I’m sitting here editing
pictures for my weekly letter blog and I see there are eight pictures with a Bull
Thistle in them. I made a note to that effect thinking I’d segue into those
pictures with that little fact when a thought pops into my head, I should
name it that. So, I am. And let’s kick this week off with those eight pictures.
A pretty metallic green Sweat Bee on Bull
Thistle.
That may be a spider lurking there.
A male Monarch on Bull Thistle.
“Peg, how do you know it’s a
male?” you ask.
Easy. The male has a black spot
on his wing that the female doesn’t. I’ve heard it called a scent gland but
another website says its scales.
Look at the life the Bull Thistle supports!
There are at least four different insects on here at one time.
I watched this bee dive down into the
thistle head first.
His little butt was sticking
straight up in the air!
Walking on a flower. What must that be like?
Our final image with Bull Thistle is one
with a different kind of bee on it. This is a Plasterer Bee. These half-inch
bees — also known as polyester bees — mate while rolling on the ground or while
flying, joined to each other in midair. The males fly off to finish their lives
sipping nectar while the female takes care of business all by herself. She digs
a foot-and-a-half-deep tunnel as wide as a pencil, dug straight down into the
ground. Eggs are laid in pockets, or brood cells, dug into the sides of the
tunnel. She lines each cell with polyester secreted from her abdomen spreading it
on the wall with her paintbrush-shaped tongue. She’ll pack the cell with nectar
and pollen, lays an egg suspended over the food, and seals the cell with more polyester,
closing it like a zip-lock bag. She’ll plug the tunnel entrance with soil,
packing it down with her abdomen, then goes off to dig a new one.
They don’t know how the bees
make this flexible waterproof plastic that resembles cellophane but they’d like
to. It biodegrades in five years and they’re studying it to try and make
something like it.
I found that to be very interesting.
Mike and I ran an errand to
Wysox and somewhere along the road were these two old cars. I don’t know what
they are and to me it doesn’t matter but it did bring back a memory that makes
me chuckle every time I think of it.
“It was right before Christmas and Poppy was
in the hospital,” my handsome brother David told me. He was the 16-year-old
driver that day for several of us youngins. “We were coming back from church
and I was on the center line. Somebody else came around the corner and they were
on the line too. That was on the hill going up to Craley. When I got over, I
got over too far and hit the guiderail then a pole.”
But the part that makes me chuckle
every time…
“And Paul (my then ten-year-old
brother) yelled, ‘GET OUT! IT’S GONNA BLOW!’” I told Mike and laughed. “Do ya
think we watched too much TV?”
I told you last time that I
saw my very first Monarch caterpillar. I’m interested in helping the Monarchs
so we let as much milkweed grow as we can. I’ve tried to plant more but the
seeds didn’t take. I cleaned my butterfly house and brought the caterpillar in then
I went in search of more. I found these eggs on the underside of a milkweed
leaf. I didn’t know what they were so I left them. I’ll just keep checking
and see what comes out, I thought. Two or three checks later the eggs were
gone. Not gone as in not there gone, gone as in hatched or struck by disease
gone. There was a black spot and a little residue where they’d been. My friend Google
says Monarchs lay a single egg. These are ladybug eggs.
Another day, another caterpillar
search, I see an orange and black spider. Did I have my camera with me?
NO!
I hurried back to the house and luckily,
he was still there when I got back. Only I saw through my zoom that he’s not a
spider at all. He’s a ladybug nymph.
And I saw this guy. He’s a Citrus Flatid Planthopper
This guy? I just don’t know. He’s got a fuzzy butt and I don’t know if he’s an aphid or another kind of planthopper.
I was watching these two. An Orange-spotted
Ladybug above a Spotted Lady Beetle. Both these guys are friends of our gardens
because they eat the dreaded aphids.
Lady Beetle took off and Ladybug
headed for the edge of the leaf.
A milkweed bug pokes his head up,
sees me, and falls over dead.
“You’re not foolin’ me,” I told him and walked on.
I’m not finding many Monarch caterpillars. I
don’t know if it’s just early or if the mama Monarchs don’t like my milkweed
this year. However, having said that, I did find two teeny tiny caterpillars
and brought them home. There are plenty of predators of Monarch caterpillars.
Flies, bees, spiders, assassin bugs, toads, as well as mice who’ll eat the chrysalis.
I only had my big caterpillar for
a day before he climbed to the top of the house. After a day of just sitting
there he finally hung himself upside down in a ‘j’.
I checked on him all day but he didn’t
change at all. The next morning, I found a chrysalis where he’d been hanging.
And look how much my two babies
have grown in just five days!
The
shades for the church windows.
The
paint didn’t cover the Lowe’s logo very well and that’s when we decided we
should’ve used primer. But it’s the outside so we didn’t worry overly much.
Jody had to go back to work so I did the other
side by myself. You may notice the numbers? The windows aren’t all the same so
the shades were custom made for each window.
