Spider presentation

Someone let me talk about spiders again! Yes, I gave my program, "Spiders of Central Texas," to a nice group that met Thursday at the Kingsland Library. It was part of the Green Thumb program hosted by the Highland Lakes Master Gardener chapter.

Hostplant database

I just stumbled upon an awesome database! Check out HOSTS-a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants. You can search by family, genus and/or species of butterflies and moths AND/OR by family, genus and/or species of plants along with a location. 

This database is hosted by the Natural History Museum in London.

I ran a search of milkweeds (Asclepias sp.) in the USA and came up with 53 results. So cool!

Pretty little blooms

Talayote (Cynanchum racemosum), a milkweed

Birdwing passionflower (Passiflora tenuiloba)

Dear frogs, please accept my apologies

This morning, I was sad and frustrated to find the rocks and screen that protected my water lily COMPLETELY dismantled in our stock tank pond. Ding dong, darn frogs!!! 

Awhile later, James downloaded photos from his game camera and discovered that a visitor had meandered through the back yard around 2:12 a.m. I think we've nailed our culprit!

 BUSTED!

When frogs go bad

So our resident pair of Rio Grande leopard frogs (Lithobates berlandieri) have been driving me NUTS. They're highly active and tend to shove my plants around in the stock pond. THEN they starting digging out the dirt in my dwarf water lily's pot. ARGH! I didn't know what to replace the dirt with. After some counseling by staff at Hill Country Water Gardens and Nursery, I dug up some plain dirt in our yard and filled in the big hole. See what I did next......

See what our bad frogs did?

I added dirt, then topped with some big rocks.

Hmmm. Some extra protection would help so I found an old screen, cut out a hole for the lilies, and laid the screen on top of the pot. Hopefully, the big rocks will hold the screen in place. Time will tell. 

The thing is, we WANT wildlife to come to our Wildscape. But please don't tear it up! LOL! Ah, when nature goes bad, all you can do is smile and fix it as best you can. Right?

UDATE OCTOBER 11, 2019 

I gave up and removed my pot of dwarf lilies and put it in a container of water. I'm hoping to keep what's left alive. Come cold temps, I'll put the pot at the bottom of the stock tank for overwintering. Wish me luck!

 

First September surprise Sept. 18

Cicada bones

Best year ever for cicadas!

Here's an ode to just a few of the 

many bones they left behind....