What is it?

OK, so either a bear hawked a loogie all over this bale of hay, or some kind of bug was engaged in pornographic acts and has left egg masses as evidence. It looks similar to praying mantis egg cases, but...you know...different. I really need a friend who's an entomologist. I have so many questions. I just want someone to follow me around with answers for "what's that?", "what's it doing?" and "WHAT DOES IT WANT?"


This is, by the way, our sophisticated security device. The bales of hay blocking the end of the driveway here are completely falling apart, so if any trespassing poachers move them aside to go four wheeling in the blueberry patch, the bales will disintegrate, thus alerting me several days later when I show up with the dog to go hiking. OK, so it's not a perfect system, but it's cheap.

Ooh, you know what? These also look like those cookies you get at Christmas that are made out of fluffed up eggwhites. What are those called? They're so yummy.

Tah - dah!

Just when you thought I'd made you look at every possible variety of moss - here's another one! What is it? What's it doing? What does it want? I would also like to request a horticulturist to answer my many plant questions.

Zeke and I made it all the way to the beaver ponds this time. Some of us got closer to the ponds than others.


Later, as I was slogging my way through armpit high ferns and pricker bushes that kept hooking me around the legs and cursing as a tree with giant spikey thorns reached out and tried to rip my arm off, I found this:


Whatever this is, it seems to have some kind of electromagnetic field surrounding it. I took 19 pictures of this damn plant, trying every possible camera feature, and exactly ONE was in focus. For those of you running for your native plant books, it's about 8 inches tall, and the cute little pear shaped fruit was maybe the size of a penny. And it was hard, not squishy.