caterpillar thriller

The weather is delightful this week and I've been outside quite a bit.  Lots of activity that I would've missed if we would have had "normal" (miserably hot) late August weather!

Check out this pine tree spur-throated grasshopper.

Isn't he a beauty?

More butternut woolly sawfly caterpillars!  I love them so much. 

 This tussock moth caterpillar was suspended from a branch and just spinning in the air.

Eastern tent caterpillars were busy in this tree, protected by webbing.

Look at this beautiful guy!  It's a redbud leaffolder caterpillar, and those lines of webbing are protection against predators.

I've seen A LOT of caterpillar frass (feces) around.  It's everywhere, if you know what to look for!

We're getting a late harvest for our tomatoes this year...

...and it might have something to do with this guy.

It's a tomato hornworm caterpillar...

...and they are major munchers.

tomato hornworm damage

I found several which were parasitized.

A small wasp lays eggs within the caterpillar.  The larvae hatch, chew an entrance hole, and spin those little cocoons that you see.  These caterpillars are already dead...they just don't know it yet.  They'll die around the time that the new wasps emerge from the cocoons and seek new victims.  I left these parasitized caterpillars alone.  More wasps = fewer tomato-killing hornworms! 

My pumpkins, however, are a wash.  I thought they'd be relatively safe from squash bug, because I planted this group in a totally different location from last year.  I noticed a lot of the vines dying, but I figured it was from lack of water (I'm a "sink or swim"- type gardener lately).  

Nope.

They are everywhere.  I guess I'll be visiting a pumpkin patch this year!  

Pepita has started puppy school!  She is, by far, the tiniest pup there.  Other classmates include a 150 lb mastiff and a great dane mix!  She is learning there, but learning a lot at home too.  

She has learned to climb up on the couch cushions to peer over the half wall between the kitchen and the living room.   Important investigative skills!  

She's learned to dig holes.

"Digging?  What digging?"

Despite having the world's stubbiest legs, she's a good runner.

Meanwhile, our anti-runner has learned that he has to go to extreme measures to distract us from Pepita.  He spends a good deal of time in the kitchen, on his back, begging for belly rubs.

He's becoming a champion napper, too.

If you haven't seen Barnabas as much, well, he's staying out of the way a little bit more now.  Still getting used to Pepita.  And Claudia is nearly back to normal, although when we tried to put her outside today for a little while, she begged to go back into the barn.  I'm going to keep putting her out for a few hours a day, though.  It's perfect weather for lazing!

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!  

birds in thirds

 Good morning!

red milkweed beetle

It's been a very busy couple of weeks around here.  First, we had a series of crazy storms...

Seventy mph winds that uprooted a 30 - 40 ft tree right in front of us!

Todd cutting up fallen yellowwood tree

We lost power three or four times, for up to ten hour stretches.  Then, we had smoke drift in from the Canada wildfires, and for some reason it was really bad here.

For reference, our air quality this morning is 33!

That kept us inside for a couple of days, too.  But once it stopped raining, and the air cleared, we were able to get outside and get back to work.

Corn is growing!

I'm getting insanely big 2 lb zucchini from the garden...the one below is one of the smaller ones!

Borga is unimpressed.

That's a lot of zucchini bread!  

Grilled zucchini ribbons with white beans and pesto coming today.  Because, you know, we also have a ton, and I mean a ton, of basil.  

I love using it in bouquets...the cilantro I'm growing is great, too, with its pretty purple flowers...but I prefer to eat it.  I made pasta with a basil vinaigrette and roasted cherry tomatoes last week that was to die for!  I'll make it again soon and pop in the recipe here.  

I've got to be diligent about checking our veggies for insects.  I found close to 50 squash bug eggs on our lone zucchini plant.

They'd devour the plant if allowed to hatch.  Helpfully, I found a mating pair of trichopoda flies on a leaf, too.

Trichopoda flies parasitize both stink and squash bugs, helping to balance things out just like the ladybug nymphs did on the milkweed last week.  I've always got to be diligent with the plants, because even flowers have pests.  This isn't a great photo, but one of my cosmos stalks was infested with oleander aphids this week.  Fascinating to see all the different things going on in just a few inches of space!

Tiny-but-deadly ambush bugs help keep things in line, too.

They are venomous and can deliver a nasty bite, but they also eat aphids and other pests!  Here's a quick video if you want to see their grab 'n stab technique.

Lots of animals out and about.  Here's our possum, right at bedtime, after one of our big storms.

I see our big turkey family several times a week.  There are nine poults and I love hearing them chattering in the field!  I can easily see them from my office window.  

In our front pond, we've started seeing a little wood duck family every day...mom and three babies!!

Although the back pond is fine (probably because it's a lot larger), you can see that the front pond is choked with algae.  We've ordered grass carp, a type of fish that love to eat algae, and we're hoping that they'll quickly clear out the gunk.

Of course, we see the chogs all the time.

I see hummingbirds every single day.

waiting out a storm

They are pretty foul-tempered birds and I can almost hear their string of profanity when I enter the garden and they have to zip away for a few minutes.  

The roses are done blooming after a brief show...

...but when one thing stops, another starts.

hosta flower

Madame Butterfly snapdragons

It's a lovely time of year, both outside...and inside!

Have a great week!