Some delights from indefatigable commentor and ace photographer Ozark Hillbilly:
Top pic: Brown Skippers are probably our most common flutterby. Utterly nondescript and a joy to behold as they flitter about from one bloom to the next.
I don’t know how rare Sphinx moths are, but this is the only one I have ever seen.
I once camped with about 2 dozen friends on a buddy’s property on Taum Sauk Mountain where we spent the entire weekend picking stick bugs off of ourselves. They were literally dripping off the trees.Fortunately, none of them were as big as this gal. She would have freaked out even the most stalwart caver if she’d landed on somebody’s head.
Copperheads are a common enough visitor here. Y’all have heard of the one Miss Kitty killed in our bedroom. I once found one while engaged in some long overdue weeding in the veggie garden. Grabbed a fistful, yanked, and there she was. Before I could react she slithered off into the weeds and yep, I was done pulling weeds for that day.
I love 5 Line Skinks, I chase them all over our property just doing what I do as they do what they do. I think they are particularly beautiful with their indigo tails. Which, for the record, do in fact break off if one grabs it, and they are none the worse off for it.
I can’t count the number of raccoons I have trapped and relocated over the years. Some are pissed and ready to fight. Others, like this guy, just want it all to end. For him, like all the others I have captured outside of the chicken coop, it ended happily.
I had just topped out of the valley below our place when I heard a strange animal cry and looked out my truck window just in time to see something flailing on the ground. I stopped and backed up. It was this little guy. I pulled into the “drive” of the neighbor’s property to see what was wrong. One glance was all it took: Poor little guy had gotten all tangled up in some old fencing. I grabbed a pair of dykes and my camera from the truck, took 2 quick pics and, after looking around for Mama to make sure she wouldn’t attack me (she was not to be seen). began cutting the wire away. He must have been thrashing for quite awhile as the wire had him seven ways till Sunday and wound as tight as the 2000 election.
When I snipped the last bit away from his leg, he was gone in a NY second. And I’ll tell you, even as small as he was, if he had kicked me, he could have easily punched right thru my gut. People think their antlers are dangerous, but their hoofs will eviscerate a person far quicker.
This guy may be a wasp. Or not. I am not gonna venture a guess. Jim Wright made a guess about a critter he photographed recently and every entomologist and entomologist wannabe couldn’t wait to tell him how wrong he was. I will say I like this pic.
I never thought of Cardinals as being particularly aggressive or obstinate, but this one did battle with the cardinal he saw in the window for years. He would fight with his reflection for hours. If you look at the pic, you can see where his wings and his talons (?) have removed the dust and dirt that I never would have, off the window.
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What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
Cermet
Yes, the good old copperhead; not the standard trader amerikan who sided with the confederates – never thought those would return but thanks to tRump, we now have them again.
As for the snake, certainly have run across my fair share – one decided to take up residence in a small artificial pond in front of my house; wasn’t particularly aggressive but once or twice had run ins, so, I drain the pond and encouraged the guy to live else where. It was a cotton mouth that really had a thing for trying to bite me … those snakes are highly aggressive and determined to make you want to be somewhere else – fast.
Baud
You’re a regular Dr. Doolittle.
Juice Box
My dog has an appointment for snake breaking this month and I already feel bad about doing it. It works though. My dad was out in the desert with their old dog, many years post-snake breaking, when the dog suddenly screamed and levitated off the ground. That dog was not going to get anywhere near another rattler.
I need to get myself zapped with an electric collar for reading Nextdoor. The self-assured scientific illiteracy on the subject of immunology and the virus which will not be named is crazy making.
hells littlest angel
I was thrilled the other day to discover several incredibly tiny hummingbirds visiting my flowers. No bigger than the last two joints of my pinkie. Turns out they were actually clearwing sphinx moths. Look it up, and you’ll see how I could have been mistaken. Pretty incredible beasts.
There go two miscreants
We always heard them called “walking sticks” when I was growing up. I found them, as well as praying mantises and dragonflies, fascinating.
debbie
You haven’t lived until you’ve been dive-bombed by an angry red cardinal who thinks you are after his nest 30 feet above your head. You never see it coming until it’s right on top of you.
satby
I’m always jealous that Ozark gets such sharp macro pictures of tiny insects, with beautiful results.
Nothing is going on in my garden today, it’s already at an unbearable (to me) humidity of 87% out there. We got some rain over Friday-Saturday so I can ignore it all for a day until temp and humidity come back down.
Grammer, how does that work again??
WereBear
I love working macro, and are nearly ready to at least take a prepared cardboard box for wind-blocking during my next expedition.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Juice Box: What’s snake breaking? Teaching a dog to leave snakes alone?
