Wordless Wednesday View

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Camera Critters #5 Bella

My friends from far away have a new puppy and sent this photo. Wish I could pet her. 

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Wordless Wednesday - Lexi

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Camera Critters #4 Cluck Cluck, Woof!

My daughter tends to her neighbor's poultry when needed. She is very good with all animals and they love her back. 

Even Lexi, who is being a naughty girl and looking at her Santa gifts before she should!

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De Ice Has Returned - Day 14

It started to form on November 28.

It continued forming on November 29.

It had all melted by December 6.

Today, December 14,  it has re-formed.

We shall watch its progression during the coming week.

Wordless Wednesday Photo-Bengal

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DE ICE! Day 7

Exactly one week ago I saw ice forming. The geese and ducks had left the lake. I was expecting completion of lake ice by this week. Well, it didn't happen. Mother Nature won again. She always does, I should have known better. 

The Canada geese arrived back this morning. I wonder where they went for one week.

Then I looked back and realized the ice didn't get fully formed and become "safe for travel" until mid-January! Silly me.

Wordless Wednesday Photo

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Efforts of Photography

Once in a while I upload a photo to our news station. This is the third time one has been used and rewards my efforts.


http://wnep.com/2012/12/03/photolink-library-1130/

Understand

1963

Once in a while someone says to me, "Why don't you just sell the cabin and move to someplace warmer?" (or easier to keep, or where you can have a washer, or where you don't have to worry about power losses, or closer to town)

I really can't explain it any better than to say my roots are here. The cabin is my home.  I belong here. It is my energy source. The cabin vibrations nourish my soul.  To abandon it would be forsaking myself. It is my protector. It is my karma, my destiny and I like it here.

DE ICE! DAY 2

Yep! It sure comin' 'n fisherman comin' ina few daz!

Goosies gone...duckies gone...

Wordless Wednesday Critter

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DE ICE!

De ice is comin' It will be many thick soon. Wait....  See!   

T'day it start.

Tok pichers at dawn b'fore

Sunrise: 7:08am

Camera Critters #3

Hundreds and hundreds of these were eating the leaves, no, I should say gobbling the leaves, on a passion flower vine. I took this photo in a campground and I noticed them when I went back a second time after taking a photograph of the flower a few days earlier.  

I kept it in a jar, feeding it more leaves I plucked from the vine almost daily for over a week. Finally, I had to release it because we were leaving to return home. 

I have now learned that it is a larvae of the fritillary butterfly.  The passion flower vine is one of several possible host plants for the fritillary butterflies. 

Here is a picture (not taken by me) of this beautiful butterfly.

Here is a photograph I took, not knowing what kind of butterfly it was. There were thousands flying over the ocean beaches!  Eureka!

http://bluffareadaily.blogspot.com/

Camera Critters #2

I trapped this critter in a little jar under the flap covering the skirting at our campground trailer in South Carolina in October. The lid was tightly shut for over three weeks, and when I set the jar on the dinette table in the sunlight to take a picture of it, it started moving around very vigorously and I was surprised it was still alive. After another couple of weeks of entrapment it died. I'm sure all of you know what it is and how dangerous they are. We have found several others before and are careful, as are the propane gas vendors and repairmen.

Click on photo for enlargement

http://bluffareadaily.blogspot.com/

Camera Critters

I just joined a site and don't really know if I'm doing this correctly, but here is my first "Camera Critter" photo.

http://bluffareadaily.blogspot.com/

Wille Nelson - Rare Video Recording (1962)

Playing my old music. I actually thought that "I had discovered him" when I first heard him sing. I love Willie....Still

Back Door Visitor

6:30PM and the trap went off again!

This time I was cooking supper but took a breather to get his picture. They will try ANY WAY to get in here. There will be NO mouses in my house this season!

Rewarding Day

Another mouse! It was a light brown one and the largest we have ever seen. In fact, we have never seen such a brown color on a mouse. Our mice are grey!  My husband wanted to know if I would photograph it, but I was in the middle of baking a carrot cake this morning and my energy was just about spent. Into the trash can Brownie went and the trap was reset. This little bugger was caught in the carport and we never know which trap will go off each morning when we check them.

