My Jewelweed Forest

First, I would like to say that my plot to take over my side yard with jewelweed is coming along quite nicely. I have many plants and they are starting to flower, as shown here. What I especially love about this photo, though, is the mosquito perched on the flower. I like that because that is one mosquito that was not perched on me as I was trying to take pictures of the flower. Because it seemed as though the rest of them were. Really annoying. I can still hear the buzzing in my ears...

Summer Blahs, Already

I've been absent for a while. There are a couple of reasons. First, my back went out this weekend. I know, that makes me sound old, but I have a bad back (genetic, I guess) and every once in a while this happens to me. With that, just normal stuff -- and that's normal summer stuff, so it's pretty relaxed anyhow -- has been a chore. Today I am mostly better but not 100%.

Also, summer seems to have stalled before it's even begun. Every day, it's been in the 70s at the most and raining. Some storms, some steady rain, but every day, rain. And when it's not rain, clouds and general haze. This has added mental laziness on top of my physical malady.

That said, things have happened. Butterfly milkweed opened, in some places, and purple coneflower, in some places, and even a very early black-eyed susan. One of these days, I"ll get around to downloading pics. Probably.

So that's me, I hope the rest of you are better than me, not that I'm pitying myself. Things could be a lot worse. And it's good not to have to water anything while I'm under the weather, so that's a bonus.

Munching

This fat fellow -- a black swallowtail caterpillar, is munching on some dill. Delish!

Primrose blossoms are making lovley lemon yellow splotches all over...

Dragonflies, Etc.

This common baskettail (I think) sat calmly on a lupine while I took her picture. She was hard to ID, and, if we're correct, she's a new one for me!

Eastern forktail, above (not a new one) and orange bluet (also not new) below. What a contradictory name...
These caterpillars were just decimating the Somonon's seal on which they lived.

An early false sunflower, this one without aphids.

OK, I've finally gotten around to sharing the discoveries from my last school campout (June 1-3). Actually, I wrote this entry before, and then blogger crashed, erasing much of the work and also kicking me out for about 24 hours. So this isn't as wordy as the original, but it's plenty, I think... Anyhow. One of the trip's coolest moments was watching two smallish pileated woodpeckers dance around a tree trunk about 20 feet from us. I didn't get a great picture, but you can clearly see the pileated silhouette:

Our other avian friends, the wild turkeys, invaded our campsite. These two birds were so close to tents that if kids had come out at the right moment, it could have been very entertaining. But alas...
We saw two snakes... this tiny garter snake...

and this ginormous norther water snake. The previous week, if you recall, we saw a baby swimming... hard to believe it will end up like this guy, who was easily 5 feet long and a few inches in diameter. (It was ID'ed by some other hikers with a lot of scientific equipment, so I'm choosing to trust them...)

Also in the herpetology realm,several of these (some sort of true frog, don't ask me) sat near a wetland, happy enough to let us look and photograph, but disappearing as fast as a shot as soon as a 5th grade hand reached out to grab.

We saw, also, many interesting, colorful spiders. If I had been alone, I may have focused on them more, but I wasn't. So all I have is these guys:

Transitioning to arthropods people prefer, these damselflies -- either female blue-fronted dancers (brown form) or eastern forktails (immature females) -- kept landing on kids.

As did these butterflies (azures?), which I believe were going for the salt form our sweat. You could sit and watch their proboscises probing. Here, it is eating something else entirely...

These galls shall provide our transition from animal to plant... on serviceberry leaves, I just thought their colors were fantastic.

This poke milkweed (which I think I mid-identified last June 25)-- clearly asclepias -- is just a little bit different than other milkweeds, with its loosely clustered flowers in subtle shades of lavender and green. It's really quite pretty.

A catchfly?

And now for some fungus observations... there are lots of cool fungi at Starved Rock, though not as many fruiting bodies as I saw last June, but I am showing only these three...

this eyelash cup because of its bright orange color and the eponymous "eyelashes"...
this polypore because of its lovely colors of purple and orange and brown...
and this little fellow because of the neat ridges on its cap.

The Birds and the Bugs

Male Blue Dasher, I think. Dragonflies do make me happy.

So... this was the weirdest thing that happened to me all weekend. I was trimming some bushes -- with no nest in them -- and this mourning dove came and started pecking away at the leaves and bricks around where I was working. It was absolutely fearless -- I could step or make sudden motions and it wouldn't react. At first we thought it must somehow be injured, but we couldn't find anything wrong with it... except, of course, over-trusting-ness or stupidity. It could fly, and did, when Chris, unable to resist after a while, tried to catch it in his hands. I actually thought, several times, that it would peck my toes... though it didn't, actually. Whatever it was eating, it seemed happy about it, as it returned a few times before leaving for good.

Aphids. I still love them.

And, in garden world, we are being overwhelmed by spinach, and I made my first pesto today with our first 5 garlic scapes and a grand harvesting of basil.

It's Good to be Back Home Again!

I have, like, a million... well, that's a slight exaggeration, but many photos to share from the final camping trip of the 2010 spring school trip season, but I haven't the time or energy to share them at this moment. Instead, I'll briefly share a few things from my return. First, the school is wearing its yellow outfit in honor of the last day... while we were gone, coreopsis bloomed and they are everywhere! (Also, some evening primrose bloomed).

And... in an ironic twist... this was my breakfast this morning, harvested from my garden. So delicious. The thing was, we had decided to take out strawberries this year because they really didn't produce a lot last year and it seemed like a waste of space. This haul was probably, in one day, about as much as I got all last year, and from a smaller space (some were already removed), and I did nothing to keep the birds at bay this year. I guess the birds, or the berries, heard my plans and decided to show me what they could really do! (Look at June 12, 2009's entry to read about the strawberry wars of last summer...)