What a difference a day makes! On my way out the door to work this morning I detoured to check the progress of the monarch caterpillar and discovered it still dangling upside down, deciding how to get rid of its skin. When I returned late this afternoon, I found the caterpillar had redressed itself in this beautiful chrysalis!
“The chrysalis of the Monarch… looks like a jade earring. Near the light green top, an elegant band of gold is underscored with a thin black line. More highlights of gold decorate the bottom half. No one fully understands the purpose of this glitter. Perhaps the pupae gleam to warn off predators. Perhaps their reflectance camouflages them in the light and dark of a sunlight branch. They may be trying to look like metallic beetles. They may be imitating raindrops.” – Sharman Apt Russell, An Obsession with Butterflies
a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i…. J !!!
Look what I found this evening in the milkweed patch! I’ve been searching all summer long for monarch eggs or caterpillars, suffering monarch envy at the project Bev at Burning Silo has going on, and had about given up on finding any this season. I’m so tickled to have spotted this!
I’m guessing the caterpillar will make its chrysalis on the underside of this snakeroot leaf. I’ve never come upon a monarch caterpillar in this state before; they always go missing just when they get big and fat, but according to what I’ve read on the Monarch Watch website the caterpillars wander until they find a suitable site and then form this “prepupal J” before shedding their skin for the final time. I’m hoping that in the morning I’ll find a beautiful chrysalis in just this spot.
I’ve been amusing myself the past few weeks by watching the development of the many groups of milkw
eed bugs that are feeding on the Swamp Milkweed seed pods. Yesterday I found that many in this group were in the process of shedding their skins to adulthood. Other seed pods have bugs in various stages of development and in the last few days I’ve found many of the very tiny ones that I had at first thought were aphids. I thought the pic at right was interesting because you can see one bug (almost in the center of the pic) who still looks somewhat transparent. I don’t know whether the black coloration is in the wings or on the body itself, but this one’s wings are clear and it’s very light orange compared to the others. Upwards to the left of that bug and below to the right are the shed skins of others. Not the greatest of pics… I apologize. Click on the photo to enlarge and you may actually be able to see what I’m talking about!
8/23/06 Mid-week bunny fix
Maybe, just maybe, I’ve finally found a bunny that will pose for pictures, rather than running underneath the nearest piece of furniture when the camera comes out. Peeper likes to sit beside the window on my hope chest and that’s where I took this pic today. The afternoon light streaming in the window does wonderful things for her brown fur, don’t you think?
It’s almost two months now since Peeper *showed up on the doorstep* with the help of a kindly neighbor. Just about a month since she was spayed. The change in her personality has been quite dramatic in that short period of time. She no longer peeps at me like a little lost bird; she doesn’t often have reason to be frightened now. For a while she would peep and growl at the vacuum cleaner, but now she just boxes at it if I get too close while cleaning her cage. She doesn’t peep when I touch her, but is frightened when she thinks I might pick her up.
She’s learning to like being petted and loves to explore in the evenings when she’s out. I’ve had to set up an x-pen to confine her to the office and hallway, otherwise I’m sure she’d take run of the house. With Dora, who used to live here in the office, I never had to set up a gate at the doorway because she would not cross the threshold; Peeper has no such fear and a moment of inattention on my part found her down the hallway in our bedroom, under the bed.
She’s a very unassuming rabbit; a lot like Freckles. Very quiet though; she hasn’t learned to throw things the way Freckles likes to do. She’s happy sleeping the days away, eating greens, hay and the occasional baby carrot I hide for her somewhere, and exploring and contemplating by the window in the evenings. One at a time I’m introducing her to the treats that most house bunnies love. Most she likes and will grab from my fingers and run away with. Last week I gave her a small piece of what had to have been her *first ever* banana. Most bunnies love bananas. Not Peeper… not yet. She curled up her lips and backed away suspiciously… then she ran and thumped at me. Silly rabbit, not liking nanners!
Perfuming the night 2
This is not the greatest of pics, but our Angel Trumpets aren’t much to look at this year. The trees are spindly and the leaves are a sickly shade of unhappy green. Now, at the end of the season, we have our first three flowers. I was hoping to show you how the flower shape of the Angel Trumpet is the same as the moonflower, only these trumpets hang downward and unfurl in the same pretty way. The flowers last a bit longer than the moonflowers, as well.
