Enough talk, time to walk the walk

Time to fish or cut bait. Time to put up or shut up. Time to get up and do what needs to be done.

Mayhem under the Bleeding Heart

I’m sorry. So sorry. Not one, but two young Mourning Doves got turned into sprays of feathers under the Bleeding Heart. How appropriate. And my evil cat is not sorry at all.

Snail locomotion

On a snail hunt the other night, I caught these snails leaving interesting trails. You can see clearly how they actually lifted bits of their feet as the waves moved through them. If you have aquarium snails, or watch a snail climbing up a window, you can see for yourself how the waves in a […]

Surviving, thriving, staying aliving

Spring continues to reveal more survivors. This mound of Bleeding Heart not only survived being dug up and moved, it’s about twice as big as it was last year.

A veggie patch in May

Here’s my tiny vegetable patch, which may give you some idea of how little ground I manage to keep neat.

Bee v. Bee

There’s a big, fat bee that likes to hover over the patio controlling the territory. He looks like a large bumblebee, but the white spot on its face and shiny butt mark him out as a male Carpenter bee. I’ve been buzzed a few times passing through. Lucky for me, I’m not another bee.

Ladybugs making more

I see more bees than ladybugs in my yard, but here’s a couple of Asian ladybugs trying to fix that. And now that the ladybugs have shown up, you might want to look too, and if you find them, you can report them to the Lost Ladybug Project. If you’re having trouble finding ladybugs, they […]

Bees of Spring

There’s a fairly bare, hard-packed stretch of dry soil that serves as a path up the hill in my yard, where I often see little brown bees zooming back and forth close to the ground. This year I finally slowed down enough to get some pictures. And I found a whole community of bees.

Flowers don’t punt

It’s a while since I punted. I was up late, reading, and suddenly it just didn’t seem important to scrabble out a post before midnight. What can I say?

Feed your bees

A very nice article I read today confirms something I observed last year: native pollinators prefer native flowers. Since there’s so many different kinds, from bees to syrphid flies, you need many different flowers over the course of the seasons to feed them. You can find lists of suggested plants, but the easy way is […]