August 10, 2025

A third of the way through August.  Hot days, nice enough nights - if you can stay up till the temperatures adjust.  I think the birds have brought me a few plants I never saw in previous years!  I'll try to talk about those as we come to them!  During the winter I raised a few of my favorite plants from seed.  I discovered a side of myself that I hadn't known about before - the side that actually enjoyed tending young and vulnerable plants.  I think that the first ones I tried (some thistles that I had liked from LAST summer (2024), but which got  weeded out in the front yard by little fingers that were just trying to help) were a decent learning experience.  If you would like to try your hand out at raising some tiny seedlings I will try to produce a few seeds for you to start with.  You might be surprised at how very many of the little guys will make it.  Your little peat pots will fill up and you will need to get out something bigger to raise them in.  Here is one of my favorites - a Citrus Flatid Planthopper - the first is a fave because it seems to have been produced by using a piece of fine fabric to make it on.  The second is the same creature just taken on a different piece of stem. 

The next plant is one that I had never seen before - it turns out to be American Pokeweed.  I naively asked a colleague on iNat how it might have come to be here and the obvious answer "A bird must have dropped some seed" came back very quickly!  The info package on iNat says the berries (they will be purple when ripe) are toxic to some degree to humans, but birds love the berries!Phytolacca americana) is a native plant that grows in diverse habitats, including sidewalk tree pits, gardens, and natural woodlands. Pokeweed berries are mildly toxic to humans, but they are an important food source for songbirds and small mammals. Help document the distribution of this plant species and the animals that depend on it.

A couple of weeks ago we saw for the first time a colony of Oleander Aphids on a new plant - the Swamp Milkweed, which I didn't remember ever seeing before.  In this picture, the Oleander Aphids are the tiny bright yellow creatures, and they seemed to be dancing about on the Milkweed.  I do NOT know what the little white creatures in pictures 2 and 3 are.  By the way, the Swamp Milkweed is what I had planted from seed - I believe I purchased it from Burpee - or one of the other seed purveyors - labeled as Milkweed.  I was hoping to get a crop of the big healthy Milkweed that the Monarch Butterflies like so much.   You apparently CAN NOT just plant little "milkweeds" and hope to get any particular species!  On the other hand, Monarchs apparently do have favorites that are not the "big healthy Milkweeds" mentioned here.

Here is a spider on the flower of some kind of Flowering Plant (Subphylum Angiospermae).   I have a request to ID this spider submitted to iNat.   The Spider on the left bears a striking resemblance to cartoons of Snoopy the Dog, doesn't it?

Here is a Beetle of some kind.  Similarly for the second one, but the second was on my bedroom ceiling!  I don't know what number 3 might be exactly, but it's a Beetle.  

Just in case you missed this about a week ago, the Swamp Milkweed I grew from seed attracted someone to lay her eggs and resulted in these Monarch caterpillars gnawing away at the Milkweed!

You saw this one (a Jagged Ambush Bug) last week.  It's a precursor of the Goldenrod, which is getting ready to burst soon!  But hasn't yet, even though I was telling you last week to look out for it.   Don't worry about it.

Here are some of the tiny but beautiful flowers.  First, an Asiatic Day Flower.

Here are some plants still blooming out there.  First, the Trumpetvine.  For a while it hung down so heavily with flowers that they whapped you in the face as you ducked down the path.  The Phlox is about to finish, sorry to say.  Its bright purplish-pink flowers have been so pretty!

I hate to point it out, but the Water Lilies are getting fewer and farther between.  But here is one from August 7, showing the little fish that is so fond of seeing the beautiful blooms.  OK, there you have had your anthropomorphic comment for the week.  

My neighbor Deb's sister Pam caught this Red-spotted Purple out by my woodshop siding.  Thanks Pam!   Come back any time!

I magnified this first picture a few times so you could see the little bee (which I need to expand and send out for ID)  in the top flower.   Even though I knew you didn't really want to see the Mosquito in picture 2 (It's big enough anyway!) I did expand it a bit.  

Here are a couple of Ants that look as if they are co-nannying the yellow Oleander Aphid, but I don't think it works that way.  The one on the right is probably nannying the very faint one to the bottom of the two black Ants.  If you are interested in Ant-nannying behavior, you will be seeing some soon.  I have been raising from seed a couple of kinds of Thistles that are prone to Treehopper-predation, and the Ants are an important part of that social structure.  Maybe in a week or two we'll be able to see this going on.  The big picture on the right here shows one of the Thistles (I think it's a Bull Thistle) that may soon show itself to be a home for the Bugs that nanny the Hoppers.  It will have to produce a vertical shaft - right now all the growth is horizontal!   Hold on, I know you want to see this!

Well, here we are at about the end of the pictures I've taken for you for this week.  I'll be seeing you again next week.  In the meantime, please watch your favorite spot for critter action and enjoy!!  Love, Martha