There is a bit of confusion among the common names of these plants with trumpet-shaped flowers. I’m as confused as anyone. We call White Daturas *moonflowers*, but the link I provided in my first post about them was to another plant commonly called a moonflower which is in the morning glory family. Pam, who lives in the desert, mentioned in her comment to yesterday’s post that Daturas grow there, but not moonflowers. So, I’m guessing she’s refering to Purple Daturas, of Jimson Weed fame. I guess it’s the same plant, but with a different colored flower. Both have the spiney, thorn-covered seed balls that give them their other common name, Thorn Apples. The purples do not make a nice garden plant, in my opinion, and are very weedy looking.
Angel Trumpets are Brugmansias, I think. I’m afraid to be too certain. Is everyone confused yet? The rule my DH and I follow is that if the flowers point up to the moon we call it a *moonflower* and if they point downward it’s an Angel Trumpet. Works for us!
In good years, we have a few plants in large tubs that look like this one, courtesy of Birds and Blooms. Isn’t it fantastic! My father-in-law grew the most spectacular Angel Trumpets and his yard was filled with them. Quite a sight! Somewhere in the attic I have a copy of an article the local paper did about him and his flowers. The local ABC news affiliate picked up the story and interviewed him – that was something to see my in-laws on television. Wish I could have put my hands on the article to post here tonight.
Perfuming the night
Poised on its pistilGetting the nod from dusk’s dawn
Night’s heady perfume
haiku by C. Gardner
Watching the swallows and swifts this evening while I watered the garden, and waiting for the appearance of the bats overhead as my signal to go inside, I reached down to turn off the well pump and got a whiff of this moonflower – wow! Most of them are planted along the fence surrounding the pond, intermixed with day-blooming morning glories, but a few are in pots up beside the house, where on humid nights their lemony scent drifts in the windows. The smell can be overpowering enough to give me a headache, especially if we also have Angel’s Trumpets blooming. I loved the shape of this flower as it unfurled.
Some cultural info about moonflowers is available in this blog post from 6/8/06.
A cross-stitcher’s shame
I used to do a lot of cross-stitching. Really, I should say I’ve started a lot of cross-stitch projects, but I’ve only finished 4 or 5 of the many I’ve started over the years. I like to do samplers – pictured above is one of two samplers that I’ve finished; this one needs to be laundered, pressed, and framed. It’s the first in a set of three, the second, just barely begun, is beside it. I also did a baby blanket for my niece that was later passed on to my other niece, I think. It’s probably stashed in the bottom of a closet somewhere since she’s not a baby anymore. It’s hard to appreciate the work involved until you’ve done it yourself.
Cross-stitch is really easy, but requires good eyesight and persistence. The persistence part has always been a problem, lately my eyesight is the excuse. There used to be a great little shop downtown that sold beautiful pieces of linen for stiching and thousands and thousands of charts. The shop closed up and moved far away, so I haven’t bought anything new for a while, thank goodness. There are more than enough half-
finished projects in a bottom drawer of the end table to keep me busy for the rest of my years. Each piece takes so many hundreds of hours that I just get tired of looking at it and must put it away for months on end. Usually, when the urge to stitch bites me again, I find myself picking up a different project than the one I last worked on. Some of them I never pick up again, having decided that I don’t like the colors or the design anymore.
I can blame my current urge to stitch on silverlight and madcapmum who often post pics of the beautiful things they make with a needle and their hands. I wish I were determined enough to actually finish something – maybe if I devoted just one hour a week to it I could see some progress. For today, I think I’ll spend a little time with that sampler above – those pea pods need some color.
“The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Riders of the wind
Swamp milkweed pods and seeds
“The far travelers of the plant world, the original sailors of the air in the plant kingdom, prepare their hostages to the wind. The gossamer parachutes, each with its germ of life, approach their time of departure. The winds of Autumn will bring down the leaves, but they will also carry a fragile freight of next year’s green and urgent life. Who can count the fluff-borne seeds that will fill the late September air?” –Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons
Where’s a wildflower expert when I need one?
Group nature walks have spoiled me, I think. While I don’t need to pay too much attention on bird walks, it’s comforting to have a naturalist closeby to ID a bird I don’t know. I don’t often bird with a group anymore, but when I do I use the naturalist to help me learn a birdsong or a tree or the name of a wildflower. At last night’s bird walk I learned Partridge Pea and Bouncing Bet.
