Friday, September 6, 2024

September ~ when the heater is turned on before midnight and the air conditioner is turned on before noon..

Opening the sliding glass door to the deck and the garden beyond, the music of a few katydids’ give’s purpose to my empty mind this early morning. I have missed the rush hour, and the lull in traffic gives me pause for thought.

I’m happy in parts , but unhappy with the whole of living. Selfish seems to trump goodness quite often, and we all know good intentions are no intentions at all. Such a disappointment; gives me reason to love my two cats even more. I have yet to meet a cat who has lied to me.

I’ve noticed my “About Me” part of my blog introduction still lists my interests as Cats, Dogs, Wildlife Gardening, Scrapbooking, Artist, Cooking, Hiking, Art, Museums, Theater, Music, Book Stores. Nowadays they are mostly unpracticed interests due to different health issues.

Cats are an active interest, as I have two, but if I’m not present at a veterinarian appointment, my husband will give me a different version of what the cat docter said every time I ask. Whaaaaaaaaat?

I am the head gardener of my wildlife garden with one volunteer who is a self-declared hater of gardening… ha-ha-ha. Let’s move on.

Cooking – well, yes if my prep guy preps and leaves me only with the cooking to do. Sometimes I feel as if I’ve descended into hell after I am finished, but hey, it’s always worth the try.

Nothing else happens if I have to stand more than a few minutes or bend my neck for any length of time. That pretty much wipes everything else off the list unless I have a bent elbow to hang onto. Sometimes that bent elbow walks off without me :'(

My wildlife garden only came about when the person who promised to teach me how to shoot effectively in competition matches reneged, leaving me high and dry.

Wildlife gardening was the only choice I thought I could teach myself and pull it off on my own. It was riddled with unrealistic expectations and arguments, and a hardscape of whatever I could find at construction sites.

Was it worth it?

I would like to say yes, but it feels like no one cares. A lack of compassion for all living organisms seems to be a flaw in our evolution of smarts.

So here I sit, empty as I began, in my writing room, trying to think of something more worthwhile to write.

Horace's Duskywing Butterfly, Erynnis horatius

on Joe Pye Weed going to seed.

About three feet away this looked like a tiny dark oblong mass.

Since I did not disturb the top bug from eating the lower insect,

I can only speculate that the top insect is a shield bug nymph.

sucking the innards from something

that looks a little like a spotted cucumber Beetle.

Whatever...

Clematis viorna

Flower Fly - Syrphid Fly - Hover Fly

Clasping Aster

First aster to bloom here in early fall.

Leaf base is attached to the stem without having a stalk or peduncle,

so it appears to clasp the stem.

Large Carpenter Bee, male, with its white face patch;

on pink turtlehead plant.

The sun was still shining but the wind smelled of rain: he loved that promise of wetness mixed with the autumn reek of leaves and molder, ripe apples and completed earth. The Equinox always roused him and gave him a sense of fulfillment at the same time: he felt as tired and contented as the ground and yet as wild with storm as the changing sky.

~Frances Frost, Uncle Snowball, 1940

Polistes fuscatus, Northern Paper Wasp, I think.

They mimic so many different looks.

It will drink from the side of birdbath as the one above is doing,

but will also land on the water and float while drinking.

Drosophila melanogaster, Fruit Fly

Carex plantaginea, Seersucker Sedge edging pathway.

Wild Petunia, Ruellia humilis

A nice groundcover when happy.

Oncopeltus fasciatus, known as the large milkweed bug

Milkweed nymphs go through a process called molting, where they shed their exoskeleton to grow larger. The time between each molt is called an instar.

On Butterflyweed, Asclepias tuberosa, seed pod which they feed on.

They reach adult stage after four instars, and live for about a month.

That time of year, you know, when the summer, beginning to sadden,
Full-mooned and silver-misted, glides from the heart of September,
Mourned by disconsolate crickets, and iterant grasshoppers, crying
All the still nights long, from the ripened abundance of gardens;
Then, ere the boughs of the maples are mantled with earliest autumn,
But the wind of autumn breathes from the orchards at nightfall,
Full of winy perfume and mystical yearning and languor;
And in the noonday woods you hear the foraging squirrels,
And the long, crashing fall of the half-eaten nut from the tree-top;
When the robins are mute, and the yellow-birds, haunting the thistles,
Cheep, and twitter, and flit through the dusty lanes and the loppings,
When the pheasant booms from your stealthy foot in the cornfield,
And the wild-pigeons feed, few and shy, in the scoke-berry bushes;
When the weary land lies hushed, like a seer in a vision,
And your life seems but the dream of a dream which you cannot remember...

