18 & Life

 Hooray - our 18th anniversary is in the books!  I just found the perfect t-shirt at an Amazon returns/overstock store for .50.  :)

We'd made plans to travel to a national wildlife refuge with Pepita for hiking, a picnic lunch, and board games by the water, but we got rained out.  Severe storms here and there, all weekend long.  The best we could manage was an hour-long hike at the local bog, but we barely made it through...the rain had started by the time we finished up.  

Pepita is still not much of a hiking fan.

But she finally complied...mostly.  

Wonderful to be out, lots of flowers...

purple fringeless orchid

...and waterways.

We'd used a spray for mosquitoes and ticks, but it didn't affect another common pest, the deer fly.

They have a pretty painful bite and can draw blood!  Mosquitoes use a thin needle-like implement, but deer flies saw clumsily through skin to create pools of blood to drink from.  

Thankfully, we don't seem to have any deer flies around our house.  Just lots...and lots...of butterflies.  Hundreds.  More than I've ever seen anywhere except for the butterfly installment at the Indianapolis Zoo.

Not just butterflies.  The flower garden is drawing all sorts of bees and wasps, and one of my favorites...hummingbird moths!

Milkweed tussock caterpillars!

Lots of other creatures too.  I love, love, love having this insect draw every year and it makes all the hard work worth it!

twice-stabbed stink bugs

red milkweed beetle

oleander aphids

milkweed bug nymphs

adult milkweed bugs

I had my camera on the wrong setting the whole afternoon but I think the photos turned out all right.  I need more practice with it...I've been relying too heavily on my iPhone camera this summer!   It's just too easy to grab it when I see something "important."

cousins and armchair rabbit hunters

As long as this nice weather holds, I'm sure I'll have more chances!

grainy photos = strain and drain on brain

I bought a new camera!  I had to order a special memory card that won't be here for a day or two, though, so...I had to rely on my terrible, terrible cell phone for photos (seriously, why is it so bad?).  

A week in grainy photos:

Sunflowers are finally huge!  Do you see Todd in there?

He's getting ready to pick tomatoes.  The tomato/2nd sunflower patch is pretty big, and it's bursting.  Finally.  I've got to crack the formula for starting seeds indoors early enough to have tomatoes all summer long!

Apples are getting close to being picked...within a month, anyway.  It's been so cool that it's hard to believe that it's early August!

The annual garden is popping.

Another view that my normal camera lens isn't wide-angle enough to get:

Still some color in the perennial garden too...

...and still some pesky critters around.

oleander aphids

The weather has been nice enough to set up our croquet set...

we have to take it down every other week for lawn mowing!

...but we're still inside playing new games, like Patchwork.  Patchwork is one of the great discoveries of the summer.  It sounds incredibly simplistic (use buttons to buy fabric pieces and make individual quilts Tetris-style, whoever has the most buttons at the end wins!), but it's layered (get it?  quilt?  layered?) in strategy.  It's for just 2 people and it takes around 20 minutes to play a game.  Perfect.

Speaking of "patchwork," I also did a bit of patchwork sewing for the first time in months.  I'd picked up a "cat cave" at a thrift store for $6.  Looked new, but I washed it several times.  It did not fare well in the wash.

I hate wasting money...even $6.  So I took some spare fabric, put on an episode of Law & Order, and whip-stitched around the edges to cover the foam.

It was so cute that if they had loved the cave, I would've patchworked the entire thing!  They showed an initial interest...

...but then got bored and ignored it.  Sigh.  They're spending some time sleeping in these late summer days...

...but they're mostly still rambunctious and getting into trouble...climbing things they shouldn't, scratching things they shouldn't, and chasing things they shouldn't (Calliope).  I'm hoping that they'll be more relaxed soon...right??

Have a great week!  

milkweed glee

Summer is going by so quickly, which always amazes me.  But the signs are unmistakable.  Blackberries are ripening everywhere.

Flowers are starting to go to seed...to seed!  It seems so early.

bupleurum

Spring hatchlings are looking more like adults now.  This bluebird is just about ready to leave the nest...

...and these young barn swallows are practicing their low, swooping flights every late afternoon, filling the air with their exciting chirps.

Young rabbits, too, are getting more bold.

(side note: ANOTHER TICK)

Our young turkey poults are half grown now!

Our trail cams pick them up quite a bit.

The local fawn is steadier on her legs, too.

This grass-carrying wasp is preparing her nest for eggs.  They take over old insect nests (in this case, a carpenter bee hole) and stuff them with grass to make soft places for the next generation.  

Caterpillars are everywhere, eating quickly to gain mass for pupation.  Here's a black swallowtail butterfly caterpillar on my dill (another excellent reason to plant it):

And a new-to-me one on the milkweed.  These are milkweed tussock moth caterpillars.  They look destructive...

...but they serve a purpose.  Both monarch butterfly and milkweed tussock moth caterpillars rely on milkweed for their larvae, but monarchs prefer new leaves, and tussocks prefer old.  They happily co-exist. Milkweed spreads rapidly, so these tussocks ensure that they are not too widespread.  They eat a few of them, and the sap from the milkweed makes these caterpillars taste very unappealing to predators.  Win win!  

Milkweed really does provide for a vast array of insects, and they are all readying to lay eggs for next year.

red milkweed beetles

milkweed bugs

It really is a wonderful plant to have around!

Well, although we're nearing late (!) summer, there's still plenty of insects around.

cluster fly

wood nymph moth

oleander aphids

agreeable tiger moth

meadow spittlebug

There's so much to see that I've gotten into the habit of carrying my camera when I go outside.  There's only so much summer left!

Well, as seasons end, so do lives.  Borga gave her last WOOF last week.  

She had a good, long life here!  Todd is really going to miss his little companion.

Hopefully these guys will help him feel a little bit better!  It's tough to lose a pet, though.  They really do leave paw prints on your heart.  

(yes, they're on the dining room table...again.)

Have a great week!