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!

mandible mouthful

 Beautiful warm mornings for hiking!

I love seeing the woods wake up.

red maple

rusty blackhaw

spicebush

silver maple

anemone ran.

senecio aus.

Sometimes, when looking into the woods, the woods looked back! Someone did, anyway.

white-tailed deer

Things are stirring everywhere!

american bullfrog

There's definitely plenty of water for frogs to play in.  :)

At home, I'm picking the last of the early daffodils and the start of the late daffodils.

I love bringing them into the house!

When I was out picking daffodils, I noticed that carpenter bees were bypassing the flower throats and stabbing directly into the nectar pod behind the petals.

You can see how short their tongues are...

That makes it difficult for them to penetrate tube-throated flowers, like daffodils.  Instead, they use their cutting mandibles...so helpful when they're chewing wood fibers...to cut directly into the nectar pod.  The flowers are still getting pollinated by other visitors...

northern paper wasp

...and the bees get the nutrition they need.  So interesting!

In other news around the house, both sugar snap and sweet peas are thriving and ready to go into the ground this week!

I'm getting some nice growth in the outside mini greenhouses, too.  If our weather remains above freezing for the next two - three weeks, AND if the forecast is positive, then I will be able to put out the summer flower seeds by the third week of April!  Hooray!  I've got a lot of great plans for the garden this year, shoulder permitting.

Have a great week!

oh baby

I'm loving our new habit of daily morning walks.  Even the humidity has a silver lining:  the hazy air is beautiful in the sunlight!

At home, the ducklings may be nearly grown, but it's quite clear that it's still very much baby time for many others.  So much activity!

Sarcophaga Flies

Squash Bugs

"baby" Squash Bug

Skippers

Milkweed Bugs

flirtin' Spicebush Swallowtail

Twice-Stabbed Stink Bugs

Tiger Bee Flies

Squash Lady Beetle Eggs

Everyone is hurrying to mate, lay eggs, and for those young who won't be overwintering in eggs: a chance to live their brief life before winter comes.  Those recently born are doing what they can...

...like this Cecropia moth.  The pulsating body told me that it had recently hatched.  It has no mouthparts and cannot feed...its brief two-week life will be spent mating and/or laying eggs.

A group Tiger Bee flies, too, just "hatched" on the front porch. I've been absolutely fascinated by their mini drama!  I kept finding these strange shells dropping from our porch ceiling:

It turns out that these are Tiger Bee larval shells.  

These, too, kept falling.  They seemed to be immature carpenter bees:

I kept an eye on things, and was soon rewarded.

Tiger Bee flies don't sting or bite.  They're great pollinators, and they also have been helping us in another way:  they lay eggs in carpenter bee holes.  Their larvae hatch and devour carpenter bee larvae, which is why I kept finding those bee corpses.  We definitely have a excess of carpenter bees so this is a great development!  

Strange, though, that all of the new adults were dripping a white liquid. 

It turns out that it's meconium!  In their pupal state, they don't excrete.  When they emerge, they pump the liquid through their wing "veins" to help harden them.  Once they are fully filled out, they simply drip out the excess.  So interesting!  

Caterpillars, like this Tiger Swallowtail, are eat, eat, eating to prepare for their pupal stage.

This little guy was on the dill that I'd potted up on our porch steps, and I checked his progress every day.  Yesterday, though, he was gone.  Maybe he's made a chrysalis somewhere nearby!  

In other baby news, our young "chogs" have finally grown and left the nest.  We've gone from seeing them multiple times a day to a complete absence, and it's about time...it only takes about 44 days for young groundhogs to mature and leave the nest!  We're worried that a fox has moved in, though, judging from the smell and the increased digging.  A trail cam will be set up soon to verify!  

Phew!  It's been busy, but I'm loving it.  We're getting things done despite the suddenly-hot weather...

...but a little time to relax, too.

Have a great week!