Category: FRIENDS

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06/12/2022 yard

Maybe Phacelia?
I found at least four leaves full of my amazing tree hopper friends.
Each leaf had a different set of adults or immatures.
Adults get taken care of too.
Babies!!!
The leaf bends where the treehopper eggs were.
Lace bug
Frogfruit east of patio is doing well. Just moved a piece there this spring.
Nice true bug
Dog flower highly mobile.
Monarda future flower bud??
Baptisia and okra
Rudbeckia maxima from Abby has a new leaf.
A planthopper (Flatidae) on curly dock. First time for this family in the yard?? I used to see them regularly at home.
Rattlesnake master still lives.
Passionvine (seeds from Bartlesville) doing well in their second year.
Tiny bee on butterfly milkweed
Hedeoma in with Datura.
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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.
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06/12/2022 a walk in the park

Just a bit of prairie here at Ruby Grant Park in NW Norman.
Oh wait! A box turtle!!
It is good pollinator habitat and good prairie too. I heard one Eastern Meadowlark singing and at least one Dickcissel.
A weevil on green milkweed pods.
A family of baby milkweed bugs on green milkweed pods. We looked but didn’t find any Monarch butterfly caterpillars.
Sideoats grama grass.
Abby has suggested this is bottlebrush squirrel tail grass.
It has very exciting seedheads!
Thanks to Mom and Abby for identifying this as Apocynum cannabinum, or dogbane.
There was a lot of it along the trail and we saw the dogbane beetle that eats it too!
Possibly prairie acacia?
A non native lady beetle on the acacia.
Really great stands of Rudbeckia amplexicaulis here!
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06/10/2022 exciting friends

I wasn’t sure at first if this was a bit of debris on a bird seed sunflower stem.
But I saw it walk!! It’s a plant hopper!
I think it’s Entylia sp, possibly carinata if I understand bugguide saying there’s only one species and it’s quite variable. That’s the species shown in the new Abbott and Abbott Texas insects book.
Spittlebug adult!
The most special flower.
A beautiful white lined sphinx visiting the non native verbena.
I love the different wing angles the camera catches.
Side view.
Slime mold very happy after 3.46″ rain in the past seven days.
Blurry but you can see two seedlings: the winecup above with three leaves and the lyre leaf sage with two seed leaves. Working on my ground covers out front around the raised beds.
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06/07/2022 catching up

A Fiery Skipper on lantana on campus.
A native fleabane in the front yard.
Another Fiery Skipper on the verbena at home. I need to replace this non native moss verbena with prairie verbena but I can’t get it to germinate. 😡
A paper wasp on mealy blue sage. It looks weirdly purple here.
Using my new copy of the social wasps book, I narrowed this down to Polistes fuscatus or Polistes bellicosus, based on not much black on legs, black tipped antennae, and the yellow ring around the abdomen.
The Hedeoma is flowering!
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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.
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06/05/2022 bird nest

Bird’s nest fungi, that is!!!
The Chef noticed these this afternoon. Very excited.
A William’s pride apple!!!
I realized there are multiple kinds of horse crippler cactus. Mom helped me identify this as Echinocactus horizonthalonius (the common and widespread subspecies), based on it having eight ribs. The flower closed in the sunshine today. Apparently it needs a second individual to make fruit, ie it’s self sterile (also known as self incompatible).
Some kind friends brought us a big obsidian rock!
I put it near the baby two leaf senna. I think the black and yellow will look very nice together.
A small pokeberry growing in backyard.
A Texas dandelion accidentally brought from home! Yay!
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06/04/2022 unexpected excitement

Saw a great little jumping spider on the ironweed leaves.
An interesting bee or velvet ant male or something, on white avens leaf. It was one of the nervous kinds who keeps flicking their wings constantly.
The rain of the last few days prompted the Missouri fluttermill primrose to bloom again!
The Chef and I cleared leaves off the patio. In several places they were up against the wood siding which is not great as they are essentially composting. Here Briar holds down a leaf pile for us. We leave the leaves in the rest of the yard as that is best for a healthy woodland environment!
The worst offending area of leaf collection next to the house. This is after I pulled out the bulk of leaves. Our compost pile should be happy now!
An extremely tiny planthopper that the Chef found on the outdoor work bench.
The last round of tepary beans I planted are coming up.
The big thrill of the day… The horse crippler cactus in the rock garden has bloomed!!!! I imagine this means it’s either happy here or thinks it’s about to die. Hopefully the former. Since I just planted it this spring I wasn’t expecting it, and its flower bud was not obvious, or grew in really fast the last few days when I wasn’t looking with the rain.
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06/02/2022

New book in the mail! The Social Wasps of North America by Chris Alice Kratzer. It looks very useful.
Awards for bravery all around tonight. Shacks walked right past Briar and she stayed put.
Purple coneflower finally opening up!
Ironweed is budding, seems early??
This is one of two dill seedlings in the herb bed.
Pretty sure now that this is the Mexican sage from Judy.
Whoa, standing cypress about to bloom!
The just-planted two leaf senna doing okay.
The older two leaf senna seems to have gotten nibbled. I’ll have to consider if I should put some Vaseline around it against earwigs or a wire cage over it maybe for rabbits.
A non native moss rose (Portulaca). Dog behind.