I don’t want to panic you or anything, but have you looked at the calendar recently? The Holidays (capital H, here) are racing up on us and along with them, the dinners, the parties, the last minute and impromptu get-togethers.

I’m going to do something a little bit different today, and I’m not going to write about the food. Gasp!

Look, you’re going to be doing a lot of cooking and cleaning up – no getting around it. Admit it, there are going to be some times when you just can’t stand the prospect of loading and unloading the dishwasher one more time or looking at yet another sinkful of dirty dishes, and you’re going to do “disposable”. I don’t blame you – I’ll absolutely do the same. I’m going to ask you – for just half a minute – to think about the impact on the environment of all the discarded plastic cups, the plates, the utensils. Nothing like a side of guilt with your turkey and dressing, right?

One of my usual shortcuts is to line my cookie sheets and brownie pans with aluminum foil to help cut down on cleanup. Well, looky what I found in the wrap and foil aisle of my regular grocery store:

All I can say is, it’s about freaking time! Finally! It’s just like regular Reynolds Wrap, but it’s made from 100% recycled aluminum. This is the kind of forward corporate thinking I’d like to encourage, so this is the foil I’m going to use to line my pans and tent my turkey this year. It even costs a few cents less at my store than the regular Reynolds Wrap. By the way, in case you haven’t noticed, Reynolds has changed their packaging to use less materials – the amount of product inside is the same, but the packaging is smaller. Yay, Reynolds!

When it comes to disposable plates, there are a number of options at the store. Here’s the “Plain Jane” version:

Admittedly, you might like something sturdier for your dinner – especially if folks are eating off their laps. All that gravy and cranberry sauce is bound to get a little sloppy, right?

In that case, you might choose the popular Chinet brand. Chinet’s now made from recycled materials and is fully biodegradable and compostable in either your home composter/compost pile, or in a community composting program (check to see if your community has one). I actually just toss ‘em in my composter and they break down just like newspaper and tree branches. And not just the white ones – all of ‘em!

Let’s not forget the beverages! Solo is now selling a line of plastic cups called “bare“. The bare line is made with 20% recycled plastic and is 100% recyclable in your regular household recycling. Another “finally!” is due here.

There are several other eco-friendly choices available online and in party specialty stores: disposable utensils made from cornstarch and sugar cane, higher-end disposable serveware made from bamboo and palm and sugar cane fibers, too. There are even compostable plastic cups! Many of these products aren’t new, but they are becoming more easily available, both at the party stores and at your local grocery. These are just a few of the items I noticed while wheeling my cart down the paper aisle.

It’s not a great revelation that our health – and that of future generations – depends on the environment. You take the time to care about and ask where your food comes from, so this Holiday Season, please take a moment to think about what you’re putting your food on. No one family can do everything, but every little bit helps!

By the way, I am not being sponsored or in anyway compensated to show you these products. Except maybe with a little karma, I hope.

The PhotoHunt theme this week is “Spotted”

When I saw the PhotoHunt theme this week is “Spotted”, the first thing that crossed my mind was the Spot-Breasted Oriole.

These birds are native to Mexico and Central America, but because of their vivid plumage, many were caught and brought to the U.S. to be caged birds in the 1950′s and 1960′s. Many of those, however, escaped and began to populate South Florida. Today, if you live in a suburban neighborhood and have shrubbery that produce berries, you might see one of these beautiful bright songbirds with their spotted breasts.

I had a family group visit my yard – the top photo is a young, immature Oriole, who’s just starting to come into his spots. The photo below is a mature bird in his full spotted glory.

Happy weekend, everyone!

The PhotoHunt theme this week is “Birds”

Totally cheating, I’m combining my PhotoHunt and Nature Notes posts, again this week. Well, the subject’s pretty much the same – Birds.

Things have been, and continue to be, hectic around here, lately. But I was able to steal a little time to enjoy the increasingly better weather we’ve been having. Of course, good things never seem to last very long – temps are supposed to hover around 88º this weekend. Hardly inspiring the feelings of fall and upcoming holidays!

Still, we’ve had some new visitors:

The Gray Catbird has returned to enjoy snacking at the Beautyberry.

And this lousy picture is of the male Painted Bunting who appeared – if only for a couple of days before apparently moving on to Miz Shoes’ place, several miles away. I was very excited to see the male bunting! I’ve only ever had females come to my feeder in previous years, and have only ever seen one male, years ago, from a distance! So, what happens? The breeze comes up, and it’s nearly twilight, and all I get is a fuzzy image. But I don’t care. I had a male bunting!

In other news, three – count ‘em three – hummingbirds showed up at the pavonia and mystery shrubs! At the same time! For us, that’s more than exciting – it’s incredible! If they stick around, I’ll try to get some new hummingbird photos – not so easy to do, since they seem to prefer the flowers to the feeders.

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Michelle at Rambling Woods is hosting Nature Notes: Signs of the Season, a weekly meme dedicated to challenging us to take a moment out of our hectic lives and notice the seasonal changes – large and small – taking place in nature all around each of us, in our own little corners of the world. Please visit Michelle and all the other participants, and maybe take some of your own Nature Notes!

