Wild Poinsettia (Euphorbia sp.)

The Wild Poinsettia is really buzzing with bees and other tiny friends lately over the past few days! It’s a very enthusiastic unsolicited volunteer but it seems to get a lot of customers now that the weather is cooling down into the 80s and 90s. It is a native plant and hosts also the very fun Euphorbia bug which has little pompoms on its antennae.

A tiny bee.
An Eastern tailed-blue
An immature euphorbia bug
A potter wasp
A sweat bee
A jumping spider hoping to snack on a visitor to the Euphorbia!

06/21/2022

Gram guards the rooting juniperleaf.
There’s a new pollinator garden on campus!!
Very pleased at least one of the partridge pea seeds I sprinkled last year made it up.
Paper wasps made a nest on the debris of the invasive clematis.
A small lynx spider eats a fly
Just noticed that the long true bugs have little flat pom poms on their antennae.
A second individual. I think you have to see them from the right angle to get a good view of the antennae spots.
Dog
A helpful cat saw this wasp (maybe a spider wasp?) In the aloe and knocked the pot over.
I took it outside and shooed the friend off. No dinner in the house for it. Only cat.
I spotted a plume moth hiding on rain barrel stand.
Potatoes in straw bale getting big. Hope roots are too.

06/11/2022

The Chef made no bake lemon curd/ cheesecake layered parfaits with homemade whipped cream, farm share blueberries, and homemade granola for a garden tour.
Prepared the night before in the fridge.
Perfect for the tropically humid day.
A wasp carrying a caterpillar
Spittlebug
Hello Tuqu
This young man.
Two Texas dandelions from home! White specks are elderberry petals.
Bee fly
Possibly a baby Grindelia leaf??
A second Coryphantha sulcata seedling came up!!!!!
Lace bug (Tineidae) on giant ragweed leaf.
Nobody home…
…except for this crab spider!
My keeled treehoppers have a big family!!
Soooo manyyyyyy
Shackleton and Briar disagree about social distancing.
A nice jumping spider.
It’s on a houseplant that is outside for the summer.

06/05/2022 indoor/outdoor

I learned today that spiderworts are self-incompatible, so these buds didn’t have any seeds in them. Oh well. It was worth a try! Thanks Mom for sending and prompting me to look this up! It explains why we only have the one. 🙃
I repotted the aloe vera (not shown) and added some more dirt and another succulent to this pot, which lives inside in the entryway shelf.
Milkweed beetle! It’s standing on a dayflower and moving over to a nightshade, though.
Ashy Sunflower yet lives!!
Linum rigidum from home still blooming. It’s annual so I hope it seeds!
A different jumping spider.
A lightning bug resting on a native poinsettia (Euphorbia) leaf.

05/28/2022 after planting

Plants I got from the “pop up” location of Prairie Wind Nursery: Copper canyon daisy, Pineapple sage, local genotype Baptisia australis (planted between roses near the trellis fence), Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata, planted near the elderberry as apparently they like similar soils), rattlesnake master (planted on drier side of brush pile), chives (the round green type as only the flatter white edges kind survived the winter this year), and five kinds of basil in my ongoing attempt to find where they like in the yard. Varieties were African blue (in raised beds in front of tomatoes), mammoth (small plant but big crinkly leaves) in the herb bed (where I have not tried any basil before), and amethyst, Genovese, and large leaf in the front strawberry bed near porch.

Mystery sunflower in the “prairie”. Rough leaf sunflower, or a bird seed sunflower?? It’s much narrower, but not quite like the ones I dug from home yard.
A much better capture of the long true bug. I feel it’s very svelte. The Gram of true bugs. So long. It’s on the native poinsettia.
The mystery seedling by dividing fence is definitely a legume and not passionvine. So, tepary from last year? Butterfly pea? Or maybe trailing wild bean from Abby?? We’ll find out…
Stripey plant hopper on Texas mallow.