I have a few wildflower books, but haven’t learned how to *key* a plant properly. It’s laziness, I admit, but I tend to rely on my better knowledge of cultivated plants, rather than a wildflower guide, to help me ID a plant. Last night the Bouncing Bet reminded me of Phlox, so had I not been able to simply ask the naturalist for an ID, I’d have come home and searched through my Newcomb’s Guide for a flower that reminded me of Phlox. The Partridge Pea looked very similar to Crown Vetch, so that one I might’ve figured out easily enough on my own.
This 
evening I took Buddy for a walk to the farm pond and stream that are down the street. The environmental commision here in town has recently made this wetland area their *project* for improvements; they’ve removed a lot of the vegetation from the borders of this pond. This concerns me because I think it will only make the area even more attractive to Canada Geese (they frequent the adjoining athletic fields) – I often find herons and sandpipers here and a pair or two of mallards, but hardly ever any geese. They’ve also made and mulched a narrow trail through the wet woods which makes walking there more pleasant.
I found the plant pictured above right growing all along the stream bank. The flowers look very familiar to me, but I’m not certain what it is and my wildflower guides have only further confused me. I’m nearly certain it’s a Eupatorium – maybe Eupatorium coelestinum, most commonly known as Mistflower, but the flowers (which haven’t opened completely yet) don’t look right for this ID. Also, it seems to be growing as a vine, or maybe that is some other plant vining up through it. To further confuse the issue, this flower could be a *cultivated* one, rather than wild, because a plant nursery shares the property. I would really appreciate if any readers can help me guess what this pretty plant might be.
One group of plants that I almost always recognize is Viburnums; they are a favorit
e. These beautiful berries belong to a Cranberrybush Viburnum that grows along the woods edge beside the nursery. Whenever I walk by, I have a look to check on the progress of flower or fruit and remind myself that I really would like a few of these at home. I just need to find a place for them.
Sunset birding with the girls
The girls I work with are good sports, for the most part. On a lark I invited them to a bird walk sponsored by Monmouth County Audubon out at Sandy Hook tonight. We’d been looking forward to it for a month or so. We arrived almost an hour late, but just in time for the *death march* out the Fisherman’s Trail to the very tip of the Hook. It’s not a terribly long walk, but the trail through the dunes is all soft sand, lined on both sides with poison ivy, beach plums (almost ripe!) and bayberry. The wind direction was good so that at least there weren’t any bugs biting to make the hike any more miserable.
We didn’t see a great number of birds, but enjoyed instead a beautiful sunset over the water. We did have nice looks at osprey, some southbound plovers, and many far away peeps. I was most impressed with th
e swarms of swallows going to roost as we made our way back through the dunes to the parking lot. This wasn’t the greatest trip for getting beginners interested in birds; I knew that would be the case, but I think Sandy Hook on a summer evening is one of the prettiest places to be and any birds are just a bonus. We ended our excursion with dinner at the Chinese place around the corner from my house and I think there might have been a stop for ice cream after they dropped me home.
The photo at right above shows the Three Birding Stooges – Debbie, Linda, and Debbie’s daughter (who must be one of the cutest kids ever! – she passed up going to the fireworks tonight to come along on our walk).
8/16/06 Mid-week bunny fix
Yesterday was Missy’s 5th Gotcha Day – I woke her from a sound sleep early this evening to take a photo of her. She’s not awake enough yet in this pic to be mad at me, but before long she was giving me the evil eye, or as I call it, her *Attila-the-Bun* face. She is a very tolerant rabbit, but isn’t afraid to nip me when she thinks I need it.
Two days (and a trip to the vet) after bringing her home from a pet store I brought home Freckles to be her friend and living companion. For most of the first six months with them I questioned my sanity on a daily basis. I was miserable with these two messy, timid (yet very headstrong) rabbits who wanted nothing to do with me. Little by little I learned how to *manage* normal bunny mischief. I gained their trust and fell in love. Five years and six more rabbits later I couldn’t imagine a day without them in my life and in my home.
In her five years here, Missy has lived with (and lost) three rabbit friends. She has health problems and needs heart meds twice a day and is forever on and off antibiotics for a respiratory infection that never really goes away. She sleeps and *loafs* a lot these days and breathes heavy at the least bit of excitement. But, she loves to play and does the most fabulous wobbly binkies of any rabbit here. And she loves her salads and her hay. I love you Missy Bun – Happy Gotcha Day!