Welcome to my yard in July! It's late in the day here in Hawaii, so I'm sure you've probably already been over to visit Carol at May Dreams Garden to see what everyone else has blooming in their yard... but if you haven't, please stop in and say hi to our wonderful host. Meanwhile, if you can stand looking at one more yard on this beautiful July day, then let's get to it!
I can't figure out my crape myrtle at all--I never know when to expect flowers, and at least once a year, I'm convinced that I've killed it, so it's always a nice surprise when it blooms.
Evolvus glomeratus (Blue Daze) looking a little more purple than blue here today, but that's OK.
Both my lavender and my basil are almost always in bloom.
This ice blue plumbago is going crazy right now. I guess after the year+ that it spent living in a bag between my friend's yard and mine, it's decided to take advantage of its spot in the yard.
My favorite daylily surprised me with a new bloom the other day. With red ti leaves in the background and my hardy ice plant (Delosperma cooperi) below, what more could I ask for?
This is another mystery plant for me. When the leaves unfurl, they are a gorgeous purple color; eventually they turn into the mellow green that you see on the left-hand side of the picture. The flowers are sort of secondary, but they are always a nice little surprise when they show up.
This is another mystery bloomer that I always forget about. The variegated grass is the main attraction, and every once in a while, when I'm poking around in the yard, I'll discover that it has decided to flower. Once again, it's always a nice surprise when they show up.
Do you have anything in your yard that makes surprise appearances? What's been your favorite surprise so far?
Previously, I introduced you to some keeled treehopper nymphs, spikey little alien-looking critters that had invaded my tomato plant. Well, after a while, being a spikey little adolescent takes a toll on a critter, and, like a lot of us, they eventually decide to just mellow out and become smooth, green, tank-like adults. OK, I need to work on that a little, but you get what I'm saying.
Unfortunately, the picture quality in this series is not quite as good as it was in the last one (but you can still click on any picture to enlarge it)--I took this set of pictures before I took the set of pictures in my previous post, and I hadn't quite perfected the iPhone macro shot yet. Also, I was sitting in a dark room. Wearing a headlamp. Don't ask, just...be impressed that they came out as well as they did, OK?
Anyway...here's how you go from this:
to this:
in just 20 short minutes. (This is, like, the best make-over ever!)
First, you wriggle out of your old, spikey shell, with your little wings all folded up behind your head like little white spitballs.
It's OK if they start to unfurl a little bit before you're all the way out. Just keep your head down and keep going.
Whew! Now that you are out of that cramped little space (how did you get by in there for so long??), you can really start working on those wings.
Almost there...
They're all nice and fluffed up, now make them just a tiny bit longer. (Oh boy, there are going to be some disappointed people landing on this page through key-word searches!)
Perfect! Now you can start elongating that helmety-looking bit with the orange racing stripe.
Good, good, now bring it down a little.
A little more...
Keep going...
Perfect! Looks good!
Very streamlined.
"Hello...Are you my mother?"
Now, turn around, face down your past, and prepare to go out into the world and wreak havoc on my tomato plants.
Yep, just like that.
So, whaddaya think? Pretty cool, huh? I mean, not for my tomato plant, but from a transformation perspective, it's pretty impressive. The only bummer about this is that they don't seem to have any natural predators. I did get a lizard to eat one of the adults, but it didn't seem very impressed; and the nymphs are just as pokey as they look. I wouldn't want to eat one! My tomato died, and the treehopper numbers started dwindling. A few started showing up on other, smaller tomatoes, and I couldn't let another population explosion occur, but I couldn't bring myself to squish them or spray them either. I ended up picking them off and dropping them onto the lanai. I was hoping to lure in more lizards, but they're no dummies; they weren't interested. I figured if any treehoppers made it back across the lanai and up into a pot, well, maybe I'd just let them be.
"Do I look like some kind of dummy to you? I'm not eatin' one of those things."
I wrote this a while ago, and I've kind of been sitting on it, not sure if it adequately expresses what I want it to, but recent events have brought me back around to it, so I figured I would go ahead and put it up.
My grandmother passed away in February. At her funeral, as is often the case at such events, I was reunited with a family member from my grandfather's side of the family that I hadn't seen in...25+(?) years. I have fond memories of this person from when I was younger--nothing specific, just that he was generally someone that I liked. Throughout the years, he and his wife divorced, I heard things about why, his reputation wasn't exactly stellar, and he sort of disappeared into the ether. So, when he showed up out of the blue at my grandmother's funeral, I wasn't quite sure how it was all going to play out, but here it is nearly four months later, and I am still struck by our brief interactions.
