Out and about after the rain

 Here is a hornworm I found on our pepper plant. If not for the frass I would have missed it. For those of you that don't know what frass is, it is droppings.

 Just about any damp or semi damp spot along the county roads here have lots of Wingstem blooming. The bees are using it too. I noticed a week ago or so, the bees bringing in orange pollen. The nearest wingstem to just that I know of is maybe an half mile from here. Something you might not know is that each bee gathers one pollen type usually until the flowers are finished. Other bees might be out there getting pollen from another source, once brought back home they do not mix the pollen.

This bee with orange pollen confirms to me that our orange pollen bees are visiting wingstem right now.

Today I saw lots of these Eastern-tailed Blues, these two posed for me nicely.

This is an wild lobelia that I see every late summer or fall. It was in great light and had a decent background for a change.


This is Gerardia it looked really really good the rain has revived it. I saw lots of it, yet found no Common Buckeye caterpillars on it. Usually in late summer you can easily find caterpillars.

This is my favorite spider it is an Marbled Orb Weaver. Very secretive and weaves a beautiful web. If you ever find one building its web it is fascinating!

This spider on the other hand is the villain of all spiders. I have seen this one with more rare butterflies in its clutches than I care to recall. It is a Green Lynx Spider, my first this year.

Black Widow in the Laundry Room!!

Yesterday when Meg got up she found a Black Widow spider in the laundry room. They are common around here though we have never found any in the house, likely came in on the recycling bin. I removed him and let it go outside. Many of you might ask why I did not kill it? As a nature photographer nature might never be interfered with, it is my way. BTW Black Widows are poisonous but not much of a threat when they are minding to their business and you are minding your own business.

We built 3 make shift cold frames on Sunday. One of CPVC piping that is light and 30" x 96". Another was the freebee one we used 4 old window sashes placed on left over concrete blocks (Swiss Chard). The last one I used some leftover 2 x 8s and bought 7 pieces of 1/2" PVC pipe and 24 conduit straps, it ended up being 6' x 10' and about 5 foot tall. All the plastic was left overs from handyman projects too!

It was dark by the time we finished building cold frames so I do not have any photos of them yet.

Everyday for the past four days we had seen this Chinese Praying Mantis on the screens of our porch.

The art studio tour was fun! I bought an original water color of a Trout Lily, it was small 5 x 7. Realized today that my avatar is of a Trout Lily... 

Given I'm on the new mac the work flow for creating photos until I get it figured out it terribly slow. Trying Gimp it seems ok but finding the image to put in it in Iphoto with 400 other images pretty well sucks. at this point.

Little Yellow not so Mellow!

Today I found a Little Yellow in the garden on the verbena. It has been 3-4 years since one of these southern migrants was seen in my garden! Surely in 13 years here at our garden we have not seen more than 4-5 of this species, so it was pretty exciting!

I saw this guy on the verbena and came inside and checked my e mail, went back out 15 minutes later and it was still on the verbena! This photo was taken from 2 inches away with my little G11 camera. Looks pretty good right? Lets look closer at the photo below.

 Now look closer at the butterfly legs, the whitish legs pointing down are the butterfly legs. The greenish legs pointing upward at a crab spiders legs. This is a in perfect pose dead butterfly.....

News from the garden. We received at least 6 inches of rain in the past several days, it was much needed! The pond had looked pitiful with only weeks left before it would have dried up. Today the pond is back to a normal low level back to its summer edges at least.

Good news is the hellebores are perky looking, not wilted and desperate looking. Bad news is another 4 ft camellia might be dying, only the top leaves are green with a few buds. I'd forgotten to mention on of my big butterfly bushes looks bad too, the trunks are all whitish and scaly looking.

We have been picking Lemon Cucumbers this past week, they somehow survived the mildew and are now fruiting. Yummy!

Acorn bombardment, fall gardening

Folks,

The past few days and nights we have been bombarded with showers of acorns. It now takes about 2-3 days before the deck is covered in acorns.


Above is two days worth of acorns on the deck, pretty noisy when they hit the roof then bounce onto the deck.

A pile Meg swept up that we'll be piling in the woods for the deer.

Today Meg and I went to the local farmers market and stocked up on fresh veggies and greens, our CSA on Wednesday has now ended and they closed the Wednesday market too.

Down by the pond this morning I spied our local 3 point buck resting hidden in the willows by himself. Until a few weeks ago he was in the company of several does and two fawns, this was the third time I'd found him by himself down by the pond in the morning.

We cleaned up the garden and planted garlic, greens, swiss chard, spinach and kale. Before planting we filled a wheelbarrow with our homemade compost and added it to the soil. Someday that soil will be prime but it has years to get "fixed".

Dot the Wonder Dog in deep thought. She is enjoying the freshly swept deck, a hard hat is needed out there!


Meg was digging in the garden and found this Red Eft, Notophthalmus viridescens. This was the second terrestrial version of the Eastern Red-spotted Newt we have found here in paradise. Our pond has a lot of aquatic Red-spotted Newts every year.

Other creatures seen in the garden today were a Common Ground Skink, 2 Worm Snakes (they eat slugs BTW) and a Eastern Fence Lizard.

I was lucky enough to find this Marbled Orbweaver, Araneus marmoreus down by the pond this afternoon. They are my favorite spiders and I had the pleasure of watching it build its perfect web. Finally I can see the web and ID the spider before I look for it hidden in the leaves next to the web.


Above is an update on our Swamp Sunflowers, even in more bloom than the last posting. We have seen several Monarchs, Cloudless Sulphurs and an American lady visit it for nectar.

Here is our 10 foot tall Sparkleberry with lots of berries. It is I believe actually a holly. I canoed the Sparkleberry Swamp in South Carolina once many years ago and the sea of red berries really got my attention. So I bought this one at Durham Hardware many years ago, it has been closed down for a long time now. Last year Meg and I watched from 10 foot away in the screened in porch Cedar Waxwings, American Robins and Eastern Bluebirds eat all the berries in two days.

Our Cosmos is still doing well!

These tiny peppers are called Del Monacos I think. I searched the web for them and came up blank. Meg bought two plants this summer and both plants are 2 foot tall and wide completely covered in these pea sized "HOT" peppers. I added three of them to some salsa for heat a few times this summer. These are too hot for our liking.