Hi every one! Can you believe it? I still cannot believe my luck and I was there!!! Again while on my way to work this morning there was someone white and *quite* chunky looking flying across the road. I pulled over, backed up a bit, and admired a stunningly beautiful snowy Owl perched on top of a utility pole. This one was much larger than the first Owl I had seen and was more heavily barred. The barring seemed darker / black. I believe this Owl was a female as her face, nape of the neck and center of the breast were white. From what I was able to research that does describe the female snowy. Maybe this was an immature but I did not find much description of them. Any way ... I am 113% sure this was another Snowy Owl! What a wonderful start to the day! As my luck would have it, I did not have my camera in the car for the past week. Had the camera been there then for sure the Owl would NOT! LOL! So that was a great start to the day. I was 20 minutes late to work but work is just soooo over-rated. LOL! The rest of the day was downhill but who cares? I saw another Snowy Owl! The Owl was about 1 mile south of the earlier sighting on Rt. 83 in N. Ridgeville again. C3D and 2 Snowy sightings this year!

Glad you found out what it was - the spots fooled me because every hermit thrush I've seen has been much more heavily spotted. Maybe local variations come into play here, or perhaps a young bird ??? FTM, your photos are wonderful. I feel like I can reach out and touch your bloodroots. The second to last one with the fern(???) coming up out of the dried leaves is a great shot. I did notice your bloodroots seem to have double blooms compared to mine. I can't believe your hepatica has already bloomed, I hope I didn't miss mine blooming. I actually used the Roundup concentrate on the cut ends of the honeysuckle and that didn't do it, and didn't help much at the local park which is what they did too. I've thought about cutting it down to a manageable size and spraying the leaves with roundup and then covering it with black plastic bags (which is what I had to do to get rid of some english ivy) but it will be tough to get very far that way considering how much I have. I have been digging some of it and then planting a bush in it's place but it's not feasible to do that with much of it. I am also hesitant to do too much until fall considering how many birds nest in the thickets. Too bad the emerald ash borer doesn't like honeysuckle instead ... big SIGH. That weed wrench looks like a handy tool though, and if it doesn't disrupt the ground as much as digging the bushes up than it might help in preventing new seedlings. I had a major explosion of gold finches this weekend. I stopped counting at 100 - they were fighting over the feeders so bad I did some serious ground feeding. And I think every one of them was singing and chirping, it was incredibly loud. And alot like the peepers, they would all suddenly stop and then one would start, and another and then all of sudden they would all be at it again. Very cheerful on a cold spring day. Also had 5 purple finches, all females and perhaps a young male just starting to show some color. And had a dozen chipping sparrows and three field sparrows, they make the fox and white-throateds look like giants! I was really hoping that I would get Number 100 this weekend with the cold weather but I guess I will have to keep watching.

Haven't seen any mums my way yet, but expect to see them within the next week or 2, same as last year. A neighbor bought a bunch of them last year in early August. By mid September they had just about all gone by. She had very few blooms after that. Told her it was way to early to buy fall mums. This year she is listening and is waiting till the second week in Sept. Dawiff, Michaels is a craft store, so finding Halloween items in the store at this time of year is what one would expect. I for one, as a crafter that has my own business, would appreciate craft stores carrying holiday merchandise year round. That would make life much easier for "us crafters" to be able to buy the supplies we need year round instead of only at certain times of the year. Now, finding Halloween items mixed in with the school supplies in August and Sept. really bugs me to no end, and finding very little, if anything, for Thanksgiving really rubs me the wrong way. I've also seen dept. stores putting up and decorating their Xmas trees in Sept., which is just plain crazy. Fran

"I already planted an herb garden full of stuff that attracts them, but none of the herbs currently have flowers. so if I have time I'll buy some marigolds this weekend. maybe I'm weird, but I don't like planting flowers. I like my garden to be full of plants that I can eat. I tend to leave the pretty looking stuff to my wife. I'll make an exception for plants that attract things that keep my plants edible. " -------------- I'm the same way. But now i realize if I ever want to conquer most pest infestations and eliminate bi-weekly spraying of every veggy in the garden, I'm going to have to let nature do the fighting. Some herbs tend to satisfy guys like you and I. But they only flower for a short time and then they're dead. Flowers though can be planted at different times of the year to where you have some "flowering" at almost any time of the year in mild climates. This way, you have a constant population of the good guys. Other "edibles" which are beneficial attractors that you may look in to are fennel(watch it though, most other veggies don't like being planted next to fennel), sunflowers, corn, lavender, wild carrots. Also, there's mixed reviews about ANY pesticide -- homemade or commercial, synthetic or organic. Neem oil interrupts the feeding cycle... which is why I suggest it. I just feel that it's necessary to bring the population levels down to a point where the beneficials can manage them without YOU spraying more soap and/or neem. Yep. marigolds are probably the quickest and easiest at this point -- they're already flowering in pony packs at the garden centers. Good luck. Kevin