06/27/2022

A paper wasp flies to mealy blue sage.
Using the two new wasp books, we narrowed it down to three species of Polistes: dorsalis, bellicosus, or fuscatus.
I’ll look this wasp up tomorrow in the pollinator wasps book.
It was going in and out of the hollow dead branch.
The native black currant is ripening!
Pizza with garden basil, garden onions, garden garlic.

06/18/2022 onion time

Oops. We disturbed this big beautiful toad.
The toad hopped over our onions to nestle down under some bean plants. We turned the soaker hose on after we were done harvesting to make sure any other plants we disturbed weren’t too upset, and hopefully that will keep the toad safely into the cooler night too.
Three kinds of onion!
The shadiest bed has Inca pea beans planted over Thomas Laxton sugar peas which we removed as they were getting mildewy. Now the pea beans have room to grow.
Our supervisor chose a shady, cool corner.
Left are the dried Thomas Laxton sugar peas for next season. To the right are Oregon sugar pod II (the original kind I had) from earlier this spring. I am going to bleach them to prevent transfer of the mildew to next season. We also put the plant waste in the city yard waste bins as their composting gets much hotter than ours.

Mesh weavers! And other friends

Onion flowers.
05/21/2022 a mesh weaver on an onion flower husk.
Sliiiiime mold!!!! Also from May 21.
A lightning bug spied on our dinner. (05/21/2022)
Mesh weavers on the sugar peas.
More mesh weavers!
Thanks to the diligence of the tiny mesh weaver spiders, here are 146 g of Thomas Laxton sugar peas. (05/20/2022)

Path and fence plants

I got a bit of dirt from near the rosette of Spiranthes orchids to get any mycorrhizae to sprinkle in my soil at home.
Here it is.
“Mother hellloooooooo hi hi hi hi wigglessss”
Boredom between walks.
Also bored.
Several spring prairie plants I want to establish in my mini-prairie (to ensure flowers for early pollinators) are growing right by Mom and Dad’s house where they always weedeat, right along the foundation and in the driveway. This is a wild onion.
A weird and neato double stemmed and double seed head ten petal anemone!!
Hopefully these annual groundsel (which will get mowed in path) will seed in my yard.
Mom did a cross post on her blog. This is private property, so we are the only people digging any plants and are careful to take very few and from areas on the property where they will be damaged or killed, such as a path, the house foundation, or fence line. We also divided plants from the garden near the house and dug up babies from yard trees that would get mowed.
Gracie got a sticker in her paw, so Mom helped her out. Up along the fence, there was a small fragrant sumac that Mom was going to lop off (keeping the fence line clear) so we dug it up. It had a long taproot! Still not as long as a yucca though.