Something From the Trail Camera

The only pictures I was able to retrieve from three working trail cameras included these two shots.  I'll be checking on the cameras before too long to determine if the lack of pictures on two of them was due to operator error - namely my failure to return a fresh SD card to the camera or to turn it on.  Or if there is some other sort of equipment failure.  I do know that batteries are all good as that is something I check each and every time.

Stay tuned...

Prairie Flowers And a Bonus

The prairie flowers are outstanding this year.  With a prescribed burn in the works for this fall I cannot wait until next year.

Here's a shot of the grassland looking northeast.

And dang if I didn't get a picture of a couple of hummingbird moths sipping nectar from the bergamot.

It's a rare-enough sight to see these curious flying insects.  That darn delay feature on the iPhone camera is plenty of opportunity to miss a rare shot.  Arghhh.

Also called a hawk moth or sphinx moth they belong to the Sphingidae family and are so-named as a consequence of their hovering flight patterns.  Here's some YouTube video...

Meatball Farming

It is hot, hot, hot today.  The heat from the four-wheeler was hot.  Even the wind is hot.  Just got back from fetching the SD cards from the three trail cameras only to find out that two of them were entirely blank.  Two weeks outdoors and they were devoid of pictures.  Did I mistakenly reinsert the old card instead of a new card?  Or did I fail to turn the camera on?  Or was there a malfunction with the device?  What the heck.

I'll check them again at the end of the week.

Last weekend during Schuetzenfest the boys completed the planting of five wildlife food plots.  I prepared them with a couple of applications of glyphosate (RoundUp) and they disced and rototilled, broadcast seed and fertilizer and dragged the plots with old tractor tire chains for a somewhat decent seed to soil contact.

This is what I call Meatball Farming.  And in a good year we get pretty decent results with all manner of stuff growing to tide the critters over the winter and into the following spring.  Where we seed clover we can get a crop that persists for years.  All the critters like clover.

Here are some pictures.  In the space of one week we've had fairly decent germination.  Let's hope the rains continue on a regular basis...

Slippery Bandit

This weekend was Schuetzenfest 2013.  There was the annual smell of spent powder, testosterone and barbeque in the air. 

In any event the other day we dragged the turkey fryer out to make a big meal of fried catfish and hushpuppies.  If you are going to deep fry anything it is best to do it outdoors where you won't get greasy oil on anything but the grass.

Sid made a remoulade sauce to go with the frijoles, tortillas, homemade garden salsa and other assorted sides.  The meal was fantastic.  After we cleaned the place-up we put the lid on the fryer and left it outside to cool-off.  The plan was to filter the oil the following day and make a humongous batch of onion rings.

Morning dawned.  Padding out the garage with a steaming cuppa joe I notice the lid off the fryer and oily spatter all over the driveway. 
 

I'm thinking - What the heck.  Were we that messy last night?

The tip-off that it wasn't us came with a close examination of the greasy, oily trail of the slippery bandit.

A raccoon actually climbed into the pot.  Feasted upon the bits and scraps of fried fish and hushpuppies, climbed back out (without tipping the pot over), shook-off on the driveway spraying oil everywhere and sauntered-off leaving oily footprints in his wake.

Needless to say we pitched the oil.  No onion rings.

Return of the Tall Ships

The Frau took these photos of a couple of tall ships making the passage into the Sturgeon Bay ship canal on their way to Green Bay for this weekend's Tall Ship Festival.

The first ship is outfitted with cannon.  Awesome...

 

Mugging For the Camera

I'm sure that deer do all sorts of routine things all day long that nobody gets to see.

Why do they do it for a trail camera?

You'd think this deer was on a fashion runway...

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Gemini

Just like clockwork the twins and their mom are making the rounds at this trail camera location...

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Same Doe?

Six days apart.

Same pose.

Same deer?

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Wooden Boat Festival - Redux

Some pictures from the Door County Maritime Museum's Classic and Wooden Boat Festival...

RMS Titanic

Door County Pot Heads

The Commando

The Boatmobile

And the ever-vigilant USCG

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Checking Out the Trail Camera

A velvet buck giving the trail camera an up-close and personal inspection...

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Hope he doesn't spar with it when the rut starts.

Wooden Boat Festival

More about the Door County Maritime Museum's Classic and Wooden Boat Show.  These boats were constructed of 3/8 inch plywood, zip ties and Sikaflex (an adhesive caulk).

During the sea trials some of these vessels capsized immediately, one broke in-half on the return leg of its maiden voyage and others completed their sea trials successfully.  Albeit slowly.

Here are some before and after pictures...

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Learn more about the Sikaflex Challenge here.

Wooden Boat Festival

A selection of photos of classic wooden boats from that past weekend at the Door County Maritime Museum's Classic and Wooden Boat Festival.

Enjoy...

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Wooden Boat Festival

One of the mainstay summer events on the peninsula is the Door County Maritime Museum's Classic and Wooden Boat Festival.

Classic wooden boats, a wooden boat-building competition, fun on the water and much more.

This morning as we were putting our 'aluminum' boat in the water a guy with a German Amphicar drover out of the water, up the ramp and out of sight.

No trailer, no nuth'n.

Later on The Frau and I rendezvoused with Sid and his Frau to watch the fun.

Check back this week for a taste of the festivities.

You can learn more about the Amphicar here.

If Only The Dead Could Talk

When I'm out on my bicycle it is a rare occurence that I do not encounter one of these roadside shrines.

This one is particularly sad.  Oh, it's well-maintained and fairly elaborate.  But is is also a shrine to a very young person.  June 8, 1995 to September 10, 2011.

 

 

Family Life

Another doe and her fawn - different location...

Hot Road

Probably one of the coolest names for a road I've seen lately.

Wonder of Homer Simpson lives around here...

Bucks

A solitary buck...

And a pair of bucks...

All sporting their velvet antlers.