A Sweet Gig

Were you passed over for the position of NPR librarian? Take heart, there are still some excellent gigs out there, like this one. Makes me wish I had some archival experience...

Arachnophiles Only Read On

Here now is the late (very late indeed) late-summer roundup of Spiders In The Backyard, 2009 Edition. We will be starting with egg cases, but later there will be big hairy spiders, so you are aware. This summer we had a number of Cribellate Orb Weavers (Uloborus) on this one low evergreen shrub. They build a horizontal orb web, and sit around all stretched out with their legs before and behind them in a line. Odd. Here's a shot of what the egg cases look like. Naturally, I missed the emergence. Very hard to catch these things.

Here's the Uloborus stretched out, as is its wont, in the center of the web.

Here she is, stretched out (again) to the southwest with one egg case behind her:

So that was something new and different. There were plenty of familiar octopeds, too.

Here, it was a cool day, and this guy was sleeping under a buddleia leaf just off his web.

Look at the design on this spider's abdomen. It reminds me of a woven tapestry or rug:

Click to enlarge and check out the child-like flower image on this spider's abdomen, a brown flower with two leaves on a cream background:

( I don't know what's for lunch, but it looks like there's plenty of it... )

And last but not you-know-what, here's a belly-view of a late-summer badass, the kind that build giant webs across frequently-traveled paths...

Hiding In Plain Sight

Would you look at that? Do you see what's in the seed pod, beside seeds?

I usually cut down the daylilies' flower stalks before they develop seed pods, but the ones I miss have, by mid-October, been dessicated into lacy cups of glossy jet beads, like the ones here. I thought it made a nice image, with the shadow and the contrasting textures, and photographed them two weeks ago. Only now do I see.....the snail. (Make that snails. That's one in the left pod, too!) These guys get everywhere. It's not unusual to see the little critters poised at the end of an eight-foot-long willow branch that must have taken them hours to traverse the length of, from the ground to the very tip where now is being chewed up the tenderest, juiciest new growth. But really, you climbed all the way up the stalk, into the seed pod... Did it eat and fall asleep? Was it attacked by a predator and left there, an empty shell? Went looking for that same stalk and seedhead today, but it's gone; it's been two weeks of rain, wind, leaves falling, sun, rain, etc. So. Something impossible to look out for next year...

Hey, A Job's A Job

and this one pays ten thousand for five weeks' work. Is it worth it?

Moth Heart (No, Not The Playwright With A Lisp...)

Still slacking off here.

Coming soon: gruesome life-and-death struggles in the suburban backyard paradise.

Until then, this one's for Clytie!

Easier On The Eyes

I apologize for flaking out and leaving that giant spider up for weeks as the only thing to greet you, my welcome visitors. While I will continue to flake out for a few days, until I drum up something to say or show, let me post a prettier placeholder here. Normally, I bore you all with Latin names, but honestly, I just plain forget what this is. It's not a daisy. I bought it in the spring at the nursery; I think it's a perennial, the flower petals are rosy, purple, blue or white, all on the same plant, and the centers are all this great navy-blue.

Oh, wait! I found out. It's an osteospermum, probably the cultivar "Passion Mix." Should be perennial. Anyway, it's very pretty all season long here in zone 7; I recommend it.

It's Giant Spider Season

Late summer brings out webworld's big boys! Thanks to Ken for the scale-providing half dollar.

Key West Final (People and Other Critters Edition)

The streets were lively at night; this man had music playing as he cruised the main drag:

Oh, Peter, you should have gotten a teaching license to fall back on...

Michael and Alex with a stormtrooper:

We also saw some pretty strange sights during the day.

This is a conch eye:

and this was the spider that changed my mind about walking down that particular "nature trail;"

it's a spiny-backed orbweaver:

Time For Another Insect Closeup

Look what I found on the tomato plants this evening! A tomato hornworm, parasitized by the cocoons of brachinid wasps. I've read about these, but this is the first time I've seen one in real life. He's a goner now; a luckier hornworm would have eaten all the tomatoes and tomato leaves he could hold, then metamorphosed into a sphinx moth. You can see from these photos that the tops of the little white cocoons are mostly all open, so I guess the wasps have emerged already, and all the excitement's over.

Olivia Does Key West, Part 1

Ken let Olivia drive the last leg of the trip into Key West. (I thought it set a bad example for the boys, what with her being unlicensed and all, but she brings out the scalawag in everybody!) He had to work the gas and brake, of course.

It turned out Olivia was well-know in the southernmost city; here, Ken and Alex give her a boost so she can pose next to her name on the street sign:

Well. I can't begin to tell you how excited Olivia was when we arrived in Key West to find out her name was all over town. She was pleased as punch to have so many photo ops, but I confess I didn't do a very good job of lighting her in the street scenes. Mea culpa, sweetheart. We'll shoot more in the daytime next trip.