Ok, I looked it up and it is Ostrich fern, but also found out people have gotten very sick from eating them due to not cooking them long enough.... good to know. Editing to add the following:"The term fiddlehead is used to refer to plants in 3 ways: (1) the young curled leaf of any fern; (2) the ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris of the Aspidaceae family); and (3) the young curled leaf of the ostrich fern used as a vegetable (often called fiddlehead greens). "

My maternal Grandparents supported their family of 11 working the deep coal mine that was on the land they owned and where their home was built. Of course all the kids as they got old enough worked in the mine. It was wholly owned and operated by the family. That would have been in the early 1900's to about 1940. My Dad died suddenly at age 49, just 3 days before the letter came accepting his application for State Mine Inspector in PA. Heart Disease complicated by black lung took him. He had spent all his working life in the mines mostly as a general foreman and actually teaching night classes in mining in our town for Penn State University.

Gazania and Nicole, your bugs are amazing looking! They really don't look real! Great colors too. I was just so happy this afternoon to look at my yard and see so much color.

Thanks. I haven't been posting here as regularly as I had in the past. So now sometimes when I do, I get carried away. It was pretty easy to take fabulous pictures on the island of Madeira. Almost anywhere you looked there would a stunning view. And you could then turn 180 degrees in that spot and have a different wonderful view. Between my 35mm film camera and my wife's small digital camera we came home with nearly 800 photos.