Mike came out on the patio and
visited with me from time to time but my true entertainment came from watching
this little wren feed her babies.
A cricket.
A spider.
A couple of I-don’t-knows.
Another cricket.
A moth.
Trip
after trip she made, never being gone long between trips. I’m not happy she
booted the Downy Woodpecker from this nesting site but you have to hand it to
her. She’s a good mother.
An Amber-wing Dragonfly.
A little Pearl
Crescent.
Vervain, also known as Verbina, has been
used for a plethora of conditions including headaches, fevers, nervous
exhaustion, depression, and gall bladder problems. Externally, it’s used to
treat minor injuries, eczema, sores, neuralgia, and gum disease. The leaves and
flowering stems are an analgesic, antibacterial, anticoagulant, antispasmodic, and
mildly diuretic.
Queen Ann’s Lace. One of the very first
wildflowers I learned the name of because of my beautiful friend Trish. She
taught it to my kids and from there I was hooked learning the names of
wildflowers.
Queen Anne’s Lace is in the
carrot family and is also called Wild Carrot. You can eat the roots in soups,
stews and in making tea. Leaves can be chopped and tossed into a salad. Flower
clusters can be ‘french-fried’ or fresh flowers can be tossed into a salad. The
aromatic seed is used as a flavoring in stews and soups.
Queen Anne's Lace has been used
for centuries in herbalism. It’s used for digestive disorders, kidney and
bladder diseases, and in the treatment of dropsy. The seeds can be used for the
relief of flatulence and colic.
And here’s a fun fact. Legend has it that
Queen Anne, the wife of King James I, was challenged by her friends to create
lace as beautiful as a flower. While making the lace, she pricked her finger,
and it’s said that the purple-red flower in the center of Queen Anne’s Lace
represents a droplet of her blood.
Having said that, they don’t all
have the dark center flower.
This one is Spotted Knapweed. An
invasive. Cattle and other critters don’t eat it so it causes a real problem
for farmers. It crowds out the native food they will eat.
A Red Admiral Butterfly on my
Bergamot.
And most everybody knows this one. Pokeweed.
The tiny little flower of Herb Robert. I may
have done this one earlier in the year but I just need to take pictures for
you. If you remember, this is the one that if you crush the leaves it’s reminiscent
of burnt rubber.
Butter and Eggs.
This is called Large Milkweed Bug.
Our carpenter bee trap is a bust. We did get
a few bees but none of them are carpenters.
Another beautiful friend of mine
— have you ever noticed that all of my friends and family are beautiful or
handsome? Ya know why? Because they are!
Anyway, much to my delight, Jody
asked if I’d make her a couple of face masks. I said I would.
I started gathering my supplies one
afternoon and set everything up at the table. I picked out material and went
looking for the pattern to cut the masks. I looked and looked and looked! Finally,
I found it under the treadle sewing machine where I’d had my supplies stored. It
must’ve floated off the top on a current of air. I cut out the pieces I’d need
and started joining the pieces together. That part went smoothly. I had two
layers of cotton and two layers of filter. I fitted all four layers together
and sewed along one edge. When I was attaching the ties I realized when I went
to flip it the filters would be on the outside instead of inside where they
belong. I had to make like a frog and rip-it. Thank goodness I’d bought a seam
ripper. So, I got it apart and reassembled the right way and sewed along the
edge for the second time. Then I saw I’d failed to turn one of the cotton
panels the right way and the seam would be on the outside! OY! A second time I ripped
it out. Put it back together and started to sew the seam for third time.
It'd be just my luck the bobbin thread will
run out now, I thought.
Self-fulfilling prophecy or not, that’s just what happened. I pulled the bobbin
and rewound it. Rethreaded the machine and I don’t know what happened but
something did. The stiches were all catawampus and the bobbin thread was
tangled in it somehow and I had four threads coming from the machine to the
material when I pulled it away instead of two. Once again, I cut and ripped and
reassembled and started over. But I got the job done. I spent hours and hours
and only got one mask made.
I’ve been asked for another two
masks so now I’m happy as a lark to have a reason to make something.
And speaking of making things, I
made another two concrete leaves. Look at the size of those burdock leaves,
would ya! My foot, in a size 6 boot, is there for perspective.
“Peg, what are you gonna do with
them?” you ask.
One is semi-promised and I’ll
probably just paint the other and put a solar fountain in it for a birdbath. I
only made these because I had half a bag (or a little more) of concrete I
wanted to use before it sat around and got hard. Plus, I wanted to get them
made before they mowed the sides of the road and mowed down my big burdock
leaves again.
I was out taking pictures of our sunset the
other night. And just to show you how much focal point matters, these two pictures
were taken within seconds of each other. The time stamp indicates they were
both taken at 8:37. If I focus on the sky you can’t see the deer standing
there.
If I focus on the deer all the color is gone from the sky.
A
possum crept along the weed line, not minding at all that I was standing there
taking photos of the sunset. Didn’t I just get done telling you I haven’t seen
one of these guys in a while?
