New friend

Stephen recently decided he likes to hang out on my desk, as long as there's someone there to keep him company. This was taken yesterday.

Arizona outback

We went to Arizona from Feb. 8 to 11 to visit Nan and to soak in a little sun and seem some friendly cacti. Like this one, which we found while on a private Jeep tour.
Here's my mom, looking cute. Dad, tour guide Jim and Nan are in the background.
There was this little pink cooler sitting under Jim's seat the whole time. I assumed it was his personal snack.
Turns out it was a tarantula, which Joe insisted I photograph while he held it. Not close enough, he says.

Thanksgiving Highlights

I haven't been blogging very much lately... and it's not that I don't want to. I think about blogging a lot. I dream about it. Day dream that is. But these days I've really been running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Or my wings cut off. And maybe one of my feet cut off too.

Well tonight I'm finally forced to sit down and do something fun-productive because Joe has the car and I'm stuck without any way to get back to work and do A) interviews for a holiday pops story B) write said story C) write tour of homes story D) fix my new column "Girl Eats World" about the cushaw squash E)Gather information for a new photo feature I'm starting Thursday F)edit and layout the wedding announcements G) Call people to set up interviews for the Madrigal Feaste story. There's probably an H) sitting somewhere on my desk, but for now that's all I can remember.

I really don't like December, and it's not even December yet.

OK enough whining. Let's look at some wonderful Thanksgiving highlights:
These are the cushaw squash pancakes I made the night before we left for Cleveland. We ate them in the car on the way there.

Joe and I got to see many of his relatives on our trip and enjoyed many, many home cooked meals. This is a small selection of the desserts we had to gorge on Thanksgiving Day. The cookie is a soft Italian Biscotti... They were lightly iced and had orange zest in the dough. Made by another Italian in Grandma Giammo's apartment building. Must get that recipe! Joe devoured half the tin for first breakfast on Black Friday. Behind the biscotti is tofu pumpkin pie... my mom's recipe made by Joe's mom, just for me (and Jack, who is also lactose intolerant.)
And here's an adorable chickadee, looking more colorful than I remembered them, at the Cleveland Metroparks Rocky River nature center-- a place I could probably spend hours sitting in the bent-branch rockers, ogling critters until the sun goes down. Some genius placed several feeders just outside a wall of reflective glass windows. I think it's one of my favorite spots on earth. The day after TG, the Parrino clan braved the cold to take a very short walk in the snow crusted woods and to sit in those rockers. We saw chickadees, nuthatches, tufted titmice, red bellied woodpeckers, hairy woodpeckers and downy woodpeckers, mourning doves, junckos and the pudgiest squirrel I've every seen. He didn't bound, he waddled.

Patio menagerie

This little orange moth and I are becoming fast friends. I've seen him several days in row on my zinnias. Today when I stepped outside to water my plants, the moth came flying at me in his zig-zagging way before landing abruptly on the edge of my white tank. I looked down at him; he was facing me. His long black proboscis uncoiled and prodded my shirt. Realizing it wasn't a flower, he flitted away.

Back to the task at hand: Watering my potted plants. The Kentucky sun was intense, so I thought I'd use my little watering blue can with the focused spout--to avoid covering the leaves in magnifying glass water drops. I filled it up at the spigot, then tried to pour into the zinnia pot. Water sloshed out from the top, but not the tip.

This has happened to me before. Last time the spout was clogged by a big yucky bug carcass, which I had to extricate with long twig. I started to carry the can over to the grass to dump out the water and begin my task, when I noticed water was coming out of the spout again. Back to watering I went. The heat was causing my glasses to slip down my nose. Just as I adjusted them I felt the presence... eyes of a pale grayish green being were peering up at me from the edge of the watering can. I quickly put it down and backed up ... (yes, I'm a 'fraidy-cat!) But once I realized the fear was mutual I decided to get up close and personal.


After a torturing the frightened amphibian with a photo shoot, I returned the can to the porch and let him hop back into his oasis from the heat wave. Good thing I have two watering cans.




This shot captures a feeling I can relate to... staring into the abyss, hoping for shelter, but unsure of what lurks in the future. Ha ha!

Last I left him, he had crawled back into the base of the spout. Only his tiny frog hieny was sticking out.

I'll pack an Alpaca

-- Actually just some alpaca thread was packed in my luggage before returning back to Kentucky. But I think I've found a new favorite animal. Cats are still number one, but I don't think I'm allergic to the awkward, doe-eyed, humming alpaca.

We met these creatures at Foothills Yarn & Fiber.

Blackberries, banana slugs and sweetpeas

Rocky Butte, the hill on which the City Bible College sits, wears a mantle of wild blackberry bushes. I saw them on my morning walks to the lookout point and on a short but steep and sweaty hike to the reservoir with Shirley, my roomie on the trip.We didn't pick too many because some were on the sour side... the ones that were ripe were very good though.
Wild sweetpeas lined the road up to the top of Rocky Butte.
And I also saw several banana slugs on the wall... this one has a particularly terrified look in its little eye stalk. I guess I got a little close.

Audubon State Park

Saturday was a near-perfect day: Joe and I slept in (a little) after a long-- long-- Friday night. Then we packed up a picnic lunch and headed with my folks to the John James Audubon Park in Henderson, Ky. We dined in the shade of Sassafrass and Maple trees on sandwiches, spring mix salad with basamic vinaigrette, blue corn chips, guacamole, farm-stand strawberries and chocolate chip angel food. Bluebirds were nesting across the way and Carolina wrens were chudle-lee-chudleing in the distance.
Before heading out on a hike, we stopped to watch the hummingbird feeders.
The top photo has a male ruby-throat, and this photo shows two females.
After our hike, we enjoyed the AC in the bird observation deck, where I saw a tufted titmouse (he was shy, so his tuft is down), a pileated woodpecker, chickadees, jays and cardinals.
In the museum, they had some interesting animals, like this Eastern Box Turtle eating a grape. And this ultra-adorable frog.

