the little monster

Doesn't this look like some cute little shaggy dog you'd love to pet?
Don't Do It!

This is the furry puss caterpillar of Megalopyge opercularis, the Southern Flannel Moth, and it is considered to be the most venomous caterpillar in the United States.

Must be the season for me to see weird bugs

As I've learned from experience, if a caterpillar is fuzzy, spiky, or begging to be petted, you should avoid it like the plague or be prepared to face Pain. Or as WIRED put it: Never Touch Anything That Looks Like Donald Trump's Hair.


This worm had an interesting brown stripe along its back, which included the tail. Looked like a Mohawk haircut. It was crawling around the withered top of a spider lily in my back yard, perhaps looking for a place to attach itself prior to morph into THIS.

I got a short video of this creature on my phone but forgot & turned it the wrong way.  When I went back outside to redo the video the critter had vanished.  So, apologies for making you turn sideways to view it.

return of the spider lillies

Three spider lillies popped up and bloomed early last week. A few more appeared later in the week. A grand total of 6 or 7 plants this year; nothing like last year. Maybe it was the unusually wet weather we had in August this year.

unexpected pinkness

Last fall I planted a packet of wildflower seeds. I was hoping for bluebonnets and paintbrush, but so far what has been most plentiful are the non-native flowers, including these corn poppies. On this cool rainy day they look like luscious lollipops out in the back yard.

harvest of purple and gold

Partridge Pea  -  Chamaecrista fasciculata

One of my long-term goals is to convert my lawn into a nature friendly xeriscape. That means planting as many native plants as possible to give back some of the habitat being destroyed by housing and roadways. The partridge pea is an old favorite flower, one I first spotted in Bosque County about 1985, but I hadn't seen one in many years until recently. Now I see many dozens of them in an as yet undeveloped field near my house and I thought I'd to grow some. Getting seeds for planting has been a bit tricky. I've looked at a lot of seed pods, but there must be a very short time between the pods being too green or being too ripe with seeds already scattered.  I've been looking at and gathering pods sporadically for over a month and have less than 30 seeds to show for it.

I had been puzzling for months over a clump of interesting greenery in someone's front yard, trying to identify it. It looked like rosemary, but was too stiff and prickly & certainly didn't smell like rosemary. A few weeks ago the prickly greenery began sprouting tiny purple flowers. and then I saw these plants in the wildflower field which are unkempt versions of the plant I had been so fascinated with. I finally found its name: Gayfeather, Texas Liatris, or my favorite, Blazing Star.

Gayfeather  -  Liatris mucronata

I took a spade with me one day and dug up a few specimens to put in my yard. I wouldn't normally disturb someone's property, but this field seems to serve mostly as a repository for cans, plastic bottles, and almost every kind of trash. I didn't think anyone would miss a few plants.  So far the specimens I transplanted are surviving.

When I dug up the gayfeather plants I accidentally got a couple of Broomweed plants with them.

Prairie Broomweed  -  Amphiachyris dracunculoides

I decided to plant them as well, and hope any seeds formed would self-sow in my yard. One plant by itself doesn't look like much, but in quantity they cast a nice yellow glow. Apparently settlers in the 1800s would gather a bunch of these plants and bind one end so they could be used as brooms, hence the common name broomweed. They're part of the Aster family, and up close are quite pretty. I do hope I see them in the yard next summer. Maybe all these wildflowers will find my yard to their liking.

Bring me the sunflower crazed with the love of light

  -- Eugenio Montale

And life itself exhaling that central breath!

Top: The seed packet said Maximillian Sunflower (Helianthus maximilianii) but none of the pictures I found on the internet look like this. Plant is about 6 feet tall and flowers are about 5 inches wide.

Bottom: A "volunteer" sunflower, planted by birds, with Western Tiger Swallowtail. Probably a Common Sunflower (Helianthus annuus).  Flowers 4 to 4 1/2 inches wide. This plant is about 7 feet tall and has 40-50 blossoms on it, with more on the way.

looking under rocks

Sometimes I have to move rocks or concrete stepping stones so I can pull weeds or put in new plants. I consider the sight of a sleepy garden snake a fortuitous occasion. I have spied at least 8 or 10 of these rough brown earth snakes (Virginia striatula) in both front and back yard. This is a small non-venomous snake (7-10 inches) that eats earthworms and soft-bodied insects. To gauge its size, on the right side of the photo you can see a plant shoot just emerging from a seed.

I took a lot of photos before the snake disappeared into the grass. Note the black spots on the head and the forked tongue testing the environment.

Take time to look under rocks sometimes. It's such an interesting world.

CAVEAT: Respect Nature! I wear gloves when probing around rocks, just in case there are UN-friendly critters lying in wait. Depending on where you live, consider doing the same.

prickly protection

Prickly Pear Cactus is one of my favorite plants. There are about a dozen different species native to the American Southwest. Most varieties are from the Sonoran, Chihuahuan and Mojave deserts. This is a detail of one of the prickly pears I have growing in my back yard. I call them jumping cacti because you can't get too close or it'll "jump" out and stab you. You think you're not touching it, but ouch! You've suddenly got one or more stickers in you that will be almost impossible to find, and will drive you crazy until you do get them out. It's not those long spines you see in the picture that get you, but rather one of the many really short stickers in tufts you see at the base of the big spines. Those things are called glochids.

I don't know which variety of prickly pear this is. It may be an Engelmann's. A friend gave me two pads a few years back and they have grown by 4 or 5 more pads each year. I have two of these in pots which I will be planting near some windows in the front yard. The windows are close to the ground and the previous occupants of this house had boxwood  or waxleaf ligustrum shrubs growing up against the windows and halfway up the house, I guess as a burglar deterrent. The shrubs were half dead, a real fire hazard so close to the house, and they weren't native plants, so I've been gradually cutting them out so I can replace them with native drought-resistant plants. These prickly pears will make a much better burglar deterrent than those boring old ornamentals.

P.S. The easiest way I've found to get those glochids out of your skin is to make a thick paste of water and baking soda and smear it thickly over the area you've been stuck. The skin absorbs a lot of moisture, swells a bit, and squeezes out the spines. You might have to repeat a few times, but it usually works.