Caraway eyes and robber flies

It's anniversary time!  I believe this is our fourth anniversary in the South.  One year we went to the coast, and the other years to the mountains in North Carolina.  This year we'd originally planned to go to the coast, but had some unexpected expenses come up last minute that made it seem a little less than prudent.  We then thought we might head to the mountains to hike, but my still-healing ankle made me a little hesitant to try really steep inclines.  We finally settled on a simple day trip to Athens, Georgia, to see the state botanical gardens.

I love that water lilies are always in bloom on our anniversary.

We saw lots of beautiful dragonflies.  These are both in the Erythemis simplicicollis family, with the common name pondhawk.  Isn't that a great name for a dragonfly?

Another great find was this robber fly who'd captured a carpenter bee.

Also called "assassin flies," they can easily catch prey in flight and insert a neurotoxin to subdue it.

Here's a lovely grasshopper!  His striped eyes remind me of stubby caraway seeds.

Finally, we saw some aphids deliriously sucking the fluid from a lily, little legs kicking in pleasure. These guys know how to have a good time!

I was really delighted to spot a lizard that I've never seen in South Carolina:  a five-lined skink. Check out that tail!

Skinks are tiny...only about 8 inches long, and almost half of that is tail.  They can detach these tails if needed, to avoid a predator.  Scientists theorize that this is the reason for the brightly-colored hue of the tail, to direct predators to that end of the body.  The skink can lose the tail with no problem...the head, on the other hand, is indispensable.

I saw my first cotton flowers - so lovely!  I love the clasping leaves and the way the light shines through the petals.

Beautiful light all around.

Their hydrangeas aren't doing much better than ours at this time of year!

Star-shaped seed pods...

---more lovely spirals.

I spotted this bulbous fungus on a juniper fir.  It's apple cedar rust gall.

Left to its own devices, these will sprout pretty cool-looking orange fingers.  They'll dry and then send spores everywhere. It's best to remove these as soon as possible!

After our easy walk around the gardens, we gorged on steak tacos at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, then went to a local nature preserve to hike more.  A stomachful of steak and 95 degree temps do not a pleasant hike make.  We only made it a mile or two before I threw in the towel.  I truly felt like Michael Scott on his Cure For Rabies Fun Run. It was better to be at home - in air conditioning!  I did give Todd one of his anniversary cards a little early (he gets several!).  This was probably influenced by the fact that I've started watching Breaking Bad again.

I love making cards and don't do it nearly enough!

Otherwise, on the homefront, our goz are taking regular practice flights.

All except for - gulp! - a certain flipper-winged goose, who has been ominously absent from the group this week.  Maybe he's got a cozy nest at the other end of the pond...I'll continue to keep an eye out for him.

Have a great week!

the itsy bitsy spider

If you're squeamish about spiders, I'm sorry about the following photos.  I actually felt the same way you do.  Growing up in the country, we had loads of big, hairy wolf spiders everywhere, especially in our garage (where I liked to play) or around the wood pile.  My grandpa and I had an insect collection and even though spiders aren't insects, we pinned several of them to the collection board.  I shuddered every time I passed by!  I felt the same way about praying mantises.  But I forced myself to learn about why I didn't like them.  I read about them and photographed them, and while I certainly don't like to be surprised by either one, I've developed a grudging admiration for them.  

Let's face it - spiders are EVERYWHERE.  They spin beautiful webs and eat a ton of bothersome insects, like mosquitoes (some estimates show that an average spider eats over 2000 insects per year!).  Although I'm still not a fan of big, hairy spiders, I do enjoy looking at the smaller ones. 

This little spider has made a comfortable nest in one of my nasturtium leaves.  He's got a nice mottled body and translucent legs, and a pretty nice setup for catching gnats and other tiny insects!

I spied this tiny green spider curled up in a cluster of hydrangea buds.

He's a green jumping spider (Lyssomanes viridis), also known as the Magnolia Green Jumper.

His eyes are on top of his head in that reddish spot - see them?  They have terrific vision, like all jumping spiders.  I think he's a beauty!

This Opilione rests in the heat of the day under a basil leaf.

He's a harvestman, a creature I've always called a "grandaddy longlegs".  However,  while Opilione are in the class Arachnid, they are not considered spiders.  They have a solid instead of segmented body, do not spin webs, have just a single pair of eyes, and no venom glands.  Their bodies are actually nicely colored, like a pebble:

I have to admit, they still creep me out.

I finally got a good shot of a Venusta Orchard Spider abdomen:

Gorgeous!

Even if you don't see a spider, they are most likely close by.  Living in the woods, we have lots of webs, even between the boards on our deck:

This little house spider spun a web on the outside of one of our windows.  She made her egg sac, which hatched yesterday:

Still, I'm glad this is outside and not inside!

I've obviously had spiders on the brain lately, and this dragonfly nearly gave me a heart attack last week when he landed on our back screen...at first glance, I thought he was a spider!

We've had more great rain lately.  Mushrooms are springing up everywhere.

My ferns are loving it.  I have three kinds.  This I call "bronze"...

This is "alligator":

This is "maidenhair":

The hosta flowers are starting to open up.

My hydrangea is budding out more and more, in a beautiful deep blue.

The clearance hydrangeas I bought at Lowe's all died.  I left them in the ground, though, because sometimes...

...you get lucky and they come back.

