You're so welcome, Butterflyaddict - nature is my much-enjoyed hobby! Your local butterflies are probably in their caterpillar and/or chrysalis stage right now. Most of the ones you saw in Feb. were individuals that had overwintered - you should be seeing another influx soon. By late summer/fall, the generations will have overlapped, and you'll see them every day, not just in waves. I'm lucky to live in the country, close to the Desoto National Forest, where host plants are everywhere, so I get to see lots of butterflies. I saw two different tiger swallowtails this morning, a male and a yellow female. I made pictures of them, but they didn't turn out, because they were basking in the sun, and were overexposed. I used my editing functions, but they didn't make the pictures better. The female was really beautiful! I checked out the big false nettle patch for question marks - didn't find any cats - but got these pictures - As it turns out, there are still some parasitic critters doing their damage to the red admiral cats, because I found one of those little white cocoons in a nest. But fortunately, that was the only one I found - red admirals are beyond plentiful this year. Here's a cat in the patch, raising itself - I always find a lot of frogs in the nettle patch. This one was perched by a nest - Sherry

Gary, common yellowthroats are exceptionally pretty, aren't they? Even if they ARE common warblers, the male yellowthroat is so bright and colorful. I'm only used to seeing them along roadside ditches, but I'm sure they show up other places, too. But I think SPF would have noticed that mask...it is SO prominent. However, I also know that yellow is one of the more common colors on warblers, and getting a quick glimpse of one makes it tricky to figure out which one it is, especially if you aren't a hardcore birder. Poor SPF. We have totally confused her now. I'm tellin' ya...birdwatching ain't for sissies! Haha. Marcia (ps...just to make it more confusing, they get ya with names, too. The Common Yellowthroat is one warbler and the Yellow-throated Warbler is another. At least those two don't look much alike, thankfully. The Yellow-throated is black & white with a bright yellow patch on his throat, where the Common Yellowthroat is mostly yellow with a black mask. Getting MORE confused yet?)

I posted this on a nother thread but I'm going to put it here to :o) I enjoyed it as well! Everyone was so nice and welcoming. Now I just have to try to place everyones real name to their screen name on here. I want to thank everyone for lovely plants,flowers and veggie plants and most of all I thank you for your fellowship! ~Kim

My earliest memory is only a small snippet in time. I may have been 4 years old. My dad was in the barn yard trying to start the family car, a Model T Ford. One rear wheel was jacked up and the front wheels chocked. I suppose this was to prevent the car from running over him as he hand cranked the engine. He couldn't be sure if the transmission was in neutral or that it would stay there. I do not recall if he was able to get it running. I know that some time between that event and by the time I was 6 yrs old, that car had been discarded. He sold the engine and transmission to someone who was going to make a stationary power stand and the remaining chassis was dragged into a brushy patch in the pasture below a hill our house sat on. There it lay slowly disappearing with time. I have a fleeting memory of Christmas visit when my mother took my sister and me to her parents place in Oklahoma, 500 miles from our home. I remember nothing about the trip to and from that place. I remember being tossed back and forth like a ball by my uncles and badly buring both hands. Their kitchen was equipped with a wood burning stove. Granny had cleared the ash box and placed the glowing embers in a metal box. It was at that moment when I ran from the living room into the kitchen, tripped and fell jamming both hands into the ash box and burned both hands. It hurt and I suppose that is why I remembered that incident. Mom was angry with me because she had told me a short time before not to run in the house, and now I was injured. For the next week, one of my aunts attended to my wounds. My fingers were loosely wrapped in gauze and chicken fat applied to keep the fingers from sticking together. Each day, she cleaned the wounds and re-dressed the fingers. She was very gentle and used a chicken feather to touch my burns because I was so very fearful of anyone touching the burned region - it hurt too much. It must have worked becasue I did not develop any lasting scars. My reliable memories begin at about age 5.8 yr when I entered first grade at a one-room country school. We had been reduced to travel by horse and buggy for a few years until our economic condition improved. We were unhappy with out lot in life, however, our home life was good and our little family was a very cohesive unit.