Insects, Plants, Fungi and Animals
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Bugs…..again.
But they’re wickedly cool, and everywhere. I archive what I come across as I go each day, stumbling upon interesting insects with a regularity that is unreal. Some encounters, like the predacious wasps dragging their prize kills across the patio, really should come with comical incidental music. Many of the solitary wasps we’re seeing paralyze their prey, drag it to a nearby burrow, lay an egg on it which produces a hungry grub that will eat the host alive as it matures. This is pest control that is downright Medieval. The three rust-colored, horned beetles in the lower photos also drew the short straw, having the misfortune of emerging above…
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Wild Mushrooms Abound
Every time we have a rainy stretch the networks of mycelia in the ground put forth an abundance of fungal fruit – mushrooms, boletes, puffballs, earthballs, toadstools, slime, stinkhorns and other forms of which we have yet to become acquainted. Though most are not edible for us, it makes a plentiful ongoing buffet for small animals. I’m only seeing a couple of squirrels on the land and with some kind of mushroom in their mouths when I do. Probably building up a stash when they’re not scarfing them down. When we get around to cultivating edible mushrooms it will be done with several kit options and protected in a mesh…
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Gardens and Sanctuaries
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Sebucan Seed Harvest
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From Bed to Bed and In Between
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A Gem Within a Gem
The coolest jumping spider I have ever seen awaited me last week as I added compost material to the rapidly growing blue facheiro next to the driveway. The Apache jumping spider, Phidippus Apacheanus, fit in perfectly like a color-complimentary orange jewel on a turquoise medallion. It’s metallic green chelicerae (beefy fang appendages near mouth) put it over the top for my viewing pleasure. This tiny stalking cougar with eight legs and lots of eyes is harmless to people but ambushes the bugs that land on our cacti to feed, so it is most welcome here. They occur in most U.S. states and Cuba. Pleasant surprises are always welcome as I…
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“Hey, that’s not a yardlong bean!”
These were so cute as not to generate the usual scream from Ma at several of the regular stops on the farm. I melted at the sight of this sweet baby Southern coachwhip snake catching sun and hopefully a passing breakfast while resting on a squash leaf. Known to eat rattlesnakes, as does the Indigo snakes that we have, you definitely want these around in this part of the country. The largest I have seen was in excess of eight feet in length on the house lawn recently. Perhaps they’ll make a meal of any squirrel that makes a move on the corn now coming up in the Duck Garden’s…
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Pilosocereus Royenii has Set Fruit and Flowered Again
Well, it was a success! Self-pollination with the expert advice of a botanist in AZ and those 3AM wanderings into the backyard resulted in fertilization and the first fruit on this cactus. The Royen’s tree cactus is busting out in a conveyor belt of buds, flowers and now fruit that should contain genetic clone seeds if I can keep the critters from getting it first. The second flower opened last night and was even prettier than the first. In the past two weeks the growing tip of the stem has become an ever-changing activity center full of intriguing protuberances with inspiring shapes, colors and functions. I’m not sure how many…
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Scene around the Farm
This week’s work gave me plenty of image material for the blog, as is so often the case while tending the different stations on the land. I’ve never seen so many species of swallowtail, and this pipevine swallowtail on a zinnia was striking. Sometimes what I see isn’t so good, namely the grasshopper eyeing the bean leaves, but then our handy egg hens never turn down a snack – there’s a cordless power tool for everything. The orb weaver spider I found one morning on the hard nursery shade cloth created it’s own patterned weave at the center of its web. These always get a break for the insect control…
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Rhinoceros Beetle
Cactus Island Nursery