With the cake in the oven, I then had a moment to look for some information about brown mice.

Brown mice are nocturnal in nature and feed primarily on plants. However, they will consume whatever food sources are available to them. Brown mice are good climbers and may be found atop trees or manmade structures. They are also capable of running very quickly and jumping up to 18 inches in height. If food supplies are sufficient and predators are kept at bay, brown mice produce offspring throughout the year. Females produce up to 10 mice in a single birth and offspring are ready to reproduce within 60 days. (source: Orkin Pest Control)

The recipe I use for carrot cake is one that a neighbor gave me when I was first married in 1955. It is always a success and doesn't even need any icing. For many years, especially at Thanksgiving time I have turned it into "Gere's Fruitcake" by adding candied fruit, raisins, chipped pecans and baking it in a silicon 10 cup bundt pan. Could you smell it baking? It usually takes about 1 1/2 hours to be baked just right and then we begin to dig in. Cake for lunch? Why not!

Can you see the carrots? I love carrots.
Click on photo to drool!

After lunch and nap, I really must go outdoors and dress James. He's gone naked since August when he was treated with some boiled linseed oil mixed with turpentine. At first I was going to let him age naturally but then I gave in and decided to try to prolong his lifespan with a spa treatment even if for just a little bit. Wiley is already sporting his holiday bib.

By the way, my sweet potato vine has sprouted and seems to be doing well even though the countertop where it sits by the window is a very cold area. 

Remembering Lakewood Campground

Prologue.....

To me, verbal reminisces are not enough. After hearing about their past ventures I have been trying for a couple of years to have my beach friends document the experiences of their past 50+ years of camping, especially at Lakewood Campground in Myrtle Beach, SC where we have enjoyed ourselves for 24 years. This lovely couple have not been able to travel there for the past two years and we all miss them very much. 

I cannot tell you how excited I was to receive a three page letter from "Betty Jo" recently and she even enclosed an old  camper's receipt from 1962! I dug in my photos and came up with two to go with this blog. If I had thought ahead, I most likely could have asked her to send some of hers for me to scan and return, and she would have, but the letter she sent covered just what I requested and I'm happy to share it. 

I have typed her letter here, as it was handwritten. GMR

Remembering Lakewood Campground

Written by Betty W. Magee

When my husband Morris and I were married in 1950 in Roanoke, Virginia, we went camping with my parents, Lelia and Norwood Wharton. They had a station wagon that they slept in and we slept on cots beside the station wagon with a canopy over us. 

In Virginia we would camp on Shenandoah River and Craigs Creek where we fished. We camped at the Peaks of Otter on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

We would camp at the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We would go to Hollywood, Florida where my uncle lived and fish in the canals there. We drove to Canada in 1957. My dad died that year and my mom in 1959.

Morris and I would take two of my nephews, age 10 and 12, camping at the Peaks of Otter in Virginia and the Smokey Mountains in North Carolina. They enjoyed seeing the bears and hiking the mountains.

Morris and I went to Lakewood Campground in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina when they first opened. After entering, there was a small trailer and a young woman taking the money for camping, which was $1.00 for the night. 

The roads were just sand. People were always getting their vehicles stuck at their campsite and other campers would help them get out.

Our first camping trip there we were on a site, now No. 1209, and had a pup tent. We left to drive and get something that was not in campground. We left the flap up on the door of tent as the weather looked good when we left. Some campers that we didn't know came over and put the flap down when a rain storm came. We really appreciated that.

We've found that campers are the nicest people and we've made a lot of friends camping at Lakewood for over fifty years.

One time when we went down, we thought it would be warm the whole time but turned cold. We went into town to find a jacket but the stores only had T-shirts and swimwear. We knew next time to take warm clothes too.

There was a path from Lakewood into the woods that led to a lake. A dog was tied near the lake and would bark when someone went down the path. On the north side was all wooded area and had several horses that ran loose in the woods. One day a man camper went to get water out of a spigot and a Copperhead snake was on the spigot.

