have fish in our pond. They are in the level that is right above this one. If one of the fish decided to swim a little too close to the waterfall.....turtle food! So... As cute as he was, all 12 inches of him, he had to go! No killing my new Koi fish!
We had been lounging around so Adam was still in his PJs. Hehe. It took a little while because Adam had to move a bunch of the rocks. For some reason the turtle didn't want to be caught. *snicker
Success with the shovel!
One of the great things about living in Pointe Royale....there is a path that leads right to the lake. This is his new home. MUCH better than our pond.
GOOD RIDDANCE!

My 1st Geocache Hunt

So....I was all excited about going geocaching. I used to letterbox but decided to give this a try. There are tons of caches around Branson and I wanted to try out the free iPhone application that I had downloaded last month. Heh....little did I know...it wasn't going to be quite as fun as I had hoped.

Adam and I took off around 7 PM to drive the whopping 2 miles to the closest cache near Table Rock Dam. The weather was perfect and everything is nice and green and there are wildflowers everywhere.

We parked and followed the trail...through tall grass and a LOT of Cedar Trees. For those of you who aren't familiar with ticks, Cedar Trees are what I call Tick Trees. They lie in wait for you to walk under them and then they drop on you. BLECH! So, there I was covering my head under the trees and constantly checking for ticks and rubbing my legs so that nothing could burrow into my skin. Yes, I was absolutely BRILLIANT in my choice of clothing. I didn't think to change out of my shorts. Arggg. Eventually we had to go off the path and into the forest-y area. Poison Oak popping up all over the place, both tiny and large plants. We finally found the ammo box that it was in and I high-tailed it out of there! Sidenote: There were 2 people that found the box yesterday. I had no idea so many people did this on vacation.

As I was looking at some random cacti growing on the side of the trail, I felt something on my leg. At first I thought I was just brushing against the tall grass but NOOOOOO, there were 2 seed ticks crawling on both legs. YUCK. Stupid curiosity of mine. I mean really, who thought there would be random cacti growing in Branson, MO?

We picked off a few ticks before getting into the car and then more at home. I actually yelped at one point as I was looking in the mirror to spot ticks. One was crawling on my thigh (queue yelp), and was running for it when I tried to grab it. Of course it was a big one with a white spot on it. Ewwww. All of the other 15-20 that we found were seed ticks.

I think I may wait until the winter to start looking for these things. It's so sad because the scenery is beautiful around here...you just can't walk around in it.

Chewie and the Squirrel

Yes, it's time for a few more pictures of Chewie and his antics. Every year there is a squirrel that likes to tease Chewie. He gets right next to the window and looks him in the eye. The little stinker knows that Chewie is stuck indoors and takes full advantage of that little fact.

This year the squirrel has been sitting in my pots and attacking the birdseed bags on our deck. There are also a couple of chipmunks that have joined in the fun this year. Oh yay. It IS pretty funny because the squirrels keep ganging up on the chipmunks. They are constantly chasing each other off. I followed one of the chipmunks the other day to try and figure out how far he is traveling to our deck. I followed him around to the front of our house, up the driveway, across the street and up the hill of our neighbor's house. His cheeks were packed pretty full when I saw him last. I'll need to take a few pics of those guys next.



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