flag in the front, armadillo in the back

Pic taken when outside waiting for the 4th of July neighborhood parade yesterday!

armadillo in the backyard 

This little visitor came by Saturday morning. He was rooting around and Polly (one of the feral kittens) was fascinated. She was following him ... but not too close. This is what caught my attention. 

In the top picture, I actually walked almost right on top of him and he wasn't intimidated - just looked up at me.  We see lots of possums and raccoons in our yard (which is by a creek) and they they are very wary, so I was surprised at his boldness. But I took pictures and he eventually went off down the rabbit hole*.

While I was out there I decided to take some pics of our figs which are getting larger every day. Hopefully they will be ripe by next week.  We have 2 fig trees;  a Turkey fig and a Celeste. The Celeste are smaller and much sweeter. We generally leave the Turkey figs for the squirrels and mockingbirds... and pick the Celeste for ourselves and friends.

and we have a *Bay leaf tree* also.  It does wonderfully well and supplies us with plenty of fresh bay leaves for cooking.

Bay leaves

* I starred rabbit hole as many of you may not know what was meant by that. Well... there's a hole in our bushes which runs directly from our backyard down an incline into the lower yard which is next to the creek. This hole and path was made over the years by the critters that have used that path for the 30 years that we've lived here. My grand daughter when she was younger disappeared down that rabbit hole to check it out. She said it was "awe-some".

Have a good week!