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!

hot spot

Working on two full weeks with our Pepita!  She has somehow taught herself to fetch...

...and is working hard on SIT and COME HERE.  Still no house accidents, still sleeping through the night in the office crate, and now she rests quietly in her living room playpen for 4 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the afternoon, allowing us to get work done.  When not in the playpen, she is actively working with one or both of us.  Frances supervises from a safe distance.  He knows that she's been good, but cats are so interesting and new!

Pepita made her first trip to PetSmart this week...

...and managed her first 15-minute trail walk this morning!  She's making amazing progress.  

So is Claudia!  Her tubes come out tomorrow and I think she'll finally be able to leave the crate she's been living in and roam around the barn.  Todd has been spoon-feeding her (because of her cone), cleaning her crate and litter box, cleaning her incision and drain tubes, and making sure that she has plenty of pets and reassurances.  We'll both be glad for her to gain a little bit of independence!

Meanwhile, our hot weather stretch continues.  I open the windows every morning, no matter what, for a bit of fresh air.  It doesn't take long for our floors to become actually wet from the humidity and after we slide around for awhile, I grumpily close them.

 I keep trying to rouse myself to work in the garden, but between the heat/humidity and Pepita, I can't seem to get time to get anything done.  I did get the pumpkins planted, at least.

But the cutting garden (hangs head in shame)...we've got the saddest 4-foot sunflowers ever, and despite the fact that I spent an insane amount of time weeding at regular intervals until just two weeks ago, weeds are bursting out everywhere.  I'm definitely writing it off for the year.  At least the perennial garden has a ton of color...

daylilies

...and a ton of visitors!  The bee balm, especially, has drawn all sorts of butterflies...

eastern tiger swallowtail

zebra swallowtail

great spangled frittilary

pipevine swallowtail

...but also one of my favorites, the snowberry clearwing hummingbird moth.

They used to be a rarity, but now the garden is FULL of them.

You can see why they're called flying lobsters!

They're great pollinators and I love to see them around.  I also saw two really cool sphinx moths this week...the blinded sphinx moth (so named for a coloration quirk - they are not actually blind, but they don't have mouthparts and don't feed...just breed quickly and die!)...

...and the elm sphinx moth.

A couple of beauties!  

We're still catching lots of action on the trail cams.  Bobcats, coyotes, possums, deer, squirrels, skunks, turkeys, turkey vultures, herons, and so...many...raccoons.  I counted five in this video!

Todd has only seen two ticks so far this year, and I haven't seen any.  Our winter was especially cold (I wistfully remember) and that helps keep the population down.  However, seeing this deer on one of our cameras reminds me to continue to be vigilant.  There are still ticks around.  See those lumps on the backs of her ears and bridging the space between?  Those are ALL TICKS.  Yuck!!

Between trying to keep up with Pepita and Claudia, get work done, keep the house in order, and generally keep things moving forward while trying to survive in 90 degree heat, there isn't a lot of time left for leisure.  However, I'm going to try to take a cue from Pepita...

...and the cats...

a typical Frances nap

...and take a break every once in a while!  

Have a great week!  

those that devour coneflower

The bee balm is starting to fade, and it's a shame because it draws so...many...insects.  One of my favorites is the hummingbird moth.

Like hummingbirds, they can hover, and they are fast...up to 35 mph!

I love seeing them in the bee balm.

Of course, there's still plenty of bees there...

Butterflies, like this pipevine swallowtail...

Really, the only other flower that comes close is the coneflower.  Now, I planted a few coneflowers when we moved here, but they have spread...

...and spread.

I think our huge population of goldfinches helped to spread the seeds.  Before they really got going, I counted over one hundred plants!

Butterflies love 'em.

Great Spangled Fritillary

Eastern Swallowtail

Of course, we have lots of other personalities...

Damselfly

Ladybug

Japanese beetles

red milkweed beetle

so many bees!

I've also been delighted to find lacewing eggs around the garden, suspended by a stiff stalk.  The eggs are tiny, like a little poppy seed.

After a bit of searching, sure enough...I found the lacewing.

Lacewings are great to have around because they eat aphids...something we have in abundance here.  I'd been fretting about our milkweed in the back, covered with sugarcane aphids.  I didn't want to rinse the leaves with soap and water, for fear of destroying any monarch eggs.  However, nature balanced it out.

This is a ladybug nymph:

In the few weeks before he pupates, he will eat hundreds and hundreds of aphids.  They are voracious!  They're all over my milkweed, and the aphid population is looking decidedly thin.

snacking on an aphid

What a relief!  Now to keep an eye out for those monarchs!

So much to do in these mid-summer days, but still seeking out those quiet, peaceful moments when I can find them.

Have a great week!