Front Yard Interests

Funny how you can walk through an area and not take notice of things that have been there from the start but never really appreciated the greatness of God's handiwork.

Take the pine trees for example. First of all two of our neighbors have pine trees close to our property. The trees bordering our backyard keep our pool supplied with a never ending rain of leaves and flower buds. The pinecones are about the size of a baseball and the trees are probably 30 feet tall making them very hard to miss. The trees bordering our front yard are almost unnoticeable with a height of 10 - 15 feet with very short pine leaves. The pinecones are smaller than a chicken egg.

Then you come to our trees which are 40 - 50 feet tall and very thick with long leaves. The pinecones are some of the biggest I've seen though I know there are bigger ones. So if I were to get into a fight with pinecones being the weapon of choice I would definitely choose the ones on my trees. The photos show one I found in the front yard and one I placed in the rocks next to our sidewalk. They both measure 7.5 inches long and 4.5 inches wide. The only thing to be concerned about when picking one up is the pine resin which is not easy to wash off.



We have flowers of all kinds of which several were here when we bought the place. The front slope has one of my favorite flowers, the honeysuckle, which I enjoyed while growing up in Louisiana. The honeysuckle is a vine that right now covers approximately a third of the slope in our front yard. The flowers have a great aroma and are visited by hummingbirds and a rather large moth which I just discovered. We also have hibiscus in several locations on the property. The picture of the hibiscus is from a potted plant we recently purchased but have not planted. So far it has been loaded with flowers.

The moths that I mentioned were a recent discovery while I was checking the front yard as the sun was setting. There was probably 7 or 8 of them hovering like a hummingbird while quickly moving from flower to flower making sure not to stay in one place for more than a few seconds. I thought it would be cool to get some pictures during all the activity and this is what I captured. Oh, by the way, the moth is a White-lined sphinx(Hyles lineata).