Someone
else who I haven’t seen in a while is Alvin. My little chipmunk is MIA for two
weeks straight now. I’ve given up watching for him. I don’t know if he decided
to move away to some place with less cats or if one of the said cats got him.
If they did, they didn’t present him to me.
Mike and I took a Saturday
morning trip to Tunkhannock to pick up a prescription for him at Walmart. We
get there and find out the prescription had never been called in. While there I
wanted to check for elastic for the face masks (they didn’t have any), pick up
some pet supplies, and a container of parmesan cheese.
“Peg, that’s a weird
combination,” you say.
I know, right! We’re not in need
of much of anything and we always just run into our little town to get milk and
bananas, but Walmart has a better price on canned cat and dog food. And the
cheese? I have a bad habit of snackin on air popped pop corn sprinkled with
parmesan while we’re watching TV at night or even just having it for my supper.
I do like my parmesan with a little pop corn in it.
We get the few things we need
and head for the checkout. Would you believe that on a Saturday morning there
were only two checkouts open and both of them had buggies lined up the whole
way around the block! Who’s got time for that!
“You just wanna leave it and go?”
Mike asked.
“Yeah. But first, let me register my
complaint.” I headed for the Customer Service and met the front-end manager on
the way. I wasn’t happy and I bet she could tell. “You only have two registers
open and the line is a mile long.” I told her. “That’s just ridiculous! I’m
leaving my buggy and leaving.”
Her nose went up in the air a
little as she bustled past me. “That’s fine.”
No satisfaction there. And normally, I don’t
believe there’s any benefit to doing what I’d just done, namely complain,
because they truly don’t care.
Across the road, a brand-spankin-new
Aldi’s is being built. “They’ll lose some business to that,” Mike said and I know
he’s right. We always get the majority of our supplies at Aldi’s.
Mike drove through McCarthy’s and I took a
bunch of pictures of the tractors and old wheels and plows and other implements
dotting the hillside but this is the only one I’ll bore you with.
Ginger. My poor baby girl. Can
you see the tears just running out of her eyes? It breaks my heart.
Her tumor is much larger and she
has another growing on the other side of her neck that’s getting bigger and
bigger too. She’s still eating pretty good but her pain meds make her sleep
most of the time. When I hold her, she’s limp and she’ll often push her neck
into my hands. It’s as if she’s trying to get me to notice there’s something
wrong there. “I know, baby,” I coo. “I know.” And I kiss her.
“Peg, you’re being selfish to
keep her as long as you can. You should do what’s best for Ginger,” Mike
admonished.
I called the vet and we moved Ginger’s
go-to-sleep-forever day up to tomorrow, Monday.
“What are you gonna do with her?”
Mike asked. “Have her cremated?”
“No. I guess not. Let’s just bury
her.”
We picked out the spot. There’s
a young pine tree close by that will grow up to shade her.
“We’ll have to get stones for
the top so the critters don’t dig her up,” I told Mike.
“Maybe we could find a flat one
so I can mow around it,” Mike suggested.
“Jon and Steph said we could have
stones from their quarry. You wanna go up there and see if we can find one?”
On the way up the hill I took pictures of
the deer stands; one old, one not-so-old.
We found matching stones for Itsy and Ginger.
Itsy isn’t sick but she’s 15 and we’re gonna lose her sooner or later. We thought
we might just as well get her one while we’re there.
A grasshopper sat and let me
take his picture. I believe he’s a very common kind of grasshopper called Pallid-winged
Grasshopper.
We loaded the stones on the golf
cart and headed for home.
“Are you gonna paint their names and dates
on them?” Mike asked.
Honestly, I haven’t thought that
far ahead. “Probably.”
At home, Mike measured around
the stones so he could set them down, ground level. I flopped the stone over and
he took the sod off. That’s all we got done before the heat called an end to
the job. We’ll go out in the coolness of Monday morning and finish preparing it
for Ginger. I’m thinking I’ll buy a rose bush to plant there.
And with that we’ll call…
“Wait! Peggy! Just wait! You can’t
end your letter blog on such a sad note!” you say.
All right then, how about Mr. Cuteness? I’ve
been plucking him from my desk and putting him on the floor when he gets in my
way. So now he creeps up and scoots behind my monitor before I can get him. Do
you see him peeking out from underneath? I’ve lightened the shadows so you could
see him.
“Peg, is your desk getting
junked up again?” you ask.
Is that a trick question?
I’m not happy with the name Sparky and I
haven’t been. Although he is a spark of joy during this sad time, it doesn’t suit
his big personality. Out of nowhere the other day I called him Tiger — and I
like it! He’ll grow up to be big and strong like a tiger and he already rules
the roost.
Tiger gets up to the window above
the door, a place Mike made for the cats to go. I was waiting in the doorway
for the girls to come toddling back in when Mike calls, “Watch out above you.”
I look up and this is what I
see.
And now, for real, we will call this
one done.
