Bridges of Ashtabula County

No, this isn't a remake of that movie with Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep.  I talking about one of the things that I think are a unique part of Ashtabula county in Ohio.  We have 18 covered bridges in our county and we can boast that we have both the shortest and the longest in the country.  The family was out for a drive and we stopped to take some pictures at the State Road Covered Bridge that crosses the west branch of the Conneaut Creek.  

Check out the slideshow that we put together below.

The GPS coordinates for the bridge are 41.8864434,-80.6228219.  More information about this bridge and all the other Ashtabula County Covered Bridges can be found at https://www.coveredbridgefestival.org/

Ah..Mother Nature, You Fooled Us!

When is a hummingbird not a hummingbird?  When it's a MOTH!  We were in the backyard the other day, when we noticed something small flitting around the Candy Cane Garden Phlox that we had planted the week before.  It was moving pretty fast, swooping in and feeding from the blossoms and flying away, only to return for another round.  It didn't seem to mind us standing around and watching it, so Jenna ran inside to grab her camera.  When we looked at the pictures later, we noticed that there were a lot more legs than you usually see on a hummingbird and there were also antennas sticking up from it's little head.  A quick Google search pointed us in the right direction.  It was actually a Hummingbird Clearwing Moth - one of two species of moth native to the Ohio valley that mimic the feeding and flight patterns of hummingbirds.  Apparently, it's a case of parallel evolution - two different types of creatures that evolve similar traits to take advantage of similar resources.  Mother Nature, you are one tricky lady!

In any case, here are some of the photos.

Find Your Inner Peace

Hey, It's Friday!  Give yourself 15 minutes to relax and put the week behind you before we launch into the weekend.  And to help with that, here is a video with some beautiful nature photos.

Amazing!

My daughter constantly amazes me with the pictures that she takes and the places that she manages to take them.  We were sitting at home, watching a little TV the other evening when she dashes through the living room with her camera and runs out the front door.  10 minutes later she comes back in with these awesome sunset pics taken in our side yard.