Insects, Plants, Fungi and Animals
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The Big Freeze
We’d experienced several frosts and a hard freeze even before Winter formally began, with Nov. 30th changing us out from extended Summer conditions to plant-killing anomalous cold blasts. But the last few nights have been a straight dive into the low to mid 20’s with dangerous wind speeds and potential for freezing rain. I wasted no time and went on an expensive shopping spree at Lowes to get a huge roll of 6mil plastic, spring clamps, two more 1500 watt electric milk house heaters, a second Cat 6500 watt generator and a remote temperature sensor. My mom was right out there with me to put up the thick and heavy…
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A Sweet Week
Ma’s new chicken shoes arrived, and the birds each had to strut over to inspect. Style, comfort and cleanliness make tending the coop more enjoyable for everyone. I added to the fun by feeding them a couple of “treat sticks” that had trespassed on our plants. Across the yard at the banana bed, just below the mulch line and attached to sprawling vines was a jumbo yield of sweet potatoes we weren’t expecting the first year. These grow better in enriched sandy soil but put all their growth into leaves and vines, not tubers, when growing in recently built-up composting mulch. Such had been the case twice in Estero, but…
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Lots of spiders and a Few Other “Bugs”
You know, I just LOVE these things. Yuck, you don’t like? Awww, c’mon, it’s Halloween anyway! How about a hand-sized golden silk spider to brighten (frighten) your evening? We’ve got tropical tent spiders, fuzzy spiders, cute lil’ spiders, dotted spiders, huge spiders, green lynx spiders, extra large centipedes, flying ant lions and even a big undertaker beetle (red and black Nicrophorus burying beetle) to make the holiday real. But I did squash the invasive tropical brown widows and their egg clusters hiding in a couple of flower pots before I even thought of whipping out my camera, because the screams would have been deafening if Mom had found them first.…
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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…
Cactus Island Nursery