Posted on 09/30/2011 5:02:33 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good morning gardeners. Fall is in the air here in East Central Mississippi on this last day of September. It has been beautiful weather for cleaning up outside and taking care of the yard. Our daytime temperatures have been in the 70s with an occasional bump up into the 80s and the overnight lows are ranging from the 40s to the 60s. While I am waiting for Spring to arrive I will be occupied by continuing to hone my skills at home brewing.
If you are a gardener or you are just starting out and are in need of advice or just encouragement please feel free to join in and enjoy the friendly discussion. Our Freeper community is full of gardeners, each with varying interests and skill levels from Master Gardener to novice.
I hope all your Summer gardens did well this year and your Fall gardens prosper.
Sarajevo... You have just given me the creeps beyond BELIEF! I am serious when I tell you that my stomach just dropped and I got bumps all over me. What kind of snake is that? Is it poisonous (in my case, it wouldn’t matter because they would find me dead in the chicken coop). Does it eat the chickens? The eggs? Chicken AND eggs?!!! If that is you holding that thing.... you are a brave soul.
Well, that would preclude me from staying here!! Pigs are forbidden in Mequon (except the government types, of course). But we have very few snakes around here and they are only the garter type — non poisonous. If I reached into my garden and grasped a snake, that would end my gardening hobby forever!
But people on other parts for the country are not so lucky. I’ve lived in CA, IL, Washington State, and Texas — all places that boast many different kinds of poisonous snakes. When I was first married, we rented a small house in CA at the edge of a Walnut orchard. One day we awoke to a house that smelled really bad and prevailed upon the landlord to discover the problem. A rattle snake had crawled into my floor furnace and had cooked himself to death when I turned the heat on. I was never in danger of actually encountering that snake, but the very thought of it gave me the heeby jeebies for months — years.
Can you believe it! The Mrs let me bring it into the house for a picture! Of course, she promptly threw me out when the camera shuter clicked!
"afraidfortherepublic", have no fear! Everything is bigger in Texas. The ones you all have in the northern climates are smaller (I think.....) Personally,I'd rather handle the snake than the skunk my neighbors daughter caught yesterday. I ended up smelling like skunk from a couple indirect sprays.........Ugh!
I lived in TX for nearly 10 years. We moved there at a time when there was a great influx of people moving in from the west and the northeast. They were throwing up houses by the dozens to accomodate all the buyers.
We went down over the Memorial Day weekend to pick out our house, made an offer, and secured a house still “in sticks” in the last 1/2 day of our trip with just enough time left over to make it back to the airport and home. The house was my 2nd choice. The house I really wanted was not far enough along in its construction to have a price on it yet, and we couldn’t wait around and negotiate. I was really hoping that when we came back to pick out our finishing details a few weeks later, that we could trade up for the house around the corner that I liked better.
No such luck: a family had already moved in my favored house, which miraculously had been finished before mine.
I met the lady who bought the house and she invited me in to see how she had decorated. And she told me a story that made me realize that I did not want that house after all.
Her house was located right across the street from a marshy area. The family moved in. After her husband had left for work and her kids had left for school, the lady was picking up the master bedroom and making the bed. She’d tossed some pillows under the window when they went to bed the night before. There, sunning himself in the morning light, was a HUGE snake. She backed out of the room and called the builder who had a sales office right in the subdivision. The conversation went like this:
Lady: “Is Mr. So and so there?”
Voice on the other end: “No, he’s out of the office”
Lady: “Is Mr. Fol de rol there?”
Voice: “No Ma’am, he’s out on a job.”
Lady: “Who are you?”
Voice: “This is Mr. 3rd superintendant.”
Lady: “You’ll do. Get over to 101 Apple Valley Circle RIGHT NOW and bring a weapon. There is a snake in my bedroom.”
A few minutes later Mr. 3rd Superintendant showed up with a sharp hoe and dispatched a large Cotton Mouthed Moccasin to never never land. They figured that the snake had slithered in when the carpenters were finishing the house, and nobody had noticed. The builders were starting another house on the land across the street and probably disrupted the snake’s usual sunning spot.
I decided right then and there that I did not want her house under any circumstances. That my house was just fine — even though it had one less bedroom and one less garage. That I would not live in her house if they GAVE it to me.
In the whole ten years I lived there, I never saw another snake, except one that my cat caught.
You are a brave, brave man! I guess a full size chicken is too much to handle? Don’t chickens freak out if they see a snake? (as for your Mrs.... she must be brave as well. My husband and kids don’t even bring a long earthworm near me. LOL!!
I've had large snakes in the yard when I lived in the city, along with turtles, raccoon, opossum, and skunk. This is only the thrid snake of this size that I've seen since I moved to the Hill Country.
The thorns are terrible. They are going to be a literal pain to remove if it comes to that.
The chickens were sitting on the roost looking at the snake, and the ducks were outside raising a racket. It wasn't quite time for them to go in that night.
The Mrs. threatened me with a large object if I didn't get that snake out of the house right after the picture was taken. 
I highly recommend you listen to the Mrs! You have to go to sleep at some point. LOL! Freaky weird thing happened today and I thought of you... my husband and I were looking at a house for sale. It is truly beautiful (older 1900’s home and restored) with a VERY old, stone barn. Well, I was walking around the barn and glanced down and saw a snake skin. At the time, I wasn’t 100% sure it was just the skin. My husband was out in the yard and sees this flash... flash being defined as ME “picking them up and putting them down”. I did bring the skin home so the kids could learn about it (after my heart rate went to normal). He’s still giggling and telling the kids that he should put me in a marathon. Funny guy, huh? Ask your wife if I can borrow her HUGE frying pan. LOL!
Yikes! *shiver*
*bad dreams*
Thanx for this...I think!
Can anyone tell me what this is other then a white flowering plant? Thank you......
http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/2375/flowercq.jpg
They should be able to match the color of the concrete or come close to the color of your bricks. The picture on my home page of my wife, our young pups and me in front of the house we had in Louisiana shows us on a gray brick walkway that is actually colored concrete with a brick pattern. The contractor I hired when having the front yard landscaped did it to match the original color of the actual bricks on the small porch behind the railings. A person would have to look close to tell the difference between the original bricks and the concrete.
The Hill Country is beautiful.
I lived in San Antonio for about a year and all the houses in those subdivisions were all alike - same design and no yards. Gads! They would come in with the big excavating equipment cut into a hill side, remove all the trees and erect a 100 houses or so. They all looked alike. My wife and I rented an old farm house, with a good sized fenced in yard, for the dogs, about 15 - 20 miles east up I-10 from the city limits.
I have never seen anything like that plant. We are having early heavy rains since Sunday for about 3 inches total and it is raining flat rocks on a tin roof right now. Really strange...
South FL UPDATE Pictures from 10/06/2011
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