Yes, Susan, I do own a camera!

and I took some pictures to prove it!

First, here's a bug I found flying around on our three-season (enclosed) porch a couple of weeks ago:

What the heck is that? He was a big bug--at least two inches long. He's sitting on this weird rock I found in Wooster, MA. (it's silvery and flaky)

Here's a profile of him, with me kinda pissing him off because I held him by the wings so you could see him better (you know how cruel I can be to bugs):

UPDATE! -click for terrifyingly huge- (I think I fixed the click-for-big thing!)Look at him rearing up and trying to bite me with those terrifying jaws! He flew off shortly after this photo was taken. Go figure.

After I took my power walk last night (I was too sleepy in the morning), I grabbed the binocs and camera and ran back out to photograph this little family of mourning doves:

It was really late, and it was kinda sprinkling, so all we have is a silhouette. That's mommy on the left, with two smaller ones huddled down beside her. Daddy (I guess) was on the power line that you can see crossing the bottom of the screen, only out of frame.

I'm also happy to report that I drove a bunch of Eastern meadowlarks positively bonkers last night by playing my fake BirdJam's meadowlark recording! One of them flew right at me and then circled me a couple of times, trying to figure out just what the heck I was and where the sound was coming from. It was incredibly exciting! I didn't even have to play the whole recording before these guys just started "spring of the year"-ing all over the place! It was awesome.

Next, I know you're all dying to know how my little vegetable garden is doing. I took this picture last night after I came back from photographing the MODO family, so it's pretty dark:
In the front, you can see a bunch of what I first thought were carrots but now I realize is probably just Queen Anne's lace. Oops. Behind that are my raspberry plants to the left and right in front of the fence. That tall thing is a volunteer mammoth sunflower (from last year). There are also some volunteer cilantro plants here and there, making the stepping stones a little harder to navigate.

Here are the lettuces--arugula and green leaf (left to right):

This is my first try at arugula--and boy howdy, it's way spicier than the stuff you buy in the store, even the organic stuff. It's pretty strong, but it does add a nice zip to salads.

The cilantro has already gone to flower--this is all volunteer stuff from last year; I didn't even plant one seed; also pictured to the right of the cilantro are my four brocolli plants, a new veggie for me:

I gave Nibble some lettuce (including arugula, which he ate) and a big leaf from one of the brocolli plants, and he was in bunny heaven! Here's a little Pandering: a shot of the Nibble-tocks, to satisfy Fran's Nibsession:

Back to the garden: Here are three little green pepper plants 'California Wonder', with some crookneck yellow squash behind them, and another volunteer sunflower plant behind that:
Again, it's really getting dark by this point, so it's tough to see. There's also a little volunteer cilantro plant in the lower left corner; the cilantro is kinda out-of-control this year. But then my garden is always a little wild. Remember the lettuce tree and the weedy wonderland? The morning glory that took over the world?

Oh, and I realized that I did actually take one photo while atlassing last week with Roana:
This is a little mountain stream near Poe Paddy State Park. There were about a million butterflies flying around in this area, but I didn't manage to get any pictures of them. Sorry!

To finish off, I have two cloud photos I took with my Sony-Ericsson Walkman 580i camera phone. The first one was taken while driving about 75 mph down Rt 220 toward State College:
I dig the sunbeams. This next one is the weirdest-looking cloud/sun combo I've ever seen; it was taken in April, so it was still really cold which might explain the clouds:

That's a birch tree in the lower left corner, with the sun shining through these weird cotton-batting-like clouds. Creepy, huh?