berries and hairies

Caterpillar thriller continues!  More beautiful caterpillars this week.

brown hooded owlet caterpillar

banded tussock moth caterpillar

leopard moth caterpillar

silver-spotted skipper moth caterpillar

And I know I had some of these last week, but I think these eastern tent caterpillars in this lacy redbud leaf are so beautiful!

I'm loving, loving, loving late August in Indiana this year.  Temps have been in the 70s every day and the lower 50s overnight (we'll be down in the 40s by Wednesday!).  I'm back in my long-sleeve t-shirts (I'm ALWAYS cold at upper 70s and below) and very happy about it.  Seeing so many signs of fall now.

Ripe tomatoes!  Roasting lots to make my favorite tomato sauce for winter pizza and pasta.  After years of searching, I finally found a cauliflower pizza crust recipe that I like and I'm making it constantly...and need lots of sauce!  

Quilts...with cats on top.

Fall berries!  I love seeing the berries turn as the weather cools.

dogwood

spicebush

black gum

Japanese barberry

jack-in-the-pulpit

Tons of spiderwebs this time of year...

...and some really beautiful spiders (just two if you're spider-averse!).

spiny-backed orb weaver

red-femured spotted orb weaver

Our hydrangeas are taking on their pink edges...

...and some leaves are really starting to show some bold color!

Lots of fall flowers in the fields...

downy yellow false foxglove

common thistle

goldenrod

boneset

ironweed

I still have lots of late season flowers to pick from the garden, too!  I found this pretty blue ceramic pitcher at a church rummage sale for a quarter and it's just perfect.

Pepita is learning new things all the time...like how to climb on the couch to keep an eye on Daddy!

She looks so innocent...

...but she is entering her teen phase.  Not listening as well, a lot more energy and vocalizing, testing boundaries.  Teen time is considered a real regression and she will probably be more of a handful for the next few months!  

Good thing she's so cute.

Have a great week!

a vole-t from the blue

Late summer...a time for relaxing, enjoying the beautiful flowers...and a little teeth-gnashing and fist-grinding as well.

They're ba-a-ack!

Every flower from this root system is infected with pernicious eriophyid mites.  See the green sprouting in the centers?  These flowers are goners and my only hope is that cutting the stem back to the ground keeps these mites from spreading. 

And speaking of pests...aphids.  Aphids!  My foxgloves are infested.

They may look like an anime character come to life...

...but they are major trouble and desiccate the plant.  I hate using chemicals, so I sprayed them with Dr. Bronner's castile soap.  They seemed dead (but still clinging) the next day, so I gave them a good shot with the hose.  It was pretty satisfying.

I probably say it every year, but I'm really looking forward to fall.  I'm trying not to look for signs yet, since we're about a month away, but I keep noticing hints.

Acorns!

Geese in formation, or very nearly...

An occasional fall-colored leaf...

...and it's the time of year for spiders to come creeping.  For a while, I cleaned our front porch of webs every morning, but they're just back again the next day.  So I let them be.

(The next couple of photos are not for the spider-averse!!)

We've got a female orb weaver in our front window, absolutely massive.  By day she huddles in the exterior window frame crevice...

...and by night, she sits in the middle of her web and waits for food.  Yesterday, I noticed two very oddly-shaped spiders near her sleep-spot.  Is it just me, or does this remind you of the position you'd take when watching Saturday morning cartoons?

It's a male and the same species as the female but much smaller.  At first I thought he was dead...maybe a post-mating snack for the female...but I gave him a little poke and he sprang startlingly to life.  Apparently this is just the male sleeping pose.  She will probably eat him pretty soon...I check every day!

There's a lot of things happening on the porch besides the mini-dramas of spiders.  Claudia has been vigilant about catching rodents.

I originally thought she'd caught a mouse, but closer inspection revealed it to be a vole.

Voles are terrible garden pests, eating bulbs and plant roots.  Claudia is earning her keep for sure!

Construction dust continues.  The pond behind our property is undergoing a major expansion, so the back fields are full of bulldozers and dump trucks.