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone???
Those critters??
satby
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yes, they use muzzled snakes and a shock collar.
Jeffery
It actually rained last night for the first time in a month or more. I didn’t know what the noise was at first.
Kristine
Had an inch of rain at my place Friday night, which was the most rain I’d seen around here in weeks if not months. The whole county is in the Severe Drought category except for a sliver of the southeast corner.
Even with weekly watering, the shady side yard is struggling. Most of the ferns are browning, and the only astilbe without dead leaves is the one in pretty much total shade.
But the cardinal flowers are all open and the hummingbirds love them. The bees are all over the Rose of Sharon shrubs—very happy to contribute to this year’s hibiscus honey crop. I am dealing with the usual run of Japanese beetles as well as a new to me copper-colored variety called the Asian Garden Beetle. At least that’s what the Seek app calls it, and I’m guessing it’s correct because it matches the online photos. I should report it because it’s another invasive and from what I’ve read has been seen farther south but not around here. Well, it’s around here now. At least all the ones I’ve seen have been drowned in the hummingbird feeder moat and not actively munching plants.
stinger
You are inspiring me to remove more of the old fencing on my property. Thanks for saving that deer.
Immanentize
My garden is a bit of a mess. The tomatoes and tomatillos are growing nicely, but my peppers are not. I think they got drowned back in June.
Each year, it seems, I get one or two Monarch flutterbys that blow into the yard. They discover my limelight hydrangea and just make the most beautiful image with their colors against the white/green of the flowers.
Thank you Ozark!
joel hanes
Top flower is a native purple coneflower?
Sphinx moths were common in the Iowa of my youth, maybe because old people were still planting large “victory” gardens, and the caterpillar of one common species is the tomato hornworm. Easy to mistake them for hummingbirds as they visit nectar-bearing flowers in the early evening. The hindwings of some of them are vividly colored
But insects of all kinds are much less common than in those days. Used to be impossible to drive in the midwest summer without splattering bugs all over the windshield and grill — now that doesn’t happen.
I walked a couple miles of country road yesterday — a pair of redwinged blackbirds, sitting on the phone wire over the ditch that probably held their nest, followed me for a quarter mile, trilling threats and probably calling me vile names in their native idiom. As I kid, I once waded into the cattails at the edge of a marsh to look into a red-wing nest, and got repeatedly dive-bombed for my trouble.
I’d been aware for weeks that the sulfur butterflies that used to form crowds at the edges of puddles didn’t seem to be around at all — so I was glad to see twenty or so on my walk, all in pairs. Perhaps they’d been needing rains of recent days to emerge.
Spartan green
@satby: Greetings from Oakland County MI. I wanted to show you my purple morning glory “bush”, but I can’t figure out how to insert pictures. ?. Does anyone know how to deal with rose slugs? They’ve eaten all the leaves off my chihuly rose twice
Immanentize
@joel hanes:
I am sorry to hear about their ultimate form, but I’m still gonna kill them if they get on my plants. Unless they are already covered in wasp eggs, then I move them away in a jar and let nature do the killing
JPL
I hate snakes.
satby
@Immanentize: Me too. There’s plenty of other plants for them to munch, protecting my 5 tomato plants won’t endanger the species.
@Spartan green: Howdy neighbor! We can’t insert pictures, but we can link to an online platform like Flicker. And I use this systemic pesticide on my roses and flower shrubs. Doesn’t affect pollinators, only pests that eat the plants.
Edit, or take more pictures and send them to Anne Laurie for a Sunday garden post. I’d love to see them ?
Spartan green
@satby: That’s the one I bought yesterday at Bordines! Glad to know I’m on the right track.
oldgold
Spartan green:
“Does anyone know how to deal with rose slugs? “
I do. Surrender with grace.
Several years ago I chronicled my war with slugs here. This is the last sad chapter of this cautionary tale that oozed pathos.
satby
@oldgold: ?
satby
@Spartan green: It works great and as a drench it’s super easy: mix it and pour around the plant for it to drink up. Twice a summer and done; my kind of garden maintenance!
Now if I could just get something like that for weeds ?
MomSense
Anyone else want to take a field trip to OH’s place in Misery? Could we stop at Raven’s place on the way?
sab
@JPL: Me too. I was getting my hair cut the other day in Ohio and I mentioned that I had grown up in Florida. She was jealous because she hates winter. I started a list of not wonderful things about Florida that started with lots of poisonous snakes, then alligators, really hot summers, giant spiders, inch long cockroaches, grass fires, hurricanes, sinkholes, wild hogs, more snakes. She was laughing at the end ( “I get your point”.
