ROULIER'S RUSTY RELIQUES

SKULL

Just finished cleaning this skull of a very large cat who died, the person who gave him to me just found the head with some tissue and hair attached but had obviously been dead a while. No trauma to the skull, all teeth attached, and a few neck vertabrae.

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MORE STUDIO

Just putting one foot in front of the other, blind faith, fool hardiness, the right thing, the wrong thing, well it's something all right.

So got quite a bit done today and enough is finished so that I can start working, here's a few shots, I like Sunday it's noisy and sparse.

I'm catching up on the walking dead

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MY THREE CHARLOTTES

I have three Charlotte's living just outside my back door, I'm always happy to see them because they eat so many of those pesky bugs. These spiders are polite they don't come inside to spend the winter. For pictures of mine and some info scroll down.

The garden spider spins a large complex orb-web, which measures up to 40 cm in diameter and is used to capture insect prey. Individuals spend much of their time at the center of their web, and detect vibrations in the silk through their legs when insects become trapped. This spider wraps prey items in silk before consuming them. When this species is threatened, it rapidly shakes itself and the web up and down, and may drop to the ground on a silk thread. The web may be rebuilt every day, and the old web is consumed so that the proteins used in its construction are conserved and re-used.

Males approach females with caution in order to avoid being eaten. During copulation, males embrace the female's abdomen; sperm is transferred by the insertion of one of the male's palps. The male departs after mating, and the female spends a number of days inside her retreat. She then begins to spin an egg sac or 'cocoon', which protects the eggs. She stays close to the cocoon for a number of days before dying. The young spiders emerge from the cocoon in spring; they gather into dense groups until after their first molt, after which they disperse by 'ballooning', a form of dispersal in which the spiderlings are carried on the wind by a thread of silk.

The word 'spider' derives from the Old English word 'spithra' and is related to the German 'spinne', both of which mean 'spinner. Spider webs have been used to heal wounds and to staunch blood flow for many years.

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VACATION

Just got back from vacation where there is no cell phone or wifi. I got out of the habit, pretty quick, of posting regularly :) Also my first vacation without kids I almost didn't know how to deal with it..........

full moon over neighbors camper, we never saw him most everyone were just parking their campers and coming up once in a while

Osprey babies

the Madison river Yellowstone looks are deceiving it was 50 degrees with a wind that day

Madison in Yellowstone, Mike is standing in the shallow water, out by the rock it was almost waist deep

Wyoming where we got gas it was raining and cool that day but picturesque......

WHERE I LIVE

Right now, where I live, it's beautiful absolutely breath taking. After winter and months of rain I decided that me and my dogs could use a little exercise. So early in the morning we walk to the top of the mountain that we live on. It has totally been kicking my ass, the initial climb is a pretty steep incline. Here are a few shots.

almost to the top is a birds nest in the sage brush....
view looking east toward Denver
view looking west towards Evergreen...
half way down looking on down on a couple of houses on our street
looking down at our roof

ANOTHER PIG POST

This is absolutely fascinating, trying to figure out the best way to dry this pig out. So I was thinking that his ears and snout are dry enough so I am going to start wrapping the ears and nose in wet paper towel.

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SPOOKY STUFF

Okay I was walking around my house yesterday and saw this:

and this:

obviously something is going on and I'm going to get to the bottom of it.

STUDIO AND FINISHED ASSEMBLAGE

Well Sarah is moving out of our studio, kinda sad and kinda exciting at the same time. I am going to try and go it alone for a while which will mean more classes of course and spreading out. Here is the chaos that is our studio right now.

Sarah's side

for some reason my side my side doesn't look any better

Also I finished my little circus elephant, she now has a name and a baby.

Birds

We use to have a lot of song birds, swallows and other birds nesting around our house. Over the last few years the magpies have become so prevalent that they have destroyed the bird population. They eat the baby birds and eggs to the point that the birds stay away from our house. This year though their population was way down my neighbor told me they had had a big battle with the crows late last year and it had nicely culled their ranks.

A friend gave me this little rustic birdhouse, which is decorative it has glitter and pine cones decorating it. I'm pretty big on hanging things from my aspen trees so this has been in my garden for a year. The other day I was headed down stairs when I heard little cheeping I could not figure out where it was coming from. A little teeny bird had decided this was home. How awesome is that?

FOUND OBJECT TERRARIUMS

Just got my found object terrariums back and I forgot how totally cool they are and I might add a real breath of fresh air mid-winter.......nice green lush growth. I hope they don't get mad at me they did have a really good spot at Valkarie Gallery with lots of nice natural light and a grow light on timer as well. I replanted them with more African Violets and Rex Begonias and they are yummy.