Tag Archives: spiders

Cameo Spider

By

For me, one of the enjoyments of peonies is taking photos of the bugs, insects, ants, bees or arachnids feeding on their bloom-buds. I will refer to them as ‘feeders’ for the purpose of this post.
So, as I was taking photos of the ‘feeders’ I noticed a white spider. I took some photos of it and moved on. I didn’t think anything about it.
I loaded the photos on the computer, I view the photos large size so I can see the feeders in detail. I got a chuckle when I saw a slightly unsettling surprise on the spiders back; a sort of cameo face.
Then I noticed that sadly the poor little thing seems to have only 4 legs.

I was hesitant to share it here on my blog. I realize it could be a trigger for folks that have arachnophobia. I apologize in advance. I mean no harm. I’ve tried to make links instead of posting the photos in full view.  (Hopefully, I did the links right.  )

If you click on the link or the photo and don’t see the face on the spider’s back in the photos, it’s okay. Not everyone enjoys pareidolia as much as I do. 🙂

If you would like to see a large photo crop to see the face better, click here

Below is the peony photo. You can click on it to view a larger size.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

*By-the-way, I don’t care what the experts say about not needing feeders on peonies for them to bloom. In my experience, peony bloom buds without feeders shrivel and die.
One more thought: I do have one variety of yellow peony that never has feeders on it’s buds, and it blooms beautifully.

Wildlife Wednesday – camouflaged caterpillar, sphinx moth & trapdoor spider

By

I was tending to my marigolds when I saw tiny petals moving around a bloom. You don’t usually see that type of activity in a marigold, so I watched it for a few minutes. I discovered that it was a caterpillar that had used marigold petals to camouflage itself. I got such a chuckle from see it.

One evening just after sunset, we were sitting on the back-porch. I saw what I thought was a hummingbird flying around and feeding on my daylilies. I commented to my husband that the hummingbird sure was up late and I’d never seen one fly after dark. He agreed.
I got my camera and tried to focus in on it and take a couple photos. Only one turned out pretty good and it wasn’t a hummingbird, it was a huge moth. Wow, if you know how big a daylily bloom is then you can kind of tell that this moth was quite large.
I looked on the internet and as best as I can tell, it’s some sort of a sphinx moth.

Last weekend, our mower’s drive belt broke. My husband used a leaf blower to clean the mower out before he started work on it to replace the belt. He called out for me to come and see the spider that had fell out of the hood. I hurried over and was surprised to see one of the biggest trapdoor spiders that I’ve ever seen. Its body was at least 3 cm long (a bit over an inch). With its legs it was even bigger and scarier.
I clicked off a photo of the trapdoor spider before my husband properly dispatched it.
I’ve decided not to post the trapdoor spider photo in this post out of respect to people who may be unsettled by seeing it. Instead, I’ve made a link to the photo. If you would like to see the scary creeper Click Here a photo should open in a separate tab or window (if I linked it right.)

It can be amusing, interesting and/or unsettling to notice some of the buglife that I don’t usually pay attention too. I’m glad my camera is usually with me so I can get photos to help me in internet searches to better identify them.

Have you seen any amusing, interesting or scary critters lately?

I hope your Wednesday is pest free and a good one.

.

Outdoorsy Friday Five

By

P1010043I thought my rosemary was happy in the little blue pot, but I was wrong. It started looking puny, so I decided to re-pot it. It’s amazing how root-bound it was. The new pot that I transplanted it to is a big plastic bowl. I had my husband drill a half inch hole in the bottom for drainage. I made a large netting cover for it. I allowed for some grow room in the netting cover. My rosemary perked right up within a 24 hours, so now we wait for it to grow a bit more and then… maybe soon I’ll have a blog post about success in cooking with rosemary.
0rangespacer2
P1000928I’ve only 58 bell pepper plants now. A bird ate a half of one of the seedlings and the bare stem shriveled and died. One of My favorite bird deterrents is a rubber snake. I placed one across the containers and so far no more birds. 58 bell peppers is still over the top in numbers, hopefully they’ll be colorful and pretty and productive.
0rangespacer2
P1000948-0Remember my post about pin wheels and pie pans in the garden to deter deer… Well, apparently they work because nothing close to them has been bothered… however our carrot patch doesn’t have a deterrent around it and it got a deer-dance number done on it. We will be putting out some more pin wheels soon. Our carrots are super tiny and quite sparse, but we’re hoping to get at least one mess off them.
0rangespacer2
P1000965I’m happy to tell you that we’ve got a few green tomatoes on the vine. The tomatoes in the picture are husky cherry tomatoes. They’re dirty from the rain splashing mud on them, but they look wonderful to me. Now if Mother Nature will play nice, maybe in a month or two we’ll have fresh tomatoes.
0rangespacer2
5-11-2016-spiderAnd last but not least, the other day I set my camera on our patio table while I was opening the back door for Shelibean to go in the house..
My husband was sitting in a chair by the patio table. He said to me, “You’ve got to see this, there’s a spider trying to take a selfy with your camera.” I stepped around and saw it. ~shivers~ We had a good laugh about it.
I used my other camera to take a photo of the creepy yet humorous crawly to share with you.
(And then my husband knocked-it-off my camera to the porch floor with a fly swatter.)

I enjoyed sharing an Outdoorsy Friday Five with you.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
anibrd
spacer2