Calico bunnies

Joe and I drove out to Todd County on Saturday morning to explore some Mennonite businesses. I like shopping off U.S. 68/80, where all the venues are marked with makeshift billboards that say things like "Books 3/4 mile ---> 1843" or "Wood furniture, bicycles, flowers." We first went to the Country Barn, a popular garden center with beautiful hanging baskets, trays of seedling herbs and farm produce. We always find this nursery by looking for the Jefferson Davis monument that spikes the horizon behind it. This is the South, remember.

We followed a string of signs and arrows to the house of a Mennonite family that sells books. We purchased a Kentucky Bird book that has kept me entertained for hours this weekend. Then we drove further down 1843 to the furnature/bicycle/flower shop. At first, we couldn't find the shop keepers but just beyond a greenhouse we saw minature horses and cages full of very active speckled creatures. Enjoy!

Frontyard wildlife

In Taiwan we had geckos and japaluras. In kentucky we've got the wonderfully shy and squiggly skink. I've been trying to get a picture of one of these creatures for over a year now. My photo doesn't show it well, but he's got an irredescent blue-green tail.

Stahls' new home

Lucy follows Emily

Rob feeds Lucy

Torri's up to mischief. Twister is provoked. Lucy is unaware.

Torri pretends not to notice that he's the center of attention.

Kitty Field

Many of my friends and coworkers in Hoptown have heard me talk about the field by our house, and how there is often a kitty sitting in it when we drive by on our way to work. This black cat is there so often, we began to suspect he's a ferral cat, living in the grassy open space bordered by Old Clarksville Pike and Hammond Drive. Yesterday as we drove home from work with a trunk-load of groceries, I saw him slinking up from the tributary to Little River. Joe said he'd take me back after we unloaded.

It has been bitterly cold here the last 3 days. There was even a dusting of snow yesterday afternoon. The wind has also been strong, and whipping through the tall grass, Field Kitty didn't hear me approaching him. His eyes, half closed because of the breeze, were tracing the flight of some redwing blackbirds. I got very close before he turned his head in surprise.

I snapped one photo before he bounded away like a puma. My regret: I wasn't fast enought to take a little video of him. He was truly athletic!

Crouching kitty, hidden ...

Not exactly hidden. But stealth cat tries.

The inquisitive turkey

And other creatures at the LBL nature station.
Friday we had a picnic at Land Between the Lakes and caught a presentation on eagles at the nature station. The turkeys were very cute and seemed to like hanging out by the edge of their enclosures to be near people. If they only knew...

I also enjoyed watching the nuthatches, titmouses, wrens, cardinals and downy woodpeckers at the feeders.

And I wanted to take this bobcat home, he was acting very much like a big Pooky (my former pet cat). As you know, my other passion, besides food, is nature. I could have stayed there all day (or at least until the next time my stomach began to rumble).

Chatt Critters

"Always keep your chin down" -- Joe says that should be the motto of the sea horse.

These are Barbour's Sea Horses... taken Sunday at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga. I don't think I could ever get tired of watching the cuteness that abounds at that place. I'm considering another career change.

Critters above the cave

After caving, we took one hike on the other side of the ground. Here's a nice sun-loving lizard who was very patient with Joe and I as we snapped about 20 pics. Joe took this one.

Great Onyx...Or

just Great Marketing?
There is no onyx in any of the caves. But there is an abundance of beautiful gypsum formations. These look like flowers or sea creatures, depending on your imagination.

Misnomer aside, Mom and I liked the Great Onyx Cave the best... the tour was only 30 people as opposed to 100, and the stalactites and stalagmites were still very much intact... something quite rare for a cave that has been open to the public since the early 1800s. Cave salamanders were a nice touch:
I spotted this little guy on the wall when everyone else just walked on past :-) Because I have a radar for cute life forms. I'm seriously thinking I missed my calling as a national parks ranger.

More Mennonites, more mums

And an angry rooster.

I'm sure he didn't start the morning out mad, but my slinking around the mum forest trying to take his picture like a poultry paparazzi probably didn't help matters.

Salad's in trouble

You know that almost all of the photos on this blog are my own. But I decided to make an exception for this pic my mom sent me.

I guess my reaction was supposed to be 'How unsanitary!' or 'E. coli, no wonder!' But instead all I could do was feel sorry for the little guy. Just look at that expression on his timid little face. Imagine his horror, realizing he has to share his salad with a big pink oaf.

Last flight of summer

Looking out
the window

Joe saw this monarch resting on the patio this morning. I had to inspect.


He was very docile, hardly moving as I probed with my olympus. Though not tattered, his wings show signs of wear. You can see they are drying out at the edges and in the next photo you can see faded streaks. His antaene look a little rumpled and forlorn too.

His furryness surprised me.

Then when I thought I had taken all the photos I wanted, he closed his wings and flopped over on his right side. I thought it would be sad to have his little body on the patio, so I carefully scooped him into my hand... thinking to take him to one of my potted plants. But once in my hand, his wings popped open again and he heaved himself to the fence, where he clung precariously for a few seconds. I took this shot and then left him alone.

Moody caterpillars (Food Quiz below)

My brand of humor.

While I'm waiting for more guesses on Food Quiz #3, I thought I'd share a little video Joe found on the web.