Sharks amd stingrays in the water. Men-of-war and other jellyfish.
sab
Does anyone remember when purple coneflowers grew wild by the side of every country road? Now they are all in nurseries at $15 a pot.
Tenar Arha
Aww, you had your own personal attack! cardinal. My parents had years of attack! robins, bc they loved nesting in the Japanese Maple, & kept on coming back each year. The males would go for their reflections in the picture windows.
O. Felix Culpa
@Tenar Arha: Attack! red winged blackbirds are fearsome too. I was taking a little hike around a marsh, minding my own business, and got dive bombed by several. Their attacks worked: I hightailed it out of there quickly. Thank goodness I was wearing a hat!
Immanentize
@MomSense: I do! Then return via Satby.
Dan B
When I was a teenager I discovered a Cottonmouth Water Moccasin in our backyard near the stream. This was near Sab’s rental house in northeast Ohio. I managed to get it into a box, very very slowly, with a shovel. It was relocated to a farm with lots of rodents.
That night I had a nightmare that there was a 30 foot long Cottonmouth in the bedroom. My brother was “startled” when I picked up the mattress and threw it at him. (He was where the monster snake was coiled up.)
JPL
@sab: In the past, I have seen snakes in the garden bed that I was working in this morning. Fortunately, just the garden snake variety. One year the only type of snake that I didn’t see was a copperhead. I even had a orange worm snake, which looks just like it sounds.
MomSense
@Immanentize:
That’s the move!
sab
@JPL: We have grass snakes. The only venomous ones supposedly are copperheads (in 8 counties) and two kinds of rattlers, both endangered species. But Dan B says he saw a cottonmouth in his youth and I believe him.
They are rare if you aren’t deep in the country. In Florida they were all over even in towns, but back then the towns were mostly small.
JPL
@Dan B: ???
satby
@Immanentize: Awesome! All are welcome ?
JPL
Melania is sad … Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) / Twitter
sab
I had forgotten that pitbulls are actually pitbull terriers. Ponyo hugely enlarged the woodchuck hole under the sunroom a couple of days ago, killimg a rhododendron, and I just discovered a new huge hole on the opposite side of the same room. She has basically destroyed my whole shady sweet woodruff bed. I may let her build her own den and sleep in it at night if she is so determined to remodel.
satby
I went outside to dump some recyclable packing peanuts* on the front bed and came in drenched with sweat. Even the dogs don’t want to stay outside today.
* They’re made of cornstarch, so biodegradable and in my sandy soil, every bit of organic matter helps.
satby
@sab: She’s smelling or sensing critters. They have a strong prey drive, especially for rodents.
debbie
@JPL:
As far as I can tell, all the roses there now seem to be white. ??♀️
sab
@JPL: His botanical opinions are the source of his historical reputation? I had not known.
The garden may turn out okay in the long run (I have doubts), but a few months before the next election isn’t the time to tear up the existing garden. A normal person would have given her plans to the new FLOTUS as a hopeful suggestion.
The Trumps all (except Mary) pretty much deserve each other.
sab
@satby: We had a discussion here on BJ a few years back about my woodchuck, and that I needed to do something about it. I had hoped it/she had moved on with more dogs living here. Apparently not.
I am not moving her ( dog) into the yard. I have only had her a month, but I love this dog.
waratah
OH I have always called those moths humming bird moths. I had one in the garden yesterday. Your photos were interesting and I am so glad you saved the deer.
sab
@debbie: Architectural Digest had an article. They aren’t even the right bushes for the climate. They would have had to order in January to get big enough ones for July when the were doing this. But, being Trumps, they didn’t. So they bought a bunch of roses from a Long Island nursery to plop in the ground for the opening, that probably won’t survive long in hellishly hot DC. Disorganized and wasteful, as always in TFGs world.
sab
@sab: Article says Melania likes pastels. I thought the old garden was full of Queen Elizabeth roses, which are pink. So those weren’t good enough? Had to be white?
debbie
@sab:
Thanks, I was only thinking about the flowers. I suppose they ripped out the tulips, too?
I’d bet that pink roses didn’t convey the kind of white supremacy TFG was nurturing.
sab
I saw my first skink ever in the yard next door ( NE Ohio) last year. I am sure they have always been there. Very cool. I have lived here off and on since 1966. Reptiles and amphibians in town are much much rarer than in Florida. I don’t know if I have seen much of a reptile since we moved north into a city. We have the semi-annual salamander night crossing in the metroparks, but that is about it. My stepsons were always splashing in tge creek, but maybe they were too loud.