Ran-DUM

Without even the pretense of a theme, I give you the following: an unrelated collection of random pictures haphazardly assembled into a single post and presented in no particular order whatsoever.

Insectorsaurus!

For those of you who've seen Monsters vs. Aliens, you'll remember he godzilla-esque grub named Insectorsaurus, seen above vacationing in the pacific northeast, I think.  Anyway, below are a couple shots of something (moth?  spider with wings?) we dubbed Insectosaurus because it was huh-YOOGE.  I mean, for a  bug...it was...bigger than normal.

This thing either uses the most potent eye lash extender in the universe, or it has ferns growing out of its skull.

The Fowl 

"So let's go over it one more time.  I squawk, then you squawk, then I squawk, then you squawk.  Never ever squawk at the same time.  That defeats the purpose.  We're trying to create a continuous stream of squawking here."

Say hello to my least favorite animals on this farm.  I almost said least favorite life forms, but then I remembered how many times I've been covered in poison ivy since we've been here and decided to reserve that precious title for the plant whose existence I would gladly wipe permanently from the surface of this globe if only I had sufficient quantities of a weed killer sufficiently potent to do the job.  To borrow a quotation from City Slickers, "If hate [for poison ivy] were people, I'd be CHINA!"  I digress.  These two creepy buzzards are always together.  As far as I can tell, they squawk.  That's it.  It's a brain-grating, tranquility-killing sound which they make with a maddening regularity similar to Chinese water torture (that's two references to China in the same post?  Hmm.).  I think they've managed to avoid extinction by simply being the most annoying creature in the food chain, such that no predator can stand being around them long enough to kill them.  Plus, look at 'em?  Look tasty to you?  I bet only the French eat these things.   I think back to the episode when the hunters (to the extent that a sentient creature armed with GUN shooting an unsuspecting bird from the road constitutes a "hunter") killed our peahen and think, "why couldn't it have been either one of these two?"  Sigh.

One other thing they do is fight, and it is hi-LARIOUS.  The black annoying bird  (hereinafter "BAB") chases the grey annoying bird (hereinafter "GAB") in circles roughly 20 feet in diameter -without stopping- for a good five minutes (sometimes more).  We have no idea what starts these squabbles, but GAB runs around like it's on fire and BAB hunts GAB in a manner not unlike Jack Nicholson's character in "The Shining."

Produce

The garden is putting out some good stuff.  So far we've been eating lettuce, green beans, cucumbers, garlic, onions, shallots and some cilantro.  Neither the tomatoes nor the assortment of hot peppers are ready yet, but they're coming along.  The onions are potent.  Jess tells me this has something to do with the sulfur she added to the soil.  I cut into one of these puppies and I look like I've just watched a rerun of the national title game between Ohio State and Florida (ungh...I think I just threw up a little in my mouth).  They are delicious, and it's exceedingly cool to just hop outside (I walk, actually) and pull what I want right out of mother Earth.

Oh, and check this out.  The cucumber plant puts out these grabby-lasso kind of things which hold the vines in place.  This one caught my attention because it looked just like a treble clef!  Kinda cool.

Not the greatest pic -took it with my phone.  Still, pretty crazy huh?  Oh, and check this one out:

We have separate garden for food just for the animals, things like sunflower seeds, alfalfa, corn...wheat, maybe?  The above is a sunflower sprouting with the shell of the seed still on it.  Several of them had this.  Kind cool.