Going down to Myrtle Beach it was a 2 lane road, Rt. 501 from Conway, South Carolina to the campground. We would always go to Murrells Inlet for a seafood supper.

After camping near entrance at first, we gradually moved closer to ocean. We liked it better on sites close to inlet so we didn't have to walk very far and we could fish in the surf. We had camping trailers after a few times in tents.

When we first started surf fishing, a nice man told us to get little mullet and fillet them and use half on one hook. We did that and caught a lot of fish. Morris bought a throw net and caught our bait instead of having to buy it.

Several times we would be on the beach and army troops would come to shore on boats and run up into woods. It would take place South and North of the campground. Other times a soldier would get out of boat into the water and a helicopter would pull him up into helicopter as a practice of rescue. A boat would pull a target behind it and another boat would shoot at the target, They left shell casings out in the water and when they came back in the afternoon to pick them up, someone from campground had swam out and got one and brought it back to campground. The army men went to every campsite looking for the shell casing.

One evening the sharks were almost beaching themselves at the inlet trying to catch fish.

We enjoyed seeing the Sandpipers, Terns, Sea Gulls, Great Blue Herons and Egrets. The white Ibises would walk down the road beside the campsite eating something out of the ground, They were so pretty. Swans would fly from campground out over ocean then fly back. A Bald Eagle would sit on top of a tree at the laundry. You would see Dolphins swimming out in ocean very often. We saw Pelicans flying over ocean and Osprey diving in ocean for fish.

Several years ago there were a lot of stray cats in campground, If you left anything edible outside they would get it. One evening we had some fish bait out on a table that was screened in and a cat tore the net screening to get to the bait. Many years later you didn't see the stray cats.

Lakewood would have an ice cream social and you could have ice cream for $1.00. You had to bring your own bowl.

In September Mr. Perry would have a fish fry for all the employees. When gasoline was scarce the campground put in a big tank and a gas pump and sold gasoline to campers. We could fill up there before going back to Roanoke.

A flock of Viceroy Butterflies would fly south over the sand next to the ocean. They look a lot like Monarch butterflies. 

One year after a bad storm had washed things on the beach we got some nice driftwood and a piece of coral. We have it in our backyard. The birds enjoy standing on it. One looks like a shark nose and is about 3 feet tall. We've found over a quart of sharks' teeth through the years.

For health reasons we haven't been able to go to Lakewood in 2011 and 2012 but we have good memories of camping there for so many years and the wonderful friends we looked forward to seeing every year.

1962 Receipt-Front and Back

 September 21, 2009

2008 Red Drum Fish

Victory Again...Different

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A vole is a small rodent resembling a mouse but with a stouter body, a shorter, hairy tail, a slightly rounder head, smaller ears and eyes, and differently formed molars. There are approximately 155 species of voles. Wikipedia

If you would like to know more about them please go to this link that is a very good site for information.

http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7439.html

Victory!

Click on photos to view larger.

We do it the old-fashioned way. They are vermin! As I write this, I know that several more are surrounding my home looking for an entrance.  They carry disease.  They dirty everything they travel over. They scurry along baseboards, sticking to the walls, hunting for something to chew. They even can chew through plastic water pipes. Yes, they can. That happened to a neighbor. Mice can chew electric cords and cause fires. They can bury their seeds in vehicle's innards and clog up the heater, air conditioner, and other parts. They will hoard the little green poison pellets, if you use this method of control. They can hoard a considerable heap in your printer and kill it. Ask me. I know. They aren't just pesky, they are dangerous.

Of course, there are many ways to kill them. We don't believe in the "humane" trapping systems. A quick snap of the neck does the job and they never know what hit. Peanut butter is our bait of choice.

Each year our dog alerts to their attempts to enter this old cabin. He sniffs, sniffs, sniffs at the door or wall and won't stop. After all, he's a Rat Terrier and they are very good at what they do. They are very capable of hunting rodents above and below ground. He once sniffed one out that had been hiding behind our couch and, when it ran across the room, he caught it! How proud he was.

I will rest well after the traps come up empty for several days in a row.