going stag

 At long last...I'm finally seeing flowers in the back cutting garden.

nasturtiums

Mostly zinnias so far, but I love seeing those spots of color! The perennial garden by the house is holding its color nicely, too.

I always plant the usual solid colors:  lime green, soft pink, white, and deep maroon, but I love to plant more unexpected colors too.  Swoon!

Now, I love seeing the flowers in the field, and I love making bouquets, but I really love how flowers draw insects...my favorite thing to photograph.  

monarch butterfly caterpillar

Eastern pondhawk dragonfly

sarcophoga fly

ragweed leaf beetle

reddish-brown stag beetle

Sometimes the plants that insects frequent give the biggest clue to their identity.  I was combing my zucchini plants for squash bug eggs...again...and got a quick, blurry shot of this unusual-looking moth.  

It was just clear enough for Google Lens to identify it as a squash vine borer moth.  It lays eggs at the base of your squash plants, which hatch quickly.  The larvae burrow into the squash vine and eat, eat, eat.  Sure enough, the following week...

It's all right.  After a series of seriously huge zucchini...

...I'm ready to be done with them.   

Another interesting discovery...the pigweed flea beetle!  It feeds almost exclusively on amaranth, which made it pretty easy to identify.

 Its caterpillar form is already tearing into the amaranth leaves...

...but I'm not planning to harvest the amaranth and I don't mind a few chewed-up leaves.  

Still seeing plenty of deer...

...rabbits...

...and our wood ducks!  💗

(herons too!)

I love watching their progress.  Yesterday they were finally "allowed" by mama to swim the pond all by themselves!  She watched closely from the bank.

After the loss of so many young birds this year, I was ready to relax about our ducklings, until...

At first I thought it was a frog, but as I watched...

Another snapping turtle!  Argh! What do snapping turtles eat?  Fish, like the expensive grass carp that we just introduced to the pond...and birds.  Ducklings, full-grown ducks, and they've even been known to pull herons into the water!  They also eat frogs.  We're talking about trying to live-trap it and move it to the back pond, where it will do less damage.  

Otherwise, a bit of baking...

...and a bit of leisure time.

Looking forward to more.  Have a great week!  

a milkweed bug hug

"It is little wonder that Mrs. [John Quincy] Adams did not always see the point and was grateful for the ending, the more so because a quasi-pointless existence had been very draining to her husband, who had been worn down by his listless existence and by the climate, and who, as she put it to him, had sunk into a 'state of inanity.'"  

This is an excerpt from Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon by Michael O'Brien, and I thought it was incredibly apt for our current situation.  With multiple 95 degree days behind us and a string 96 - 98 degree days in front of us, Todd doesn't even like to go outside now.  Indiana Julys and Augusts are miserably hot, but then it's over.  Here the heat will just keep going.  I'm encouraged by the thought of cool September mornings, but I think he is having trouble remembering them, much like Frodo in Return of the King who can't remember the taste of strawberries (why stop at one literary reference? Ha!).  But I did convince him to go for one last hike at the Botanical Gardens. 

Much of the garden is shaded, which provided a nice respite from the heat.  Lots of shade plants were thriving.  I just love the vivid colors of their hydrangeas.

Even the white hydrangea have a little splash of green to help make an impact.  I love them!

Sometimes it's the shape, not the color, which provides the pop.

I loved seeing the flowers, but I was especially pleased to see some insects.  I thought these two milkweed bugs were fighting over territory...

...until I saw this!

Love was in the air!  On another plant, I saw another milkweed bug with her babies.

I saw lots of flies, of course.  This one let me get pretty close.  That amber drop?  Vomit!  Flies use their digestive enzymes externally instead of in their gut.  Pretty cool!

It felt good to stretch our legs, even though Borga was pretty tired after our walk!

At home, the usual suspects.  Clotilde is staring down chipmunks...

...or driving Tabitha crazy in the sun room.

Bosewichte is loving his new sleeping spaces.

The finch babies are growing, although I still can't tell which one is the cowbird.

I posted this picture on Facebook with the notation that Todd and I will likely feel like these two toads that I found in our carport when we move into our new apartment, since we're so used to having more space.

It's true...we've found a tiny temporary apartment to live in (approved, just need to sign the lease and pay the deposit).  We've also found warehouse storage space for the business that, ironically, is bigger than our apartment!  But today is the absolute most stressful day.  First the appraiser comes.  If we don't pass, the bank won't loan the money for the house.  The contractor comes to try to fix that broken door.  If he can't fix it, the whole wall unit will have to be torn out and replaced, and that repair could be as much as $5,000 (plus the original $1000 for the attempt).  The buyers will have our response to their home inspection requests today, too.  If they don't agree, the whole deal could fall through, which is too awful to even contemplate.  So I'm headed to the gym, and then will try to keep busy and NOT THINKING ABOUT THE POSSIBILITIES until we get some news.  Stay tuned!