Emerging

An unsuspecting luna moth caterpillar made its slow and deliberate way across our front yard. 

The black suitcase he scaled happened to be one of the left-behind items in the yard sale we 

attempt every five years or so, and his bright green color was eye-grabbing.

 A glass vase topped with some leftover door screen made the perfect spontaneous terrarium.

Wrapping itself in maple leaves and sticky silk, it constructed a cocoon by 

nightfall the same day, and the watching and waiting began. In all honesty, 

I gave up seeing the miracle of metamorphosis; sure that my

fumbling attempt to capture  transformation  in a glass vase would fail.

But about two weeks later ...

The day it emerged, we celebrated like children—the ones we truly are on the inside— and 

made an event of setting it free.

The left-behind chrysalis contained the dried, discolored bits of the caterpillar's body. 

The moth emerged with everything it needed for success in its glorious new life.

And someday ... so shall we. 

GIft Shot

This butterfly just flew into the frame as I was taking this shot of a 

pink diamond hydrangea spray, 

Completely by surprise and without any stalking on my part, 

I had my favorite photo of the summer!  

On the Edge

We're on the edge of fall over here, even though it feels more like summer now than summer actually did. 

But the vast insect chorus has begun to sing its fall selections, and you know there's no going back. 

I like bulky sweaters, new boxes of crayons and pumpkin spice cappuccino as much as the next person; fall does have its unique charms. Yet something inside me clings to summer and mourns a little, tiny bit at every passing Labor Day.

Savoring the Sun

My Husband says it's Indian Summer for a few days.

Temps reaching as high as 80 today and tomorrow!

School books are being spread out on picnic tables in the early afternoon sun -

one of the truly great pleasures of home schooling.

We're not the only ones soaking up those rays and frantically savoring the warmth!

This tiny, perfectly white butterfly reminds me of fairy stories I used to read as a little girl.

That would probably make the bumblebee a wicked villain... 

Hey, Hey, Hey ...

... Goodbye! 

The furnace is on for the first time this season.

It's going to frost soon.

The end is near for all the spiders that dotted the landscape of my summer. 

 California Trapdoor Spider (shudder) found creeping around the foundation of our lake cabin in southern Kentucky.  It met an untimely death inside these plastic bags when bees drilled through and ate him.

I can't say that I was sorry, since I overheard one teenager say to another, 

"We'll take that home and keep it in a tank - great pet!"

I was innocently looking for a nice sitting spot - can you see that rock nearest the shore? Thank the Lord I had the sense to kick it before parking my bottom! Does this spider not seem so large? Keep in mind that I took the photo from plenty far away, and that I'm pretty sure I heard it hissing a warning about my bottom meeting its home.

This garden spider set up shop among the stems of the Yellowstone daylily in the patio garden.

Even I have to admit that it has a certain ... horrific beauty. Maybe?

If you enlarge the photo, you'll be able to see it even more clearly. It seems to have a hair-do.

I decided to nickname it Barbara, at the risk of cutifying a terror-inducing spider.

And since I really enjoy the show, I let Barbara live to the end of her natural life.

Tis The Season

It's Spider Season.

And the spiders are attacking. 

One almost as big as a mouse thumped around in here the other day. 

That's AFTER My Wonderful Husband sprayed Ortho Home Defense Max.

It may say KEEPS BUGS OUT on the tag, but what it should really say is, 

"Will cause every spider in the near vicinity to parade across your living room floor."

It's like the Go For It Spider Attractant.

That's my product review, unpaid for, unsolicited, and I'm not taking it back!

True Grit

                       

Have you ever seen a praying mantis ready to take on four grown men and a dog?

This is how it looks.

Has he got some pluck and guts, or what?

He was standing, people --- standing on two legs, mouth open, pinchers poised,  

ready to take on all comers.

'Cause sometimes you gotta fight instead of hide, even if it's a sure thing that you're gonna go down.

and if he just had a weensy, tiny gunslinger belt...

Inchworm

Hide and Seek

(photo taken 

from a blue chair 

under the sweet gum tree 

on a lazy Sunday afternoon)

Let It Go

Summertime and butterflies just go together.

You know how to tell the difference between a butterfly and a moth, right?

The time for butterflies is spiraling down, I think.

The cicadas are yelling during the day, and 

the crickets are singing all night.

