all these pictures make me miss nature. i used to live in the country, had all those wonderful creatures, sometimes i wonder why i moved to the middle of suburban new orleans.....

patty dont quote me, but that may be the brown anole, as opposed to laaz green anoles. im not talking about color changing either. they are very invasive and out breed and perform their green cousins on everything. if youve never seen a green anole i may be right, because i cant imagine green anoles not being everywhere...ive only seen them in one back yard around here, and there must have been a hundred of them. i hope they dont spread too much, i like the green ones better.

anyway look it up, see if they a match

red

Yikes. Our lizards in our yards are harmless. Just the rattlesnakes we have to watch out for. Many in my area. We've cleared out 5 of them on our property since we've moved in. My very smart Aussie found one, and was extremely cautious. It was his peculiar behavior that alerted us to the snake. It was a mother of a rattler, at least 6 feet long and as big around as the top of my arm. I about fainted. I've never seen a rattler that large ever, and I've seen plenty. He must have been really, really old, had a very big rattle. We had two that were that large (second one wasn't quite as big, but nearly), as well as several smaller ones and a baby on our driveway not too many months ago that I dispatched rather poorly with a hoe. All the while my husband critiqued my technique ("you missed, you missed, you missed". Duh!! Don't you think I know that!?!?). He was lucky I didn't turn the hoe on him.

And you don't even have the large ones out there. We have a few different rattlers, but the most common is the Eastern diamondback which is the largest of all rattlers.

yea they are harmless, to everything except the green anole lol. ive never had to deal with rattlesnakes, i guess at least you should hear them coming...my biggest pest as i child was the occasional cottonmouth, ive learned to take second and third looks at standing water.

another great thing about being rural, and not in california id imagine, a .22 works well enough from a distance on a snake. or if you like overkill, .45 caliber is wonderful.

Our little lizard we have all over our property is the Coast Range Fence lizard. Or, what we used to call as kids as the "Bluebelly Lizard". They are very, very beneficial reptiles as they eat a lot of the "bad bugs", like ticks, crickets, spiders, and even scorpions. Unfortunately, the Black Widow spider can prey on the little juveniles. I just read on the California Herps page, that their blood will kill the bacterium responsible for Lyme Disease, I found that fascinating.

http://www.californiaherps.com/lizards/pages/s.o.bocourtii.html

well i certainly hope some doctor is doing research on that. it would be nice to have one less disease to worry about

The UCR site says, "Nitrogen should be applied in January or February just prior to bloom." So I would say that most of us are right on schedule. Meyer and Pink Lemonade are blooming, budding, flushing and setting fruit all at once right now. Late Lane is pushing buds and flushing, everything else is just flushing.

When applying nitrogen pre-bloom just about all growers apply it in the forum of Urea.. Nitrogen can also be applied pre-bloom in the forum of Potassium Nitrate. - Millet

My in ground stuff gets blasted with 10-10-10 & Epsom salt the first of March every year, no matter what.

Patty, I just saw your reference to Lyme disease. "They" are pretty sure we invented Lyme disease on Plum Island just a little ways from downtown Manhattan. The closest place to Plum Island is Lyme, Conneticut where the general public first said what's this ? What's up with this tick from a bird that is now thought to have flow in from Plum Island where uncle Sam was experimenting with chemical warfare stuff.....pretty interesting . Now I think all experiments there are conducted indoors. Thanks for that......Tom

Yesterdays walk around showed blooms swelling. I have to work this weekend so I'll try to get some fertilizer out this week.

Laaz I'll pass on the cottonmouths. They miss the concept of friendly everytime. If those skinks get to biting too much send them down here. With at least 50% of my yard in thick leaf mulch I'm sure they'd like it.

I do have quite a few Anoles and with my larger ornamental shrubs I guess they stay hidden a lot.

I looked up green anoles. Depending on what they eat green anoles can turn brown but brown anoles can not turn green. As I think Redster said the brown anoles are pushing the green anoles out in some places. It seems everyone likes green anoles better because they are so cute , graceful and elegant .
Tom

The green anoles do turn brown, for what reason I do not know.

It's been my experience they use it to blend in as in camoflage.