Remember a couple of weeks ago? I was bitching about Fall taking absolutelyfreakingever to reach South Florida? Like many of you Northerners look for the first Robin of Spring, how I look for the first Vulture of Autumn?

Well, boys and girls, just in time for the #GreatHallowTweet, the Turkey Vultures are back!

First, there was one. Then there were three:

Then there were about a dozen!

As the season progresses, that whole rooftop will be covered in sunning Turkey Vultures. A little unsettling when you think that this is the heart of downtown Miami! And then again, appropriate in a way…

This is what they look like close-up. I could never – nor would I ever – actually want to get this close, thankyouverymuch, but if I’m going to talk about the beasties, you should at least see what they look like. Charming, right? There’s a reason their heads are pretty much devoid of feathers: Being carrion-eaters, they’re able to avoid retaining a bunch of blood and guts and nasty microbes that might later cause disease if it were stuck to feathers. It’s hygenic. Hee!

Courtesy of Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Click on this photo or link and learn more about Turkey Vultures – the unsung clean-up crew of nature!

For more appetizing (in a sense) celebrations of Halloween, travel the #GreatHallowTweet Halloween Blog Hop sidebar, over there to the left, and see how 18 of my best blogger friends are whooping it up! Happy Halloween!

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Michelle at Rambling Woods is hosting Nature Notes: Signs of the Season, a weekly meme dedicated to challenging us to take a moment out of our hectic lives and notice the seasonal changes – large and small – taking place in nature all around each of us, in our own little corners of the world. Please visit Michelle and all the other participants, and maybe take some of your own Nature Notes!

Michelle is also one of our #GreatHallowTweet participants, so be sure to stop by and say Hi! You might even learn something!

We had a little bit of a cool spell over the last weekend – for us. Listen, wherever you live, when the low is 82º one night and 55º the next, it feels a heck of a lot colder than the temperatures alone, sound!

Sly, discovering MJ’s bathrobe, or as we like to call it, the “mobile blankie.”
And no, we didn’t put him there – he crawled in there all by himself!

I looked out the window, Sunday morning, and saw this:

Giant Swallowtail Butterfly

This must be an old, slow Swallowtail, because I have never had one hold still for its close-up before. I think that maybe the sudden temperature drop must have taken it by surprise, too, because it seemed all too happy to hang out, take in a little South Florida sunshine, and maybe have a snack.

Pavonia Bahamensis

This shrub is a relative of the Hibiscus, and is actually native to the Bahamas, but is naturalized here. It’s a great favorite of the bees and hummingbirds (when we get them… but I haven’t spotted any yet – insert frowny face here).

Northern Mockingbird

While I stood there, waiting to see if the Swallowtail would hold still, this young mockingbird popped out of the Pavonia, not three feet away from me, decided that I was no threat, and unconcernedly began snacking on the Beautyberry.

Even though the temperatures will be back up to 90º by the weekend (just in time for my niece’s outdoor wedding – pray for rain!), the signs of fall are beginning to make themselves known.

Please feel free to click on the photos – I’ve resized them larger than usual, so you can really get into the details!

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Michelle at Rambling Woods is hosting Nature Notes: Signs of the Season, a weekly meme dedicated to challenging us to take a moment out of our hectic lives and notice the seasonal changes – large and small – taking place in nature all around each of us, in our own little corners of the world. Please visit Michelle and all the other participants, and maybe take some of your own Nature Notes!

Please don’t hate me because I’m warm. Because I’m not warm. I’m freaking HOT. And not in a good way.

While I realize that many of you didn’t have much of a summer and that you’re probably freezing your keisters off prematurely, we here in Florida have been roasting in 90º heat way past its time.

For weeks now, I’ve been staring at the peaked roof of the County Courthouse, waiting for the arrival of the Turkey Vultures, and therefore, fall. The Turkey Vultures, while seen all over South Florida in the winter, seem to love the thermal air currents around the courthouse. Their arrival is some reassurance that eventually the humidity will drop and the temperatures will moderate. But everyday, I’m disappointed. No vultures. C’mon! It’s October! Where’s Fall?!?

Oh. There it is. The first American Redstart showed up at my birdbaths this week! The American Redstart is a warbler that hawks – or hover-gleans – its food, and is mucho cool to watch as it flits up and through the branches of trees and shrubs to catch insects or nab a berry. This one is either a female or first-year male, and seems to be the first of this year’s winter migrants, at least in my yard. Yay!

And I saw a Turkey Vulture this morning. Just one, but can his buddies be far behind? Fall. Finally.

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Michelle at Rambling Woods is hosting Nature Notes: Signs of the Season, a weekly meme dedicated to challenging us to take a moment out of our hectic lives and notice the seasonal changes – large and small – taking place in nature all around each of us, in our own little corners of the world. Please visit Michelle and all the other participants, and maybe take some of your own Nature Notes!

The PhotoHunt theme this week is “Twisted”

Lazy slug that I am, these last couple of weeks, I’m combining my PhotoHunt post with my (belated) Nature Notes post – again!