The lightning bugs have vanished, and 

school supplies overflow plastic grocery bags. 

No, NOT cloth bags - it's a micro-rebellion I'm participating in right now.

Summer is almost over, folks! 

And I'm just about ready to let it go. 

Are you glad to see summer finally grinding 

to its dry and dusty finish?

Pie Knees

I know I've talked about peonies before. 

PLEASE - I know we all have pronunciation differences around here. 

Tomato / tomato  and all that. And who cares how you say clematis  anyway? 

(clem-AY-tis   or   clem-AT-is  --- whatever)

BUT do take care with how you say peonies! 

I mean would you rather have  pee-knees  or  pie-knees? 

We could all agree probably, and especially here in the land of middle age, 

that pee on the knees is mostly a very grim situation. 

On the other hand, having pie on the knees - that's all good! 

Let's go with pie every time!

ANYway. I think these might deserve a spot every year. It's all about the teamwork!

Check out this photo - if you can double click to enlarge it, do that. Look at all the different sizes of ants working away at these tight-fisted blooms. Is that crazy or what? Since when do those big-butted ants work in harmony with those teensy, barely-there ants? And yet, when it's almost time for the peonies to bloom, they are all out there just busy, busy, busy, laboring for the common goal. 

Reminds me of the local pregnancy care center. Not big butts, of course, but all different sorts of Christians working diligently, and in harmony, toward a common, and beautiful, goal.

And look how much work they had to do this year!  

This past mild winter allowed almost every plant to outdo any bloom show it ever put on before. Usually, this peony bush has only a dozen or so blooms,  but just see what it did a couple of weeks ago!

And finally, peonies in the grass. 

It's a short show.

He's Early

I have a few Ruby Hydrangeas just outside our sunroom. 

Don't be fooled - they turn red in the fall, but their first bloom is NOT red, just a sort of half-hearted pink. You don't believe all those catalog blurbs, do you - not like I did, right?

ANYway, I was getting on the treadmill in the sunroom, and noticed a sunbeam falling just on the head of one of the bloom buds, just outside the window. 

All my hydrangeas are covered with blooms, even one sorry girl that has never bloomed in all its years here. This will be a banner year for hydrangeas, I think, due to the mild winter.

By the time I got my camera (anything to delay exercise) and worked on trying to capture a photo of that beam of light, this guy had landed drunkenly on the bloom head.

I'm probably wrong, but doesn't that look like a lightning bug???

He seemed stunned too!

Now, I know these come out in mid-June because they are my Youngest Son's birthday sign. 

Do you have birthday signs to watch for that indicate the soon-coming of your family birthdays?

So if that was a firefly, then he certainly is early! And it certainly has chilled down around here, so he might be asleep again - at least until late May.

Walk the Garden

Hey, how about some flower photos? I'm going to link this post to a group of bloggers posting mini-tours of their gardens as they look right now - how fun is that? I LOVE to get to 'walk the garden' with another gardener (or two or three)! So come on...

One of my favorite parts of the gardens, this last long bed - part sun / part shade.

If you double click you can get a better view.

I've got cosmos seedlings coming up in the foreground there, near the swan.

Are you offended by my (new) plastic swan?

Yes, others were, too, but that's a story for another day.

Tall sunflower youngsters over there near the (old) tomato stakes - how have the rabbits missed them? Iris, black-eyed susan, oregano, daylilies, sundrops, pinks - who can get rid of those?!, carnations, ajuga, and a trooper of a hydrangea just past the teepee legs. I must point out that hosta there, just past the hydrangea - my favorite hosta - 'Fried Bananas'. One of the only hosta that I allow to bloom, since the bloom is wonderful white and smells Divine!

First bloom from that hydrangea right back there. Pretty amazing, since I thought they all died in the drought last year! It's one of the few bushes I have that has formed a bloom this year. The most beautiful color!

Couldn't leave out a couple of 'bug' photos (NO SPIDER PHOTOS).

Bugs and gardening - it's a For Better or For Worse situation.

Check out this bumble bee passed out cold in on the stem of a lamb's ear bloom! This stem has been cut and Second Son is holding it still for the photo... Before throwing the stem in the cuttings bin, we all took turns petting the bee! He didn't move a muscle.

Do bees have muscles?

And check out this cute lightning bug, waiting on a stella bloom for his time to come - dusk!

