mandible mouthful

 Beautiful warm mornings for hiking!

I love seeing the woods wake up.

red maple

rusty blackhaw

spicebush

silver maple

anemone ran.

senecio aus.

Sometimes, when looking into the woods, the woods looked back! Someone did, anyway.

white-tailed deer

Things are stirring everywhere!

american bullfrog

There's definitely plenty of water for frogs to play in.  :)

At home, I'm picking the last of the early daffodils and the start of the late daffodils.

I love bringing them into the house!

When I was out picking daffodils, I noticed that carpenter bees were bypassing the flower throats and stabbing directly into the nectar pod behind the petals.

You can see how short their tongues are...

That makes it difficult for them to penetrate tube-throated flowers, like daffodils.  Instead, they use their cutting mandibles...so helpful when they're chewing wood fibers...to cut directly into the nectar pod.  The flowers are still getting pollinated by other visitors...

northern paper wasp

...and the bees get the nutrition they need.  So interesting!

In other news around the house, both sugar snap and sweet peas are thriving and ready to go into the ground this week!

I'm getting some nice growth in the outside mini greenhouses, too.  If our weather remains above freezing for the next two - three weeks, AND if the forecast is positive, then I will be able to put out the summer flower seeds by the third week of April!  Hooray!  I've got a lot of great plans for the garden this year, shoulder permitting.

Have a great week!

Fire Ant-ics

I'm defying the heat and spending more and more time outside.  I've been really excited about the number of insects I've been able to find pretty easily.

Carpenter bees are never hard to find around here!  I think they're so pretty.

So is this Ailanthus Web-worm Moth, but it's a minor garden pest, although like the carpenter bee it does assist in pollination.

It's the time of year for spiny-backed orb weavers, and they've made huge webs in our front yard, anchored from the hemlock branches to the ground.  Situated as they are by a flower bed, they catch a lot of bees and other small insects.

Another favorite of mine is the crab spider.  Look at its creepy pose...ready to give a fatal hug!

Crab spiders like to hang out on flowers to surprise pollinating insects.  If you want to find one, have a look for its discarded food.  This dead moth was directly beneath this flower head.

If I'm still for long enough, hummingbirds will come. 

We have mountains of lantana blooming, although the butterfly bushes are about done.  The chives are up, though, and drawing lots of insects.

The orange ginger lilies, too.

No real autumn leaves yet, but at least we've got some pretty berries.

Elsewhere in the yard, I still find the usual lizards...

...and southern toads.

And...fire ants!  I've had my first bite, obtained when weeding in the yard yesterday.  Just one bite on the inside of my index finger, which promptly swelled.

Within a few hours, the swelling had reached my ring finger and I couldn't make a fist.  There was no pain, though, and the swelling is mostly gone today. 

No offense to the fire ants, but we've had a very welcomed visitor for the past 2 weeks.  Percival Wemys is back!! 

Was it two years ago that he started spending nights crouched on our front porch ledge?  Well, he's back again.  Carolina wrens have a 6-year lifespan, so it could be the very same bird.  He's a bit of a late riser, so sometimes Todd has to use another door in the morning to take the dog out!  :) 

In other news, I've been working like crazy on my quilt top.  Three more blocks to sew, then I have to 'square up' each block and sew them together.  Then, of course, I have to 'baste' the quilt and then do the actual quilting.  I'm really nervous about that part but I'm taking a class to help me prepare.

Otherwise, it's just lazy cats sleeping through hot summer days.

Have a great week! 

Multi-Creature Feature

It truly feels like summer here in South Carolina, and we've got little creatures coming out of the woodwork...literally. 

The 3-foot long fish (we've been told that they're carp) have resurfaced in our pond.  They love to come to the surface in the late afternoon to take advantage of the sun's warmth.

I noticed a carpenter bee starting to bore a hole in our wooden flag post outside (coming out of the woodwork - get it?).  Only female carpenter bees are capable of stinging and rarely do, so I shooed it away.  In just a few minutes, it had already gnawed quite a hole.

I put a piece of Scotch tape over the spot to discourage a return visit, but the bee just settled in an inch below it and started a new hole.

I watched its progress.  In no time at all, it had gotten another good start...

...and more...

Look at it go!

I'm afraid it was pretty disappointed to discover the lack of space in that little pole, because the hole was abandoned after a day or two.

I did see a really interesting moth while out by the flag.  Its jaunty shape reminds me of a fighter jet!

I found this ant nest under a rock while clearing vines.  See the little white eggs?

I put the rock back so as not to disturb their little habitat.

This Eastern squirrel watched me weed this week.  I was surprised how close he came...Eastern squirrels are so much more timid than the fox squirrels I'm used to!

We've had a thriving nest of raccoons in a side yard tree since we moved in.  I'll occasionally catch one climbing down during the day and slipping into the woods.

This not-so-little guy was curled up in a flower bed right by our front door.

It's an Eastern garter snake and totally harmless.  They can grow up to four feet long!  These are definitely not the little garter snakes I'm used to, but I don't mind them.  They're great to have around.

I found a cardinal nest in the side arbor.

I had to clear out a foot of leaves from the side yard, most of it by hand, since the hostas had already come up, and the parents of the little ones were absolutely frantic.  Here's mom:

I really hated to upset them, but the work had to get done, so I just moved as quickly as possible.  Speaking of the side yard, it's finally leaf-free and weeded, although no flowers have been planted yet...

One of the best things is the fence, which means I can safely take the cats outside for a little outdoor time.  Bosewichte was an alley cat before his adoption, so he knows how to navigate the terrain...

...or beg for more time.

Tabitha isn't used to the outdoors, so she spends a lot of time crouching...

...and looking over her shoulder.

There hasn't been any time for baking or any leisure activities, really.  Besides the time my business demands, I've been doing all the outdoor work I mentioned before, plus indoor things:  sanding and scraping and painting (a concerted effort with Todd).  I decided to carve out a little time every day to unwind with knitting, and began making a sweater for myself.  Inevitably I got swept up in my work and laid the knitting aside.  When I picked it up again after two or three weeks away, I transposed the working colors and knitted a full two inches incorrectly before I noticed it.  See the blue at the top?

I frogged the mistake and promptly knitted it again, incorrectly.  Frustrated, I frogged it down to the ribbing and started again.  I'm very pleased with how it's turning out now!  It's also an incentive to work on it a little bit every day, so that I don't lose my momentum and start making mistakes.  This sweater pattern contains my first steek, where I'll actually cut through the knitted fabric to insert a fold-down neck.  It should be interesting!

Hope you're having a productive week, too!