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I knew there were smiley faced spiders in Hawaii and other exotic places, but I didn’t know we had them in Georgia. This little guy was about 3 mm wide. Just after I shot this picture he pounced on a flea beetle. I wish I had been shooting video.

At least in Atlanta, the Rose Breasted Grosbeak is a rare visitor that only passes through the area for a couple of weeks each year. I was lucky enough to snap a picture of this handsome bird this weekend.

I had to scramble to find my camera this morning for this one. I don’t know what it is but I have seen this bee-moth thing in TN as well as GA.


This garden spider was really patient and didn’t seem to mind getting photographed at all.


And here’s a frequent visitor to the butterfly bush.

Pasture feeding is a requirement in the organic standards for dairy farmers. The USDA and leading organic dairies seek to remove this requirement.

As reported by www.organicconsumers.org

As Organic Bytes has reported, the most serious threat to U.S. organic standards since 1998 is in the dairy sector. Two rapidly growing and profit-obsessed corporations, Horizon and Aurora Organic, are sourcing much of their milk from intensive confinement dairy feedlots, where the cows have little or no access to pasture. Now, in a secret letter obtained by the Cornucopia Institute, OCA has learned that three other major organic dairies, Stonyfield Farm, Organic Valley, and Humboldt Creamery have joined forces with Horizon and Aurora to lobby the USDA to keep dairy standards vague and unenforceable, by not requiring any specific percentage of the cow’s feed to come from pasture. The National Organic Standards Board and the overwhelming majority of the nation’s dairy farmers have repeatedly stated that at least 30% of an organic cow’s feed during the growing season should be coming from pasture. Scientific studies have shown that milk and meat from pastured animals are qualitatively healthier than milk and meat derived from animals kept in unhealthy and inhumane concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Learn more >>>
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_4549.cfm