Garden Anole

Cute little baby anole climbing around in my patio garden.  In this picture he's in the lavender plant which has been flowering all summer long.  Just have to keep it happy.

When one of our friends from the Netherlands came to visit we had a much bigger anole hanging around.  She had named him Clouse. At least that's how I'd spell it.  No telling how she would have spelled it. Unfortunately Clouse didn't hang around for very long and there were none to be seen for quite a while.  When this guy appeared I knew that my little garden was still a fairly active place for critters to visit.

Another of the critters are the wasps that come drink from the pots and soil.  I never would have though about insects drinking from dirt but I guess they have more of an ability to pull out the water from different sources.  One wasp really liked the dirt around the moss rose and would come several times in just an hour and return to the exact same spot to refresh himself.

The toads haven't been seen in a while but I'm still hopeful that they will return once the heat lets up.  It's been too hot for many of the usual creatures to come out and play.  The bunnies as well haven't made their nightly appearances so often.  Before I'd see them just hanging out on the grass looking around.  Now I only see then moving across the lawn areas heading to either eat or go home.

Temps are showing a downward trend though and things should pick up for wildlife viewing.

Courtyard Squirrel

This cute little girl was in the courtyard at work the other day.  Started me thinking about all the animals we see around the city as we're doing whatever really important thing it is we do and just how many we don't really see because of it.

There's another squirrel, a boy squirrel, a coworker calls Fred.  He, the squirrel not the coworker, likes to sit up on one of the branches of one of the trees in the courtyard and flop on his back to nap.  It's like he thinks he owns the place.

Some of the other critters around include the rabbits outside the apartment.  We've seen several of them at a time so you know there's a lot of them hidden away.  A friend of ours has a hawk that likes to perch outside one of the office windows and either rest or, on a good day, have lunch.  A less popular critter is the skunk who seems to live under the walkway that leads up to the back door of our office.  You rarely see him though since they really do prefer to avoid interaction with people rather than spray them.