~William Dean Howells

Hairy Sunflower, Helianthus hirsutus

Snout Butterfly

Eastern Gray Squirrel on

Carpinus caroliniana, American Hornbeam

Liatris aspera, Tall Blazing Star

Below is one that stands out from the rest

with its dark red.

The stem can get 6' tall, but in my containers they grow horizontally

sometimes, curling and snaking about.

Large Carpenter Bee

Often called gentle giants.

I had a pair of them fly into me today when they changed direction,

and they just went on about business as usual.

Northern Mockingbird

Mother and Fledging

Austin

Always thinking of you ...

This Post is Linked To:

Saturday's Critters

Wednesday, August 21, 2024

The Surprise of a June Day in August

Gulf Fritillary Butterfly

American Snout Butterfly, Libytheana carinent

Pearl Crescent Butterfly

I don't think I would want just three summer days as a butterfly,

but it sounds like music on the page.

Bumblebee and tiny Mason Bee

on Monarda fistulosa

Bumblebee and non-native Honeybee

Green Sweat Bee

Carpenter Bee

Carpenter Bee, Green Sweat Bee, tiny Mason Bee

You can see the difference in size from big to tiny.

Bumblebee

Common Green Bottle Fly, I think, with Green Sweat Bee.

This Carpenter Bee has wings that are further apart.

I used to look at August as the most insufferable month of the year, but months aren’t always logical these days. Something peculiar is happening. A giant portion of June leaped forward into August, and part of August is falling back into June.

As usual, I’m at my garden table on the back deck at the same time the neighbors’ children have burst forth from the school bus to wreak havoc on my wellbeing. Larger green cicadas are fewer in late summer, and revving up their song of love sounds gentler than the hordes of spring red eyed cicadas.

It is so pleasant this week, 81 degrees F. at 3:30 in the afternoon. The heat can still be felt though, until breezes pass across the deck playfully ruffling my hair.

A squirrel is busy chattering, as a female cardinal has lighted onto a viburnum twig to pick at the yellow cream berries slowly ripening into tiny pale pinks before turning into an ocean of dark blue.

Cottony clouds are passing over to dim the sun intermittently, and it feels wonderful to be liberated from the four walls of stuffiness indoors. Traffic is picking up, as it always does this time of day, past the house next door, and is joined by the noise of a light aircraft passing over head and fading away.

Mud dauber wasps are flying about, no doubt looking for mud and spiders. While we have mud for the taking, the poisoning of the ash tree every other year decimated the spider population for now.

A group of leaf-footed bugs have been spotted on the coralberry bushes where the ash tree trunk once stood, a few are mating, and others sucking juice from the berries. It has been the first time in thirty odd years that I have spotted any creature enjoying any part of the bushes.

Blue-Eyed Grass has been ordered to fill the containers of non-native herbs, along with something new to me - Scrophularia marilandica (Late Figwort). Deemed not front yard worthy, it will be tucked into the back garden in semi-shade to hopefully surprise us next year, as it is a magnet for attracting insects with the nectar refilling in the flowers quite fast.

A chickadee chirps off and on, and if it had babies in the bird box this year, I missed it all. The American dogwood has ripening berries this year, and although sunburned a bit, it is surviving with the extra watering. It does get shade past 4:00 in the afternoon, but next year maybe not so much with the position of the spring sun. Then it will most likely die.

A Spicebush Swallowtail was spotted early afternoon along with a pair of American snout butterflies (Libytheana carinenta), and as I sit here typing, I am noticing many turned under leaf edges on the Spicebushes, signaling each is a sleeping bag type protection for a baby Spicebush caterpillar.

I think potter wasps are their worst enemy, as a baby caterpillar will fit nicely into one of their mud creations. It is the way of nature, isn't it. Fairness has nothing to do with it.

What a fiasco! I just noticed sprays of water shooting up around five feet into the air at the ground birdbath, as about fifty blackbirds, six or seven at a time are flapping away madly taking short baths, one wave after another, before moving into the neighboring trees. It all ends in less than a minute. That actually took my breath away… sigh.

The mosquitoes have descended upon me like a wave of blood suckers out for the kill. I’m out of here!