Monday, September 13, 2010

Catch up time...

Two Sundays ago, my cousin, Kristen Perkins, spent the afternoon with us. While we were out in the back yard, walking around, she noticed something on the ground....a VERY tattered, big moth, attracting an arsenal of ants. I gently picked it up, blew the ants off, then set it atop some turk's cap leaves. When I checked back later, it was gone.

Fast forward four days when I happened to spot ANOTHER moth of the same species, which I think is an imperial (Eacles imperialiso). I'm guessing that this one was a male who caught whiff of our tattered moth, who was a girl sending out super-duper pheromones. Moths do that to attract mates. A year or so ago, James once brought home an imperial moth from a ranch located 10 miles away, and we set it out in the Wildscape. We were amazed when, a few days later, another imperial moth showed up!

Isn't nature just amazing?


Below is a photo of the large piece of oak limb that recently broke off during Tropical Storm Hermine. We decide that we'd incorporate the chunk into our Wildscape. We're going to plant some plants in it sometime. All that dark stuff is lovely squirrel poop, which will be incorporated as well!


Our Mexican salvia (Salvia mexicana) is finally blooming!

And the fruit on our American beautyberry is absolutely stunning!

1 comment:

czardastx said...

I never knew what those berries were called. They are all over on the trails I hike. Thanks for that. They are a very beautiful purple.

Post a Comment