Flying creatures and positive features

The monarchs are out in force right now!  With temperatures still in the 80s and the milkweed in full bloom, butterflies are really happy.

Positively giddy!

Here are the milkweed flowers they love, looking like tiny ballerinas.

Halloween is just around the corner, and it certainly felt like orange and black were the colors of the day on our recent hike.  First you have those brightly-colored monarch butterflies...and then, the spiky-backed ladybug nymphs...

...and finally, the milkweed bug, keeping the color theme going strong.

Does yellow and black count?

I also noticed another theme...babies!  Here's a group of eggs that I think belong to the southern stink bug...

...and if you can handle it...a huge spider egg sac!

If you look closely, you can see all the babies!

I think these two are going to be producing some of those babies really soon!

He's not an ostrich, but this anole was pretty sure that we couldn't see him.

We did catch a glimpse of a bolder fellow.

Here's another unseen creature...a slug.  He left a silvery trail on our cobblestones, but I have yet to catch him in the act!

And another cagey fellow - this spittlebug, hiding under his clever protection.

Here at home, I've been doing a little baking.  Spicy pumpkin whoopie pies!  The recipe is in the Sally's Cookie Adventure cookbook and they are the most delicious whoopie pies I've ever had. 

Sugar cookie bars with cinnamon chips and buttercream frosting, also from the same cookbook.

Official Halloween baking begins TOMORROW!

Speaking of Halloween, I just finished a quick quilting project.  I had the idea to make quilted Halloween banner flags to hang up this week.  I used Hocus Pocus fabric from Moda and a pattern from my Farm Girl Vintage book.  The squares were 6.5" x 6.5".

I was just winging the flag design and made several mistakes before deciding to sew banner jags onto the bottoms.  So, they look a bit like little teeth...

...but they sure feel festive!

Another project is a positivity plan I started about a month ago.  I started writing positive sayings on a white board in the kitchen, but they soon devolved into corny jokes, puns, and cartoons.

Some I make up (SNARK-EOLOGIST!!) and some I crib from the internet.  It's so much fun...I think I get a bigger kick out of them than Todd does!  Hopefully I have enough material to keep the white board humerus humorous for at least another month!

Have a great week!

Spider Insider

When we heard that the former homeowners sprayed yearly for spiders (in addition to other things), we were dubious.  Spiders are beneficial, eating mosquitoes and other pests.  Their webs are pretty.  They usually have interesting markings.  However, now we understand...not that we would ever spray.  Since we're in the woods, we have a lot of spiders.  I used to brush the webs from our window frames and deck railings, but they reappear overnight.

I joked to Todd that we don't have to decorate the outside of the house for Halloween - the spiders have done the job for us.  We have to be careful, too, when walking around on the property.  Huge webs - the biggest I've ever seen - stretch between trees, across our driveway, and in bushes...webs that are multiple feet wide and sometimes difficult to see.

If you don't always see the big webs, sometimes you feel a feathery touch on your arm or face...that's the tripwire.  The vibration of the "wire" lets the spider know that an insect may be caught, or that danger might be nearby.  They also seem to anchor the web in places.  It's just an added precaution, since most spiders have incredible vision.

Sometimes I'll just see an insect leg, seemingly floating in midair.  It's usually caught on the remnant of an old web.

The most common spider around here is Lariniodides patagiaus, an orb weaver.  With leg span, they're about quarter-sized, and build beautiful, intricate webs.  The strands are sticky, easily trapping insects that bumble into the web.

We also have our fair share of funnel web spiders (family Agelenidae).

Unlike the orb weavers, their webs are horizontal, and the strands are slick, not sticky.  An insect landing there can't find purchase on the smooth surface, and their struggles alert the spider.  Even insects much larger than the spider are subdued by a few bites, as you can see by the photo above.

Of course, we have many spiny-backed orb weavers (Gasteracantha cancriformis), which I've talked about in recent weeks. 

They look like thorns, which is part of their camouflage.

Venusta orchard spiders (Leucauge venusta) have webs that are fairly close to the ground, typically spanning the distance between two low-growing bushes, or even our patio plants.

Not only are their abdomens beautifully colored, but their legs, too, are a lovely jade color.

They are orb weavers as well.

Another favorite is the crab spider (family Thomisidae).  They typically perch in flower blossoms, waiting for visiting insects.

They come in many different sizes and colors, but they always have that distinctive front leg stance.

Sometimes you don't see the spider at all...just the legs.

Despite his appearance, the Harvestman spider (Opiliones), while an arachnid, isn't a spider at all.  If you examine the body closely...

...you will see that they don't have a segmented abdomen/thorax.  They also do not build webs, and they don't produce venom (all spiders produce venom, although only a few are actually poisonous to humans).  That black dot is the single pair of eyes that Harvestman 'spiders' have, unlike 'real' spiders, which have multiple pairs. 

A true spider that I was delighted to find in our yard is Argiope aurantia, or the yellow and black garden spider.

Their legs are always oriented in a large "X" on the web, and they have a distinctive "Z" pattern woven beneath their perch.

 See how the spider is positioned behind a dense circle of webbing?  That is her camouflage.  There are many theories about why she weaves the zig zag design...to attract prey, to warn off low-flying birds, and it might be a stabilizing feature.


Argiope aurantia are rather large spiders with large abdomens, to to 1 1/8 inches.  Even so, they can subdue prey more than twice their size!

They're brightly colored and beautifully patterned.

I found three of them, on their respective webs, in an open bed at the front of the house, in one of the few sunny spots.  I've had my eye on this bed for several weeks.  It was full of tall, feathery plants that looked suspiciously like weeds, but I had avoided pulling them in case they were a type of fall-blooming plant.  Now I know that they're weeds, but I am going to leave them up this year, because I don't want to deprive Argiope aurantia of her habitat.  I greatly enjoy watching them on their webs.  Sometimes insects fly into the web but are able to escape, even though Argiope aurantia rushes to detain them.  She calmly eats the damaged part of the web to tidy it up...

...and goes back to waiting.  She'll spin a new web the next day, so no need to cry over spilled milk.  What a beauty!

When I'm grumbling to Todd about the messy look that the spiderwebs give our house and our deck, I'm going to try to remember the creatures that inhabit them...how interesting they are, and the good that they do. 

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!