Had to show you these perfect partners! The daylily is called Children's Festival, and doesn't it have the loveliest color with ruffled edges. She's put on her best dress! The lily blooming a little lower is brand new to the garden. I got it FOR A DOLLAR on Saturday from the Lowes clearance rack.

!!!!!!

It's called Tiny Toes. Don't they look wonderful together?

My oldest lavender bush. I had to cut out a lot of dead branches this year, more drought results, so the bush doesn't look very good. This photo of the blooms is all I could post.

Send advice on what to do with an old and tired lavender bush, if you can.

That's it for my mini-tour! If you'd like to tour other gardens, go to

Cottage Flora Thursday

A Giant

I know I'm at risk of becoming the writer of a Spider Horror Blog.

But this is just too significant to leave out.

Too remarkable to NOT remark!

At least this one was not in our house! It lived out by the fire pit in a really nice, cozy hole in the ground. Lots of ideas went around about how to see just how big it really was, since we could only see its eyes glowing eerily from the bottom of its hole and the occasional stretching of a leg in our direction. The group settled on digging the whole hole up and forcing it out into this jar. What a tidy plan! ha. ha. ha. I'd post the video, but it's a little TOO real life. So for those of you not living the Real Life yet, I'll refrain.

You're welcome.

Can't pass up an opportunity for a good dare.

And this is about as brave as we get around here - with spiders, that is.

Husband suggested I trot the hairy bad boy (with 8 legs) up to the extension office for ID.

But I think I'll pass on a car ride with this mini-monster.

May this be the last spider entry of the year.

Gasp - Plink - Scurry

arachnophobia

I have it.

So when I looked up from the computer and saw this:

!!!!!!!!

Thank God Above, it was on the OUTSIDE of the screen, and NOT in my house.

I cranked open the window and plinked this guy over the sidewalk, all the way out into the grass! I was victorious for about two seconds, until he came scurrying back across the sidewalk, toward the house.

I'm waiting for him to find his way into our home, and scare me witless.

It's just that spidery time of year.

(Just for a little TMI related to spiders --- I found a tick in my pants during the thunderstorms a couple of nights ago. Even if the wind, hail and lightning wouldn't have kept me awake, every tiny, wiggly itch required investigation after that discovery.)

Robber Fly

These dry fall-like days bring out the weirder insects. This robber fly was resting on the outside of the greenhouse, just above the hose caddy. It scared My Youngest away from his daily feed-the-dog job, enough for me to be called out to look. We took advantage of the moment and staged this photo of him grabbing it.

(Any volunteers to clean the greenhouse windows?)

But looking more closely - how cool is this guy?! From the back:

From the underside:

He's got a big ol' green fly. Just sucking that thing dry! If I had taken video, you'd be able to see his furry belly moving in and out, in and out.

There, the wonder of creation! I must admit, that's one small advantage of the home school - time to Stop and Wonder.

Teen Mantis

(Oh, no, Kate - It's another bug post!)

I noticed this praying mantis in the banner grass while working in the garden last week. I'm not really all that buggy, OK - just a little, but this guy was really noticeable! This bad boy had some attitude! So tiny, just a mantis teen probably, but he did some major chest-thumping when I bumped his grassy territory one too many times. My eye finally caught him as he was springing around from blade to blade near my shoulder, all on the defense. All "Are we 'bout ta do dis?", with a little "Are YOU bumpin' ME???" thrown in. And look how he's still keeping his eye(s) on me, even with his back turned.

Starting this post, I thought I'd compare the mantis to a jedi - he's so cool, and in charge - thinking himself completely omnipotent. Master of his own universe. But....

Yeah.

It's definitely a teenage praying mantis.

Nymphs

This lovely lily is just outside our bedroom door. In passing, I noticed a cluster of bugs milling around on the bloom. I'm interested in bugs, only in the garden, NOT in my house. If they're found in the house, they just get some Instant Death, but it's a peek at creation in action to observe them out in the garden, where they should be. Since it's unusual to see bugs around the patio garden containers, so I stopped to look more closely.

Don't you think they look like red ants? But their antennae are too long...

And they're bristly little guys with perky body shapes and nice long legs. Aren't they cute!?

They're leaf-footed bug nymphs. Adorable as they are, I shook them off the lily and ran away before they could light on me.

:0)