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!