Some random bits of nature

I'm taking a break from the cards/collectibles for today. If that's cool with you, then read on -- if not, you can check back in on Friday for a regularly scheduled card post.

One thing that I've learned in my now 4+ years in Tennessee, is that when the warmer weather arrives, so do the thunderstorms (with the occasional threat of a tornado as well). I enjoy thunderstorms quite a bit, so their presence is always a welcome sight, and sound. The last couple of days have been pretty exciting, as we've had the perfect conditions for random pop-up storms -- the kind that show up out of nowhere, dump a bunch of rain, produce sounds that make one think that the world is ending, and the move off just as quickly as they arrived. Yesterday (Monday) was particularly good, especially in the morning, one came in while I was out doing some stuff out in the shed, I walked out to see what's what after listening to the sky talk for a few minutes, noticed some interesting cloud formations, and decided to take a few pictures before the rain/hail started.

Do you see the face?

I realize that some folks might not care too much about pictures of clouds, but I thought that they were neat, so... yeah!

Going back in time a little bit, to last week to be exact, we had one morning that got down to 50 degrees (brr!), and it must've been a little colder higher up, enough to produce some ice crystals, because we ended up with a sun halo. I hadn't seen too many of these before, so I of course had to try and take some pictures. Being that it's the sun, you know, kind of bright, I couldn't really see what I was doing, so I just had to point the phone in the suns general direction, and hope that a few of the photos came out.

I couldn't pull the phone far enough way to get the entire halo, but considering that I couldn't see what I was doing, I think that some of them didn't turn out too bad. Also, I didn't realize until I was looking at the photos on the computer, that a bunch of planes had to show up and spread their chemtrails (insert smiling emoji here) through my shots! Actually, I think the photos look a little more interesting with those condensation trails going through them -- although we don't get lot of airplane traffic out here very often, so to have three going by at the same time was a bit odd.

Staying with events that happened last week, I was doing some chainsawing, trying my best to clean up a little dead zone. While taking my first water break, I noticed that I had some company (middle of the photo), company of the slithering variety to be more exact.

It's probably hard to get a sense of scale (pun intended) from the photos, but that's over five feet worth of black rat snake. For non-snake people, these are a very common species, and are non-venomous. They are also very beneficial to one's surroundings, as they help take care of pesky rodents that might otherwise try to get into people's homes. He or she obviously didn't mind me or the chainsaw, as they showed up while I was working - and I certainly didn't mind the company, as it's always nice to have someone to talk to :)

Summer also means skinks, lots and lots of skinks! I love these little buggers so damn much.

Living right next to water has plenty of perks, one them being if you got to pick up a rock, or in this case, a brick, during the warmer months, the odds are high that you're going to find one of these little cuties (black salamander) underneath.

And finally, I know that this looks like the opposite of nature, but a couple of weeks ago I parked next to this car at the Kroger, and couldn't help but notice all of the muddy footprints...

... I especially liked the tracks on the windshield :)

That's all I've got for today, but there's still a lot of summer left, so depending on how things go, I might just have a few more posts worth of stuff before fall.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.