acorns big and small

I like picking up different things when I go out with my dog for walks. One of my favorite things in the fall is finding & comparing different kinds of acorns. I've read there are more than 400 different kinds of oak trees, and I suppose there are almost as many different kinds of acorns. These two big acorns are easy: they're from a bur oak. I used to collect dozens of these for a co-worker to take home to his daughters, and they would make little "rasta people" from them. I still pick them up out of habit and because they're interesting to look at. Lately my dog Kiera has taken to circling and re-circling the bur oaks at a nearby park on the off chance she'll scare up a squirrel. They're up in the trees, alright, but usually they're smart enough to stay up there. They like to drop (or throw?) their half-eaten acorns and woe to any unfortunate dog-moms (me) standing below. Those acorns are deadly little missiles.

The little acorn may be from a shumard oak, but it could be from a nuttall oak. Next time after things dry out a bit from our recent heavy rain I'll pick up some leaves to help identify it.

Springtime visitors

Hyles lineata

Warm weather is bringing out lots of wildlife! Thursday I spotted a hummingbird, so I made a sugar-water mixture and hung the feeder up. At least one hummer has been back to feed from it.

About a year and a half back (September 2016) I found a Rustic Sphinx moth resting on the brick exterior of my house. Yesterday I found a different large moth - a White-lined Sphinx. It wasn't as large as the Rustic sphinx, but was still pretty impressive.




Tonight I captured a Carolina Wolf Spider that had got in the house. I released it into the back yard; there's probably more food available for it outside.

Spiny Backed Orb Weaver

Gasteracantha cancriformis

Earlier in the week it was Spider Lillies, now it's an actual Spider. Another first for me, seeing one of these "smiley face" spiders in real life. This one is pretty small, maybe 1/4 inch in diameter. I almost missed the spider, but couldn't miss the beautiful web.

the sphinx

The biggest moth I think I have ever seen was resting against the side of my house yesterday. It stayed there for several hours and was back again this morning. It is a Rustic Sphinx (Manduca rustica).

What is the Sphinx trying to tell me?


 

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.

Land Slug

This blog seems to have changed into "Fifi's Garden Adventures". I'm spending a lot more time outside gardening & discovering new creatures & I'm too lazy to write about them in a journal. Plus I'd have to lug the laptop into my office, connect to the printer, and print a photo to remind me what I'm writing about. Too much work after working in the yard. (I had the chain saw out one day, the axe another day - dang! it wears me out.)

Couple days back I turned over a rock and found this slug. First one I have seen in many years. We have tons of snails here, and I saw lots of snails at various places I lived in North Texas, but never a slug. When I was a kid in Seattle we saw lots of slugs but not snails. We used to pour salt on them and watch them dissolve. Apparently it's an old tradition in some parts. I didn't salt this one though. I read that some of their deadliest enemies are the larvae of lightning bugs, and there are plenty of those around, so I'll let nature take its course.

Sign of fall?

© Deines, Fred. Photographer: Deines, Fred. Content released to the Public Domain

The brightest yellow bird I have ever seen visited my back yard this morning. We get goldfinches, but they're almost always in their drab winter colors. I'm pretty sure the bird I saw was a Yellow Warbler  (Dendroica petechia). I've never seen one before. Information I found online & in my bird books show that yellow warblers are usually seen in Texas only when they're migrating, so I'm hopeful this pretty yellow visitor is a sign that hot temperatures may be on the wane soon. Temperatures are still in the upper nineties, with highs of 98 predicted for the coming week. (sigh)

Hummer Swarm

I'm only about a year late posting this. It was on my flip cam until today. This was shot September 9, 2013, so it's almost time for them to arrive, if they fly this way again. I think most of these were ruby-throated hummingbirds. I hope they come back.

caterpillar season

Hungry caterpillars everywhere on my sunflower! I've been trimming more and more spent flowers from the 7 ft. tall sunflower in the back yard and thinking how life is slowing down after two weeks of temperatures hovering near 100 degrees. And then I spotted the caterpillars. Not just one or two, but dozens of them, voraciously devouring the leaves on the sunflower plant. Usually when I see a lot of caterpillars they are the "bad" kind, but these particular creepycrawlies will turn into a pretty orange and black butterfly called the Border Patch Butterfly (Chlosyne lacinia). It's also called the Sunflower Patch because one of its favorite host plants is the sunflower. I've seen a few of these butterflies, but they have been too fast for me to catch with my camera.

You can see the ragged edge where this caterpillar has been chomping away at a leaf.

This one chews from the underside of the leaf. You can see from these few photos there is quite a lot of variation in the colors of these caterpillars.  Soon these little guys will attach themselves to the undersides of the sunflower leaves and form themselves into chrysalises, if they don't get eaten by the cardinal who seems to have found them. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to see butterflies emerge in a few weeks.

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.

little mocker

Young mockingbird almost ready to fly. Look at those short little tail feathers! My dog will be a happier puppy when she has her special corner in the back yard to herself again. Her favorite spot is apparently too close to the mockingbird nest (even though it's on the other side of the fence), and lately the adult mockingbirds keep swooping down to peck her on the back.

Charlotte's Web

 

This small argiope spider spun her web in a red rose bush in my backyard.  Google says this is the largest spider most folks in the U.S. will ever see, obviously not written by someone living in tarantula territory. This was a small spider, only about 1.5 inches long including its legs. I learned it is also called "the writing spider" and that its baby spiders disperse on the wind with fine web "parachutes". I suddenly realized this is the spider of Charlotte's Web. Only the female argiopes have this particular pattern and color, and only the females spin such distinctive webs, so I know this is a girl spider, like Charlotte. Maybe she will write me a message one day!

ode to a toad

"That afternoon the dream of the toads rang through the elms by Little River and affected the thoughts of men, though they were not conscious that they heard it."  -  Henry David Thoreau

We had a new visitor on the patio this morning. At first I thought it was a regular Texas Toad, but it seemed it little too yellow in color, so I went a googling.  I found out Texas Toads don't have a stripe down their back, and this one definitely does. It is a Gulf Coast Toad, Bufo valliceps valliceps. Even though we are pretty far inland, it's been so miserably hot & humid lately Bell County might could pass for Houston or Beaumont. I hope the toad stays in our back yard. It's currently taking refuge under the loose end of a bag of potting soil, but I put a broken terra cotta pot upside down nearby in case the toad would like a mini-cave.

See the stripe down the middle of the back and two lesser stripes on the sides above the legs? The other distinguishing trait it the deep "valley" between the toad's eyes.


I'll be listening this evening for toad songs.

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.