The rain has caused some significant yellowing of the gardenia flowers.  Hopefully some sun will bring them back.

My little toad has moved from the side to the front of the house!  I stumbled over him in the front path.

I've done some indoor crafting because of the rain.  A friend's older son was getting braces and I decided to make him a card.  I'd seen this grill "pinned" as a Father's Day card on Pinterest.  I liked the way it looked and decided to pun with it.

The grill was easy to make.  A circle cut in half, with a brad in the corner for a hinge.  Construction paper flames.  The wheels were the eyes from my owl paper punch.

The inside:

I used a clear embossing marker to draw on the braces and heat embossing powder to make them shiny and raised.

Get it?  Grill?  I was very amused!

Hope you can do something creative today...have a great week!

Creature Comforts

I love the life I'm seeing outside every day.  Not too many butterflies yet, as we're in between flowering plants, but I've seen evidence of them.  This wing is from a Tiger Swallowtail:

I've seen our resident heron in the pond:

...and in the driveway just below my office window!

I'm happy to report that the anole lizards are out!  I saw a few over the winter when I walked over the leaves in the backyard, where they had their little nests, but I'm glad to see many out sunning themselves on a pretty regular basis.

They're only about 6 inches long and Tabitha was able to catch one fairly easily when she escaped through the patio doors this week.  She brought him back into the house to toy with before the kill, but I think I rescued him in time. 

More and more turtles:

And, of course, we have our beaver.  I see him nearly every day, bringing twigs and branches to the nest he's so thoughtfully building on our bank.

Todd bought some chicken wire to wrap around our trees for protection!

I've been seeing these strange creatures all over for a couple of weeks. 

They're about an inch long, with a strange, spiky back.  I found out that despite their size, they're ladybug larvae!  After this stage, they pupate and become the ladybugs that I'm so familiar with.  Speaking of ladybugs, do you know where they got their name?  In Europe they were called Our Lady's Beetle, referring to the Virgin Mary, who was frequently depicted in a red cape.  That became Lady's Beetle, and we here in the states changed it to "ladybug", even though it's a true beetle.

Speaking of beetles, this may be the most amazing one I've ever seen.  It's over an inch long and absolutely shimmers in the sun.

It's a Caterpillar Hunter Beetle, and was brought over from Europe at the turn of the last century to deal with our gypsy moth infestation.  They are wonderful to have in your garden since they eat all sorts of pests and grubs.

I left a bundle of roots in the back yard...

It is absolutely swarming with bumblebees!

They're chewing on the roots.

Bumblebees can nest in the ground or in grass clumps, so I wonder if they're excavating a new home?

I've been keeping an eye out for spiders.  I was rewarded this week with not one, but two of my favorite spiders - the daring jumping spider.  I know that I've gone on ad nauseum about them, but I'm so fascinated by the different types.  One is even called the audacious daring jumping spider - so charming!  I like the idea of an audacious spider.

This particular daring jumping spider has a lovely downy coat of a soft grey color:

...while this one has a hard abdomen streaked with yellow.

As different as they are, they both have the typical eye pattern - the line of eyes wrapping around the front and both sides of the head.  Here a female - easily identified because the chelicerae, or fangs, are not the telltale iridescent green color - holds up her front legs to warn me that she's a very dangerous spider and not to be trifled with!

Speaking of spiders...I've been keeping an eye out for a fairly common spider here, the black widow.  We have a white plastic deck railing on the back of the house, plus a small landing and stairwell off the sunroom, and it was absolutely gritty and grey with dirt after the winter.  It showed up slug trails nicely, but was disgusting to touch.  It had spiderwebs everywhere and big clumps of dead leaves.

It took hours of scrubbing to get it clean.  As I was cleaning, I was nervously making a mental note of everything I knew about the black widow spider:  "Makes messy webs.  Shiny black with hourglass shape on back?  Under abdomen?  Hides in leaves.  Bite can kill."  I couldn't believe it when I looked up and saw a black widow spider casually clinging to the side of the house.  I looked closer.  It was bigger than I expected, with no hourglass shape, but it was shiny black and had some kind of markings.  I normally leave our spiders and insects alone, but I killed this one with my broom.  I found out later that the size indicated that it was probably a female, the most venomous sex.  Apparently they aren't aggressive, though, but I still don't want to be too close to them!

I am keeping an eye out for more creatures every day!

I was pleased to see a bed of Japanese irises rise from the side of the house like magic this week!  The bed looked like this earlier this spring:

I wasn't sure if they were daylilies or irises...or something else...but I'm so glad they're in bloom!

They're such a nice, vibrant color.

I haven't baked - at all.  I've been so busy with my regular routine, plus work, plus the upkeep of the house and the yard, that Todd has been eating an awful lot of loose meat sandwiches and tortilla chips.  I hope to get back to baking soon, once I've gotten things around here in "maintenance mode".  However, I have been knitting and making cards in little snatches during the week.   One card that I made recently for Mother's Day was especially fun. 

I took a big lilac stamp and a hydrangea paper punch:

I stamped the image and then cut out flowers from various sheets of purple construction paper.

I filled in the purple border with the flowers:

...then made a little banner for the top.

This idea, sadly, was mainly cribbed from Pinterest.  But when things calm down, I plan on creating some things from scratch!

Now it's time for me to get a little yard work done before the house cleaning, supper prep, and eBay work.  I don't mind the work, though, especially when this is my canopy:

Have a great week!