life is like a box of choglets...

 While we've been busy in the yard, other creatures have been...busy in the yard.  

These margined leatherwing soldier beetles are becoming acquainted on my daisies.

If you look closely, you can see fertilization taking place.  Beetle penises are frequently referred to as "hyper-elongated" and their copulation lasts for hours.  One week, the plants are full of margined leatherwing soldier beetle pairs, and the next, poof!  Nowhere to be seen.  Eggs are being laid in the soil, and we'll have a new crop of beetles very soon.  

These chrysopilus velutinus flies, too, are getting into the spirit of the season.  Snipe flies are blood drinkers, like horse flies, but thankfully they don't feed on humans!

Bluebirds are nesting in our fence boxes and we have BABIES!  Dad brings some food...

...and then he's off for more.

Our chogs have been out and about lately, with a slightly larger family.  Yes...we have CHOGLETS!

They are very hesitant and creeping around us...

...startling easily.

Choglets...climb...trees.  This mulberry tree is full of berries, drawing birds...

...and, well, you know.

We love watching them, although they've already gotten into my tomatoes!

Other visitors this week...a Cope's grey tree frog on the front porch, again...

...and someone that Todd was less than thrilled to see, a gorgeous black rat snake...right on our porch rail, just a few feet from the front door!

This gentle snake is afraid of humans, so it crinkles up its body as a defense mechanism, so that it looks like a crooked stick.  

The tip of its tail almost looks like a fingernail!  A frightened snake will coil and shake this tip like a rattle, hoping to fool people into thinking it's venomous and dangerous. But he's a big softie!  

So much going on around the property this week, with so many visitors and so much work!  We have had mild weather, so even though I've had pretty lousy germination, I've been braving the ticks to get seedlings into the garden.  Speaking of ticks, here's one of our major carriers, down by the back pond.  Look at how many ticks are around its ears...shudder!!

The deer have been extra destructive this spring, too.  

We try to plant things that they like in areas far from the trees, where they don't usually frequent, but they're about as obedient as Frances.  Here he is, THREE YEARS into his obedience training, taking a nap right on top of the dining room table.  

He's incorrigible!  Oh, well.  Maybe 2025 will be his year.

Have a great week!   

chorus: don't fence me [out]

The visitors just kept coming this week!

Chogs ("chunky hogs," or what we call groundhogs) were out and about as usual.  

I found a dig spot beside our red barn, which we just can't allow.  It's one thing to let the chogs live under a dirt-floor barn that we're using for storage, and another thing entirely to let them tunnel under our big temperature-controlled concrete-floor barn.  We filled in the hole and are being watchful for other attempts!

Wild turkeys came to the front field to feed.

Best of all, they brought their BABIES!  So many turkey poults.

Believe it or not, they can fly at this age.

I startled them when I came around the barn and they headed for the trees!

Our heron is back almost daily in the front pond.  Yes, the algae is gross.  We're hopefully doing something about it next week.

The usual pests, the cottontail rabbit...

...and the whitetail deer were back, ranging into my garden and eating down my dahlias.

It's one thing to eat dahlia stalks, which will grow back.  It's another thing entirely to visit the row of 150 sunflower seedlings that I just planted this week and start digging them up.  I started yet ANOTHER tray of seedlings to replace the ones that were eaten, and Todd fenced in the row with cattle panels and stiff netting over the loud complaints of our furry friends.

I didn't have quite enough to replace the eaten ones, but we'll still have around 120 sunflowers if all goes well...hooray!  

Our friendly neighborhood possum comes nightly, too.

Meanwhile, everything in the perennial garden is in bloom (terrible cell phone pic):

Which brings out the bugs!  A pair of mating leatherwing beetles pollinated my yarrow.

Bees, bees, bees!

The milkweed is blooming...

...and causing a furor.  First, these little guys are about half the size of a rice grain, so it's hard to get a good picture...but after a lot of research, I've discovered their identity:  sugarcane aphids.

They're relatively new to southern Indiana and normally prey on sorghum, not milkweed.  Big infestations can damage the plants and keep monarch butterflies from laying eggs (they exclusively use milkweed).  I carefully hosed off each leaf, but they came right back.  I'm still deciding what to do...

Meanwhile, one of the "good guys" turned out to be more of a frenemy than a friend.  This spined soldier bug nymph normally eats garden pests, but this week he turned on our lone monarch caterpillar...

...and devoured him, making him a take-out meal as he moved him from leaf to leaf.  Poor caterpillar was a sad, wrinkled version of his former self.

Hopefully we'll have other monarchs, and I also planted dill, in part, to draw them in.  

So many visitors this week, and I even missed a day with my usual pukey hormonal migraine!  Even so, I still managed to have a couple of visitors in my sick bed.  Not great for an upset stomach, but a healing balm for the spirit.  

Have a great week!