Dogwood Leaf falling from drought stress between rains.
Solomon's Plume under stress between rain storms
Phlox beat to ground by thunder storm
Underside of Blue Jay Feather
With the help of Traude, these are a puffball mushroom.
Upon more research, these could be Lycoperdon perlatum,
because of the multiple pore holes.
I could be wrong :)
*
I don't think I have enough time left in my life to try and identify
these fungi from the thousands out there, although
I would love to know the identity of these tiny white ones below.
Each of these mushrooms is about 1/8 inch in diameter.
They appeared after a rain and disappeared in two days
when the soil wasn't wet anymore.
*
Trooping Crumble Cap (Caprinellus disseminatus)
Thanks to David Gascoigne for looking them up.
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly on Jeana Phlox
Old Ladies
Clematis seeds becoming hairy to float away on the wind
Unwanted intruder
As imperceptibly as grief
The summer lapsed away--
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like perfidy--
A quietness distilled
As twilight long begun,
Or nature spending with herself
Sequestered afternoon--
The dusk drew earlier in--
The morning foreign shone--
A courteous, yet harrowing grace,
As guest, that would be gone--
And thus, without a wing
Or service of a keel
Our summer made her light escape
Into the beautiful.
~Emily Dickenson
Rough Blazing Star (Liatris aspera)
I'm pretty sure this is Heartleaf Drymary or Tropical Chickweed
(Drymaria cordata)
Super aggressive!
Forgot the name of this phlox
that usually has flowers whose petals bend backwards.
The soil always needs to be moist, or wilting will begin.
Blackberry Lily
The clusters of the seeds of a flower look somewhat like a blackberry.
Joe Pye Weed hanging over the rain garden area.
Who knows why it is called a weed.
It is a lovely, somewhat monstrous plant.
Rudbeckia maxima
Spicebush berries
I read their taste is likened to black pepper when green,
and more like allspice when red.
---
Oooookay...
I tasted a green berry and while it was peppery,
a resin taste was also present.
The red berry was nasty...the way I would imagine a gulp of turpentine to taste.
Insects!
Growing up I never thought much about them,
except that the cute jumping spiders were collected in a water glass and let go
outside, cockroaches mom stomped on to crush, and I, too squeamish to consider
that, tried to beat them to death with a broom…quite unsuccessfully, I might
add.
Daddy long legs sent me into a panic,
while black ants were always on a mission to take over the kitchen counters, and
as one poisoned red ant nest passed on to oblivion, others began scouting out the
yard to set up another.
Horse flies
were hungry monsters, and a dive bombing western bumblebee would send even mom
running for cover. You already know
about the exploding grasshoppers from a previous post, but sow bugs rolling
up into tight little balls were playthings for us children.
Life in a garden is so much more complex than I ever imagined it as a child growing up. I was never fascinated by all the goings on in the early years--those years of tackling a ground of heavy clay soil that only a sharpened steel shovel and garden spade could penetrate.
My fatal attraction with insects manifest itself when my focus changed from ordinary suburban gardening, to all out wild gardening that soon became wilderness enough to sustain all things in balance. Acquiring a smart phone that took amazing photographs was the icing on the cake.
I’m amazed at the complexity of so many details on an outrageously magnified photo of an insect. It has captivated me more these past two years than anything else in my entire life’s span. If I’m asked what feature surprises me most, it’s the multitude of different kinds of hairs that appears on them all. Their smooth appearance to the naked eye is so deceiving.
In another lifetime would I take this same path again? I hope not! I'd buy a cottage in the lush countryside where no city rules applied and just chill out while nature did all the work. But then again, in another lifetime I might also be a blade of grass in my neighbor's front yard with my head mowed off every Saturday morning before breakfast. Perhaps it's best to be content with my two gimpy knees and an armchair that loves me.
Common Green Tree Cricket
on storm door glass backlit by the foyer light
Skipper Butterfly
I think this is the same type of skipper butterfly, but the lighting is different.
After a cicada exits its underground home,
the outer shell is split open and the mature cicada emerges from the top back.
Annual Cicadas , whos life span is between 2 to 5 years,
emerge every year throughout the summer.
The entire insect is from 2 to 2 1/2 inches long
with green and black (sometimes brown) coloring.
They camouflage well in the leaf canopy.
Killer insect profile: The "assassin fly" or "robber fly"
More than seven thousand species already identified
Size: 0.2 – 2 inches
This one is about 1 1/2 inches long
From the Smithsonian's website
If you are squeamish, forget about reading this.
According to Torsten Dikow, curator in the
entomology department at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History,
assassin flies are “aggressive, visual predators that perch on vegetation
and rocks to look for insects flying by. Once an assassin fly spots its prey,
it follows and attacks it in flight by grabbing the insect with its legs,
biting it on its back or side, and injecting it with venomous saliva that kills
the insect almost instantly. The assassin fly is able to hold on with strong,
bristly legs that form a basket to carry its prey to a perching site where the
fly can eat at its leisure.”
“The saliva not only kills the insect, it liquefies its insides
too, which the fly sucks up through its mouthparts,” Dikow explains. “Once
it’s done eating, the fly leaves the empty carcass behind and starts looking
again for more prey.”
Common Green Bottle Fly
Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa virginica)
About 3/4" to 1" in length
I read that males have a lighter patch on their face,
but I've never noticed.
I'm on the lookout now to discover the males,
if the rains ever stop.
Houses in Tennessee are built to resist termites and carpenter bees.
Since our garden is a wildlife sanctuary,
I don't particular care to kill these lovely creatures of nature,
as they will just be replaced by more.
Nests are usually in the porch rails or fence rails.
I can live with that.
We also provide 4x4 lumber in certain areas and dried tree logs.
Males can't sting and females rarely do.
They just intimidate the hell out of you,
if you happen to be too close to their nest.
It's a bit unsettling to have a pair of these big babies
chasing after you and circling you like they're coming in for the kill
in the springtime.
They'll hound you until you escape to the house,
or the other side of the yard :)
Okay...after I read that males have a light face patch,
I tracked down two after the rains and the patch is different on each one.
Leafcutter Bee - a solitary bee that lives on its own
Common Garden Sage
Winterthur Viburnum berries turning from white to pink.
You may notice the birds are already eating them.
Red Oak leaf in rain
A pocket of water on the rocks
Dustin will be fourteen years old this November.
He's been the best friend ever.
He's in the early stages of kidney disease.
Near the end of this month,
his system will be flushed out with fluids,
his teeth cleaned,
then his system flushed out again by twice as much fluids.
This is to give his kidneys
a fighting chance to slow down the progress of the disease.
Daylily without a name
Blooming early spring and again in late summer
Swamp Rose Mallow Seedpods
Beautyberry with white fruit
Clematis Arabella still blooming
Blue Lobelia in rain garden
There is a voice that doesn't use words.
Listen.
~Rumi
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