On our property, there's constant hammering and activity.  Construction is ongoing with both the barn and house. We don't quite have a dining room yet.

It seems like our little house is just full of holes right now.  The electrician is running new lines...

...and the mud room is waiting to be walled in.

Meanwhile, I ripped the carpet from the stairs and am trying to decide how I want to finish the job. I like the look of painted stairs, but might just go with some kind of wood cladding.

I can't put my craft room fully together until our drywall guy does the finish work on a just-moved window (and, of course, I unearth the rest of my craft items from storage)...but at least the cats are getting some use out of those Kallaxes!

I did put the finishing touches on a little space in my office, though, and for an amazing price.  Have a look at my new puzzle station! 

I scored this wooden adjustable draft table at a storage unit sale for THREE DOLLARS.  I bought some felt and velcro at JoAnn's ($8?) and Todd affixed it to the surface of the table (it's removable, so I can use the table for watercolors later).  The side table is metal, with drop leaves.  I found it for $10 at the IU Surplus Store.  Spray paint was $5.  So this amazing station came together for around $30!  I have a lot of trouble with neck and shoulder pain, and the felt - which the puzzle pieces cling to - allows me to look straight ahead instead of staring down.  It's a huge work surface...nearly 4' x 3'.  The puzzle above is 2000 pieces.  Here's how a normal 1000 piece puzzle fits:

There's even room for the box lid, which naturally clings to the felt surface.  I'm very excited about this little oasis amid the chaos!  I'll upgrade the rug and chair when I have time, but for now, it's perfect.  I used to start feeling pain after about 20 minutes with a puzzle, but this completely eliminates the problem. 

We HOPE the dining room is done by next week, and then we'll tackle the flooring and painting ourselves.  We HOPE the barn is done within three weeks, and then we'll empty our 6 storage units and finally move all of our belongings and business merchandise to our property.   Then it will just be a month or so of finishing touches.  Done with everything by Christmas?  A girl can dream!

Have a great week!

Leaf Hoppers and Tree Choppers

We had what I would consider a fairly mild storm this week, but it was enough to knock down one of our giant dead trees.  It fell into the pond, taking another tree with it.

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but the tree was huge!  It stretched almost the entire width of the pond.  The first few days, the beavers worked on the bark.  Beavers love to eat bark and the soft layer beneath.

Today, we woke up to discover the tree completely gone! 

How they sectioned and hauled off that gigantic tree in one night is a mystery to me.  They are amazing creatures!

Speaking of amazing creatures, Todd found an ant migration this week.  It was at dusk, and millions of ants were carrying eggs from a depressed spot in the ground to an existing colony location by the side of the house, a good 50 feet distance.  Since the light was so poor, I couldn't get a clear picture, but here is the general idea:

We were transfixed by the sight of these tiny, determined creatures, marching with a single-minded focus to their new home.  Today, they swarmed.  This well-established colony of ants produced sexually mature males, which will mate with the flying queen when she appears, and then die. 

More amazing...this ant dragging a lacewing insect three times its size, and so quickly that I was barely able to get a shot!

Spiders are out now, too.  This common orb weaver secures her prey...

...before climbing up to repair a tear in her web.

A beautiful yellow garden spider hangs on our back deck.

 It's an ingenious place to set up shop, right by a set of deck lights.  There's a never-ending supply of moths and other small flying insects.

We're hearing cicadas now, and seeing their discarded shells, too.

I don't usually see post-molt adults, but one attached itself to our sun room screen yesterday:

Right in line with the flowering of our front sun perennials...

...come the leaf hoppers.  Aren't they beautiful?

Here's a velvet buck in the yard, so called for the fuzzy growth on his antlers that will shed by fall.

And there he goes!

Finally, some sad news.  This is the last  picture of Little Miss's cardinal chick.

He was growing rapidly and feeding frequently, and then one day, he was just gone.  It was much too early for him to leave the nest, and I didn't find him on the ground beneath it, so I can only conclude that he fell prey to one of his many predators (snakes, owls, raccoons, etc.). 

I'll keep an eye out for other interesting things around the yard.  There's always something going on.  Have a great week!