These are the “twisted” roots of one of my orchid plants:

The vanda orchids at the other end. Don’t they look like little lion faces? If you squint? Okay, ignore that one of them has an ant up its nose.

This is what’s happening in my garden, this morning. Have a great weekend!

Michelle at Rambling Woods is hosting Nature Notes, a weekly meme dedicated to challenging us to take a moment out of our hectic lives and notice the seasonal changes – large and small – taking place in nature all around each of us, in our own little corners of the world. Please visit Michelle and all the other participants, and maybe take some of your own Nature Notes!

The PhotoHunt theme this week is “Upside Down”

I am cheating this week, and combining my PhotoHunt post with my (belated) Nature Notes post. Well, how could I resist when I finally solved a mystery that’s been “bugging” me (you’ll excuse the expression) for several months?

Back in late May, this appeared in my yard:

Isn’t it weird and cool? It’s an Oleander Moth. But I didn’t know that at the time. It looks and flies like a wasp, but it doesn’t look like any wasp I’d ever seen. And I was wondering why it was hanging around this plant. Notice how it winds up upside down under the leaf.

I looked around the yard a bit when I got home from work the other evening, and this scene caught my eye:

Oleander Caterpillar

I’d never seen this caterpillar in my yard before. It’s so cool-looking! Look at those long tufts of hair! What sort of exotic butterfly would it become? But, there are clusters of them! They’re eating this ornamental plant! And look! They’re upside down! What do I do?

As it turns out, they are Oleander Caterpillars, and they are the only critters who eat oleander, which is poisonous to everyone else. And yes, they will probably eat the leaves of this plant down to the stems, but everything I’ve read indicates that it will probably come back, perhaps better than ever. Some people even plant oleander to attract these guys for the cool moths they become. Which was upside down because it was laying eggs on the tender undersides of the leaves.

So, I’ve decided to leave them be. But you knew that already, didn’t you?

Michelle at Rambling Woods is hosting Nature Notes, a weekly meme dedicated to challenging us to take a moment out of our hectic lives and notice the seasonal changes – large and small – taking place in nature all around each of us, in our own little corners of the world. Please visit Michelle and all the other participants, and maybe take some of your own Nature Notes!

Just a quickie, this morning…

I finally captured a Zebra Longwings butterfly! While not nearly as cooperative as the White Peacock I showed you a couple of weeks ago – from the modeling standpoint (sorry, I’ve got America’s Next Top Model on the brain…) – it at least stayed still long enough for this. The Zebras have been really hanging out in the back corner of the yard by the Firebushes, and if you can brave the mosquitoes long enough, to squish back there, it can be quite stunning.

One friend said to me awhile back, “I live a block away, but you always have butterflies in your yard. Why is that?” “Plant for ‘em, babe, plant for ‘em.”

I got another butterfly picture! Yay! It’s the little things, you know?

Michelle at Rambling Woods is hosting Nature Notes, a weekly meme dedicated to challenging us to take a moment out of our hectic lives and notice the seasonal changes – large and small – taking place in nature all around each of us, in our own little corners of the world. Please visit Michelle and all the other participants, and maybe take some of your own Nature Notes!

So, it’s after work and I’m walking to the train, when, of all things! a squirrel crosses my path. I haven’t seen a squirrel in the downtown area in quite some time, so yeah, I was surprised. But then again, I once saw a skunk running down the street there, late at night, so I’m not sure why I was surprised…

As I continue walking between the wall of the public library and the large concrete planters, the squirrel jumps up onto the planters and paces me, maybe just a bit ahead, but not far.

There’s none of the usual nervousness, like the squirrels in my own yard, and I realize that this is, for all intents and purposes, a “park” squirrel. And just like the homeless men and women who hang around this area, he’s hoping for a handout.

I pause and chat with the security guard, Billy, as I’ve always done for the last dozen years or so, and he tells me that, yeah, this squirrel shows up from time to time and folks sitting on the walls of the planters (homeless and religious pamphleteers alike), sometimes offer it bits of food. The squirrel has learned that if someone reaches out their hand with the fingers pinched together, there is food being offered and it will take it right out of their hand.

Right about now, a man walks up a few feet away, sees the squirrel and decides that this would be a fun game. He reaches out his hand with his fingers pinched together, and makes chucking sounds. I shout at the man: “Don’t do that! Don’t tease the squirrel! He’ll bite you!” But the man laughs at me, laughs at the squirrel. The squirrel races up to him, sniffs his fingers, and discovers, that, Hey! there’s no food here!. The man laughs at the squirrel, continuing to extend his hand.

And the squirrel bites him. Not hard. Not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough to illustrate the point.

The man, quite predictably shocked in his stupidity, shouts, “Hey! He bit me! It hurts!” “Are you bleeding?” “No, but it hurts!” “Moron.” And I rush off to catch my train.

If by some chance I ever hear that the man decides to sue the City, I will be a witness for the squirrel.

Michelle at Rambling Woods is hosting Nature Notes, a weekly meme dedicated to challenging us to take a moment out of our hectic lives and notice the seasonal changes – large and small – taking place in nature all around each of us, in our own little corners of the world. Please visit Michelle and all the other participants, and maybe take some of your own Nature Notes!