Mikey

          Fall is in the air. The mornings are cooler and color is starting to kiss the edges of the trees.

          Asters are blooming. The Showy Aster...

 ... the White Wood Aster.

          I found a couple of little wildflowers that I haven't been able to identify.

          These have a tiny little flower on them...

           ...that look like this.

        

  

          I don't know what this one is either but it's another tiny little flower.

          I think this one is Meadow Rue.

          The thistle is turning into finch food. Often you'll see the Yellow Finches sitting on and feeding on these.

          Turtlehead is a late summer bloomer. Other names for this wildflower are Shellflower, Snakehead, Snakemouth, Cod Head, Fish Mouth, Balmony, and Bitter Herb.

          In folk medicine, it was good for weak stomachs and indigestion, constipation, sluggish liver. It stimulates appetite and expels worms. Externally, it was used for sores, painful ulcers, herpes, inflamed breasts, and eczema. In an ointment, it relieves itching and irritation of piles.

          Virgin's Bower is blooming.

          It's also called Devil's Darning Needles and Old Man's Beard. This is a cousin to the clematis that grows in your garden.

          All parts of this plant are poisonous but that didn't stop our Native Americans from using it. An extract was used to induce strange dreams. An infusion of the root was taken for backache, stomach trouble, and nerves.

          A tree fell across the creek but hasn't given up on living.

          Another in the realm of I Don't Know. 

          A sunflower with an Iridescent Bee.

          Oh, speaking of bees, that reminds me. My handsome brother David called me. "We had bees in the walls of one of the apartments we used to take care of," he told me. "Eventually the honey came seeping through the drywall. They're not going to go away. You'll have to kill them or get someone to come and remove them for you."

          As you can well imagine, I was not happy to hear this. And I wasn't happy when Mike mixed up bug spray and sprayed around the outside of the house and then the bees that had taken up residence in the wall outside the kitchen.

          Sigh!

          I like to check for wildlife at my aphid-infested Milkweeds. I'm glad I didn't cut 'em down and burn 'em because they did produce pods, which will make more Milkweed plants, and because it's teeming with critters. Look at these, would ya. 

        There were a lot of these Blue Mud Wasps there this day. Normally a solitary wasp, the abundance of honeydew has drawn them here to feed. This is not an aggressive wasp and normally won't bite or sting you. The adults feed on nectar but the babies need protein. Like many predatory wasps, this wasp will entomb one or more spiders to feed its baby when it hatches. And this wasp prefers Black Widow Spiders, hence it's other name The Black Widow Killer.

          A unique quality of this wasp is that it will steal a nest from other mud dauber wasps, remove the larva and unwanted spiders from the cell, and replace it with its own egg and new spiders.

         

          This hornet was also feeding there.

          Not there for the honeydew but for the aphids themselves is the Ladybug larva. I have several feeding and developing on the Milkweed leaves.

          After the larval stage comes the pupa and he looks like this.

          I found another baby Monarch! I didn't want to leave him there on the honeydew covered leaves. I thought if the other Monarch caterpillars died that he might die too so I took him to live in my butterfly house. Then I went to pick fresh Milkweed leaves for him.

          I found this guy.

          And two spiders in a fight. My unintentional distraction allowed the little green flower spider to get away from this much bigger crab spider.

          And I found two more Monarch caterpillars. They also came to live in the butterfly house.

          Pale Touch-me-nots. I have a lot more of the Spotted or Orange Touch-me-nots but I can find a few of the all-yellow ones around.

          Bouncing Bet or Soapwort. As the name implies, this plant produces a mild soap when mixed with water.

          Bur Cucumber climbing across the Bouncing Bet. I know it's Bur Cucumber because the flowers and leaves look very different than the Japanese Knotweed.

          From a distance, I can't tell which it is.

          My own backyard was where I found this male Black Swallowtail.

          At first, he wouldn't sit for me but I guess the lure of food was bigger than his fear of me because he eventually settled down and gave me several really beautiful shots.

          Mike and I went on a couple of golf cart rides this week. That's where I found some of the tiny wildflowers that I haven't identified, but here's a couple of more pictures from that ride-about.

          Looking up an old stone fencerow.

           The other ride we took was up on Vernon's hill. Look at this rock. It got washboarded.

          "What caused that?" I asked.

          "I guess the rain," Mike answered.

          All across the trail were spider webs and we drove through them. After a bit Mike says, "What's that?" and points to the dash of the golf cart.

          I thought it was a piece of plant debris and started to say so when I leaned closer and took a better look. "It's a Micrathena!" (Although I'm not sure I pronounce it correctly). I've seen this kind of spider before, when we lived in Missouri, but this is my first Pennsylvania Micrathena.

          Now that my eye was trained for them, I saw we had a couple more hanging onto the cart. "I'm taking them home! Then I'll have Micrathenas in my yard!" I told Mike.

          "Na-uh," Mike said. "I'm spraying for bugs."

