This little guy was on the front porch to greet us when we came home from a night on the town. We had been to see Toy Story 3 and then to dinner. Wasn't expecting it to be dark when we arrived home, so didn't leave the porch light on. Fortunately, the driveway light uses a light sensor to automatically turn on and gave enough light to see something was on the porch when I approached the front door.

He is an Eastern Black Rat Snake. They are not poisonous, but not what you want to walk up on in the dark. They eat other snakes and rodents. Looks like this one had some meals in the last several days based on the lumps in his body. I guess the porch was a nice warm dry spot to camp out for a while. The markings on his back are many time mistaken for Copperheads, but his head definitely is not a Copperhead shape. Our first snake! I got a shovel and coaxed him on his way. Hard to tell with only a little of the rocking chair in view, but I estimate him to be 3-4 feet in length and about the diameter of a shovel handle. He can grow to 8 feet in length.

We were invited to dinner a few nights back and our part of the meal was dessert. A recent issue of Taste of Home had these little treats highlighted as a light Summer dessert. They are watermelon replicas in personal sized form. The outside is a lime that is hollowed out and filled with raspberry sorbet. The seeds are mini chocolate chips. Very easy to make and very yummy!

This is our 4th Anniversary pie! It is called the Ultimate Caramel Apple Pie. Found the recipe on Food Network from Tyler Florence. Well worth the time to make it. The caramel sauce really made the pie very tasty. A friend of ours said it was better than his mom's. Oops! Won't mention names to protect the innocent. I made a little heart with the extra dough to put on top.

Here is the link to the recipe for anyone wanting to try. I used 2 Jonagold, 2 Royal Gala, and 4 Granny Smith apples and doubled the caramel part of the recipe. For some reason, mine took longer to bake and then just to be sure the apples cooked all the way through, I put the foil topper back on and turned off the oven letting the pie cool with the oven. I took it out of the oven the next morning since it was already 12:45am when I finally turned off the oven.