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.

morning glories

For a long time I had no luck trying to grow morning glories, but they seem to like the soil in my new back yard. For the second year in a row they've gone bonkers climbing up a trellis I leaned against the fence. They were so aggressive this year I had to clip them out of my neighbor's tree after they crept over to a branch that was hanging too close.  I had hoped to get several shades of blue from a "tri-mix" seed packet as well as some white moonflowers, but only this particular color showed up. I think it's the type called "Grandpa Ott." During the heat of the day the leaves wilt badly and they look pathetic, but the next morning they come out to greet the day. All they need is a bit of water to keep on going.

armed vs polite society

"An armed society is a polite society," Grisham said. "It's a deterrent to agression......"

I've held on to this little news clipping for months. I disagreed with the statement from the first, and I still do. If you're enforcing politeness with a gun you're a thug, no matter who you are.

I live in a town where proponents of "open carry" are allowed to bring loaded weapons into some eating establishments. I don't feel more polite; I feel less safe when I see armed people of either sex, no matter who they are.

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)

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night......

Happy Labor Day! Throughout most of my working life I was proud to be a blue-collar worker. I probably would have joined a union if there had been such an entity in Texas. Nowadays the job I used to do is done mostly by poorly paid workers in far-off lands and the "American May Day" seems to be just another excuse to drag out the grill & pollute the air with bar-b-que.

Enjoy Billy Bragg's "There is Power in a Union", based on a 1913 composition by Joe Hill

 

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.