There are two horsemint plants blooming and budding their pink towers in the backyard!A lone Rudbeckia amplexicaulis is attempting a flower. Pima Club wheat has seeds!!One marigold has started in the front yard!
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 caterpillarSpittlebugHello TuquThis young man.Two Texas dandelions from home! White specks are elderberry petals.Bee flyPossibly 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 manyyyyyyShackleton and Briar disagree about social distancing.A nice jumping spider.It’s on a houseplant that is outside for the summer.
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!
A beautiful little wasp on fleabane. I just ordered a field guide to social wasps of North America so I hope I can identify it soon!Blister or soldier beetle on annual coreopsis (I think).A tiny crab spider offering free hugs.A little beetle. I have seen a lot of these in my backyard too.Need to look this legume up.Rudbeckia amplexicaulis!Milkweed bug!The green milkweed was everywhere in the park!! We saw an adult monarch butterfly too.A legume.Bumblebee!!Flying viewI still need to look up the species.More of this purple legume.A blurry assassin bug on yarrow.Another milkweed bug – maybe a different or smaller kind?Legume. Edit: Mom suggests non-native Trifolium species, which looks about right. Thank you Mom!The park’s picnic pavilion has lightning bug lights!!
It’s a great little prairie. I heard singing Dickcissel, Field Sparrow, and Painted Bunting, and an Eastern Meadowlark calling. Nice!!
The Datura wrightii is still alive near the chimneys.Rudbeckia amplexicaulis from home is starting to bloom! I put this by the bird bath.Helianthus mollis coming up! The others I did from seeds in the Tupperware didn’t make it. This one came up on its own.The second senna has gained another pair of leaves!
Mom gave me Rudbeckia amplexicaulis seeds last year and I hadn’t seen any seedling candidates, but apparently I missed some! Here are very small ones flowering!