Tag: spider

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10/29/2023 first freeze forecast tonight

Piles of vegetable greenery on a concrete front poor with a black double door in the background
So, in spite of rain all day and temperatures in the 30s F, I went out and cut all the plants. That’s the giant pile of cut basil on an overflowing Rubbermaid tub and assorted cut off pepper plants nearby. The rest of the day was getting basil leaves off the stems.
An inch thick basil stem cut off, with my hand nearby for scale.
The basil stems were so big I had to use the loppers to cut them at the base.
A blue-gray rubber made plastic tub almost full of bright green basil leaves
3608 grams of basil leaves. This is 7.95 pounds. Yes, we did tare the tub weight. Yes, it is a lot of basil. No, I don’t even know what’s going to happen.
Close up view of a red and blue striped leaf hopper. Its legs and tip of snoot grade to yellow. It has tiny hair like antennae.
Leafhopper
A small true bug nymph on my fingers. It’s small enough that you don’t see around my whole finger. The brown colors are speckled
True bug nymph
A brownish jumping spider with iridescent green pedipalps peeks out from its web, which holds a bright green basil leaf folded over as shelter.
Jumping spider
Close up of the face of a praying mantis. It is watching me.
Praying mantis
We had several little friends come in on the basil. All were released back into the shelter of adjacent plants outside.
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07/20/2023 summer continues

Green grasses have broad round seedheads forming. The grass are in front of a wooden fence dappled with sun and shade.
The sea oats that came up a few years ago from purchased seeds. They finally bloomed!
Three pink lily flowers blooming at the end of a long bare green stalk. The weathered wooden fence in the background is draped with a few five-leaved vines called Virginia Creeper.
There are three surprise amaryllis in the yard! They are all this shade of pink. Not native, but obviously tough, and not spreading so it can stay for now.
A brilliant scarlet red flower peels out from behind fuzzy green leaves. The flower petals are folded around a long red-pink flower part whose name I can’t remember.
The Texas mallows have begun to bloom! I love how bright they are in the shade.
A flower bud with a domed greenish center has tiny skinny yellow petals begin to emerge around it.
Rudbeckia lacinata from Abby is very happy this wet summer and has started to bloom.
Pale fingers with a wedding band hold a small sunflower blossom and three pointy green leaves still for the camera. The sunflower has clean yellow petals and a brownish center. There are various green leaves in the background.
Helianthus petiolaris from seeds are starting to bloom! There is a crab spider hiding behind one petal that you can just see their legs.
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04/23/2023 planting before rain

We planted native Carolina Larkspur that we grew in a pot over the winter. Two in front, two in back!
Paula spotted a crab spider on the Camassia scilloides.
Shackleton is very disappointed that Briar the dog went outside with him for his leash walk. He smells an old bird nest. Briar is thrilled. She loves Shacks!!!!!
The willowleaf sunflower from Mom is inexplicably wilted. Too much water too fast?? Hopefully it recovers.
This is one of two sunchokes, an edible native sunflower, that were kindly given to me last fall! They have velvety soft leaves.
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10/09/2022 Saxon park

Schinia gaurae moth (the clouded crimson) caterpillar on false gaura! We counted nine around our 1.75 mi loop.
The tall rosettes of the false gaura were nice to see since they look just like my garden one.
A Schinia moth I haven’t identified feeding on aster flowers.
This bumblebee loved the Salvia azurea.
Back of two spotted bumblebee where you can see the spots!
Funnel web spider says no pictures, please.
A tree cricket hiding on Liatris.
The seed pod of a Baptisia. Mom said possibly B. australis var. minor
Paula found two big beautiful lynx spider mommas! Wow! This is one guarding its egg sac.
A tiny caterpillar on false gaura.
The first Solomon’s seal I’ve seen in the wild! We have several in the yard but no idea if they’re volunteers or planted.
Probably a buckwheat, the botany consulting committee says.
Abby, Mom, and Jeanne also agreed this was probably a dwarf lead plant.
Paula found a magnificent sumac leaf turning yellow to red.
The Sumac is really turning beautiful reds all over!
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09/08/2022 nighttime only adventure

The Chef wanted to see what was out this week so we took the UV flashlight and checked. Here’s a spider!
It’s beige in regular light.
I had no idea there were hairless bee flies. This one came to the porch light. We turned off the porch light once we went inside so all the critters could go back to their business.
We found three glowing crab spiders. All of them were on insect pollinated flowers, so I wonder if they glow to blend in for pollinators who can see UV? Though on this Salvia greggii, presumably all the pollen is farther down the flower. But we found two on zinnias.
The green striped cushaw squash looks melted!
Escobaria missouriensis cactus spines glow!
There’s a lot of sunflower pollen glowing. You can see how much has fallen off!
This was my favorite picture of the glowing sunflower pollen: just the disk flowers glowing against the dark sky, leaves barely visible.
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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!
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09/02/2022 Y A Y

As the sign says, it’s our one rain lily! I planted it this spring from the NPSOT plant sale. Norman got 1.4″ rain yesterday.
The rain lily was beautiful, and now home for a spider building its web from the lily flower to the ground.
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08/14/2022 straw bale potatoes

We lifted and sorted through our two straw bales of potatoes since the leaves were all eaten off by blister beetles. Upon moving the bales, we found eight bess beetles…
One fast isopod…
A second fast isopod…
Three baby house mice…
And one click beetle. This brings us to a total of 14 photographed animals plus a whole nest of ants and a small earwig that got away.
Compare this to our glorious harvest: ten potatoes from two bales. Paula is researching where we went wrong. I feel like maybe we should just go back to growing them in soil. (These experiments were my idea so I’m not blaming anyone else.). At least this year’s harvest is safer than last year’s crop of black widow spiders??
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07/31/2022 garden and neighborhood

A Texas dandelion was open in the backyard prairie after a refreshing 1/10th inch of rain!
Waaaaalk plzzzzzz
We stopped to look at the vegetables on the way out to walk and this magnificent little jumping spider was on guard!
On our walk today, near the sidewalk there’s some unmowed area near a creek. Around this beautiful and native silver leaf nightshade you can see a lot of non native and invasive Johnson grass.
An American bumblebee was visiting the nightshade.
It has a lovely flower. Mom has one that volunteered in her garden area.
The plant has pretty flowers as it crept onto the sidewalk, but turned out to be a non native invasive species called Tribulus terrestris.