          He is, but not the weeds at the edge of the yard and that's where I planned to release them. 

          This picture has one upside down and one right side up. They have a horn on their abdomens and they kept falling over as they walked around. I'm guessing they manage better on their web.

          All in all, I ended up bringing five Spined Micrathenas home with me. The female is the only one that builds a web. The male can produce silk but uses it mostly during the mating rituals — which is usually fatal for him.

          While releasing my spiders I found this guy. This is a young Tarnished Plant Bug. These guys present serious problems for our farmers because they'll feed on a lot of different kinds of crops. They have an interesting way of feeding. The TPB uses a method called 'lacerate and flush' where they inject enzymes into the plant that break it down then they suck up the juice.

          I was out in the evening with the girls and this guy was attracted to the light. I was attracted to his unusual coloring. And because of that, he wasn't hard to identify. This is a Leaffolder or Leafroller Moth. They're black with bold white markings. The caterpillars of this moth construct shelters by rolling or folding the leaf over. There are nine species of Leaffolders in North America and even the experts have a hard time telling them apart.

          Early the next morning I took Ginger to the pond and found this girl in the center of her web. This is a Black and Yellow Garden Spider. Males build smaller webs near the females and sometimes right in her web then he courts her by plucking the strands of her web. After mating the male usually dies and is eaten by the female.

          I think, in the critter world, it's better to be a girl.

          These spiders eat flies, grasshoppers, crickets, wasps, moths, and bees. Females can catch prey twice as big as they are.

          For the second time in four years, I got my hair cut. After having it cut so short last time when I donated it to Locks of Love, I thought it could use a shaping up. I called the salon to make an appointment for Mike and me. "Mike would like Michelle to cut his hair and I don't care who I get so long as we can get our hair cut at the same time," I told Jane, the lady who answered the phone.

          Mike got Michelle, I got Dorothy and talk about small world! As she talked, I found out this gal, Dort, for short, is the sister of a lady that goes to my church, normally sits in the row in front of me even. Dort is Penny's sister.

          I don't mean to be indelicate here, but let me just say that without much encouragement from me, Dort can talk — and talk she did. Don't get me wrong, I didn't mind. I rather enjoyed listening to her tell me her story.

          As I listened to Dort she was telling me about her brother Mikey. Mikey lives with her after the death of both her parents. "He's not a kid anymore," Dort said, "he's 44. But he loves to get the mail. He can't read but he can recognize his name and he just loves when he gets something in the mail," she said as she snipped away at the ends of my hair.

          You could send him something, came into my head. But what? I asked myself. A card maybe? Then I turned my attention back to what Dort was saying.

          "He sits on the patio in the mornings and has his cereal and he's got critters that'll come right up to him! He's just so patient."

          I don't remember now if she said it was a squirrel or chipmunk or it could have been a bird for all I remember.

          "And he just loves pictures," she went on to say.

          An image of my last LAM board at church flashed into my mind's eye. I only had a couple of Life At Moxie pictures to post, so I posted critter and flower pics along with descriptors.

          You take pictures, came an accusing voice and this time I couldn't keep quiet.

          "Miss Dorothy, guess what I do?" I asked.

          There was an edge of trepidation to her voice as she answered. "I don't know, what?"

          "I take pictures. I could send your brother something once in a while." I didn't want to commit to a full-time job here.

          "You could!? Oh, he would just love that!" She was flabbergasted that I would even make the offer.

          "Make sure I get his address before I leave."

          It was a little while after that that Mike was done and he came to watch and chat as Dort finished my hair. We made our way to the front so I could pay the bill and without any further prompting from me, she wrote down and gave me Mikey's address. Now I know how important it is to her.

          You can call this a coincidence if you want to but I don't believe in coincidences. I believe in God.

          Mike called a mobile Wrench It guy to come and see why the truck wouldn't start. Eric diagnosed the problem as a loose battery terminal. Mike thought it was the battery and had cleaned the terminals and tightened them as much as he could but it didn't help. I guess they're shot and the truck needs new terminals. Eric will get them and put them on and do another small job for us. He's not going to get rich off us but he will get a little work and he assured us that's all he wants.

          "I like doing what I do," he said. "I can set my own hours, my shop is paid for (his trailer) and if I need to take time off to be with my kids, I can do that."

          Mike gave Eric the nickel tour of our place and when he came to my desk, where I was sitting, he said, "And this is Peg's corner where she does what she does."

          "I blog," I told Eric and he seemed interested. I pulled my notebook from the shelf and flipped through the pages as I said, "This is what I do. I write a weekly blog about critters, and where we go, what we do, stuff like that."

          With most people, that's sorta the end of that as they nod and the conversation goes on. I don't mind though. It's not everyone's cup o' sunshine. But Eric made a comment that surprised me and almost seemed profound because I never met the man before that day. He said, "I bet you don't even know how much some people look forward to that every week."

          I do know. That's what has kept me at it all these years.

         

          Let's end with a sunset photo and call this one done.

          Done!