Animals in the Garden

     A garden is not complete without animals, whether they be your own pets and/or Mother Nature's lovely creations.  So today we are talking about animals in our gardens. To start us off is my dog Cyrus, he loves to walk the perimeter of the backyard looking for squirrels or curly-tailed lizards to chase.  Sometimes he will just sit and watch the squirrels just to see how close they will get, lol.  Other times he just likes to lay out to catch a few rays.

This Cyrus scoping out my Dad's old Miami
house looking for lizards.

Cyrus sunbathing on our new backyard patio
here in Pompano.

Cyrus looking for squirrels & definitely not
listening to Mamma to come inside, lol.

"I love you master....SQUIRREL!!!"
A quote from the movie UP lol

Cyrus & Jinx looking for things to chase at night
Our old pink Angel Trumpet tree is full bloom
& smelled super sweet!!!

Hunting at my Dad' house in Miami, a whole
builder's half acre to find new adventures &
animals to chase.

Our other dog Jinx, who passed away this time last year, just loved being outside.  It didn't matter what, who, when or where, she loved the outdoors.

Jinx the hunter..."Momma, your giving my
hiding spot away...go away!" LOL

All Jinx's favorite things...the ball, sunbathing,
looking good for the camera, outdoors & her Momma. :)

Here are some of Mother Nature's animals in our yard that I have documented along the way...hope you enjoy!

Gulf Fritillary butterfly emerging from the cocoon.

A Sulfur butterfly hatching on one of our bromeliads

Mating lizards...oh la la!!!

Swallowtail caterpillars eating my dill plant

I had this hanging metal gourd decoration
on our old covered deck & to my surprise
was this little tree-frog watching me watering
the orchids.  Soooo cute!

A close up of the tree frog.
I call it "tree-frog house" LOL.

There are a mating pair of these
Cuban anoles that just love our yard

The Cuban anoles are always hanging out
just outside my home office window.

Not sure what kind of moth this is but it
just stayed on my orchid-house shade
cloth all day.  It was about 3"long

The orioles and hummingbirds just love our
red cardinal flower plant.  The plant grows so
fast during the summer that by fall I have to trim
it back but not too much or the winter birds won't
have anything to snack on.

A male cardinal searching for goodies

A huge iguana on our fence, luckily we don't see many of these.

This was a bit disturbing but extremely
interesting to see out of my home office window.
A female grackle (state protected bird) eating
a lizard, I had no idea they were meat eaters...WOW!

We call these click bugs or lightening bugs
In the summer we would collect them in jars as
nightlights when we "camped" in our backyard then let them go in the morning.

So just a few snippets of whats been in our yard since we have lived here.  What's in your yard?
Keep Gardening!
xoxo