We did the usual catching up: where are you now, how have you been, what are you doing, etc. I told him I was living in Hawaii and pretty much just enjoying the good life, and his reaction to that is what I can't get over. He was the most genuinely happy-for-me person that I think I have ever encountered. When you tell people you live in Hawaii, there are some fairly standard responses--"Oh, wow, Hawaii, that's so great!" "Oooh, lucky you..." "Hawaii?? When can I come visit?" and it's not that these aren't well-meant and honest, but (and I couldn't have told you this before this meeting) I feel like there's always a bit of subtext attached, like "Oh, wow, Hawaii, that's so great (for you)!" "Oooh, lucky you...(I mean, you know, if you like that kind of thing...)" or "Hawaii?? When can I come visit? (No, seriously, when can I come visit?)". It's not that any of these responses are bad or wrong; heck, they're the kind of responses I often have to others' good news, you know the kind where you are trying to be supportive of somebody else, but maybe they're happy about something that wouldn't necessarily make you happy, or their good news is something you're a little bit jealous of, so you just sort of prattle out the proper responses. But this person was so genuinely happy for me, so genuinely glad to hear that my life was going well and that I was happy. And that was it. It was just so...unfiltered.
Nobody in my family would ever say anything against this person's character as far as him being someone they really liked or someone that they wished well, but everyone is still pretty skeptical about his general reliability (perhaps justifiably so; I can't really speak to that). All I can say is that he is the ONLY person from my grandfather's side of the family that made it to my grandmother's funeral that day**, and I can't think of anyone I've ever met who has been so genuinely happy for somebody else's good fortune. On top of that, he stood up and said some very kind things about my grandmother, about the good times he had out at my grandparents' house as a kid, and how my grandma was always his favorite aunt, which...how can you not love somebody who does that?
Anyway, I just wanted to share that.
This person lives somewhere in the area near where the Royal Gorge fire has been burning this week. There haven't been any reported fatalities, so I'm not worried about his safety, but as I've been watching the Black Forest fire and wondering if my grandparents' home is going to go up in flames (so far, it hasn't), I've been thinking about this person, wondering if he is doing the same, watching the news, wondering if his home will be left standing. I hope not. I wish him all the best. I wish him all the happiness that he had for me, and, really, I couldn't wish much more than that for somebody.
*The title for this post was inspired by one of my favorite songs, Jewel's "Life Uncommon".
**For the record, the funeral was scheduled with less than a week's notice, and there was a huge blizzard forecasted to rip through the state that day, so I don't hold it against the rest of the family for not making it. It just makes it that much more meaningful that this person DID make it.
I figure if aliens ever invade, this is what they will look like (click on any of the pictures to enlarge):
Sooo...maybe they're already here. Cool. Well, not entirely cool--they did decimate the biggest, baddest volunteer tomato plant I've managed to accidentally grow yet, but if that's the extent of the damage they plan on doing, I suppose we can all live with that, right?
What, exactly, are these things? At first I though they were aphids because I noticed a bunch of little black things crawling around on my tomato. But then they kept getting bigger. And bigger. And spikier. And more tank-like. And I thought, Hmmm...what the hell kind of aphids ARE these?? So, I brought them in for a photo shoot (that's a peppercorn for scale).
and then proceeded to check my favorite on-line source for bug identification, What's That Bug?. And it turns out I have treehopper nymphs, or baby/adolescent treehoppers. Cool. Except, not really. I kept reading about how much damage they do, and I could find no information about natural predators. At this point though, my tomato plant was still thriving, and I was intrigued. So I let them live, and I became their personal paparazzi. Also, I kind of liked their personalities. When I went outside to put these guys back on my tomato plant, one of them walked right off, but the other one was sort of in play dead/paralysis mode. The one on the move walked over, tapped the other one on the back with one of its legs, and kept on moving. As soon as it got tapped on the back, the act-like-a-rock one was like, What? Oh, OK, I'm coming, and moseyed off. It was kind of endearing. Anyway...photo shoot!
Some of them were shy.
"Nope. I do NOT want my face splashed all across the pages of your blog!"
While others took advantage of some photobomb opportunities.
"Photobomb, yo!"
But all of them were spikey. No wonder they don't have any natural predators!
Ants farm treehoppers like they do aphids. They sort of round them up and protect them and gather the honeydew that the treehoppers secrete. Treehoppers are like cows, but for ants. In this picture you can see a good representation of the different sizes they come in and you can see a little droplet of honeydew being secreted (halfway down, on the left-hand side of the stem, there's a little droplet on the pointy end of...a butt). You can even see a few little farmer ants in the picture.
One day, I caught one of these guys molting, so I brought it inside and documented the process while I watched TV. This is probably highly inappropriate behaviour (as if taking pictures of their honey-dew secreting butts wasn't), but I was curious. I hope our new alien overlords can forgive me. The pictures below show a little tank turning into a bigger tank. The photos are of two different bugs because the first half of the pictures I took with the first bug didn't come out very well, so the next day I found me another bug at the same stage and began documenting again, but, I can assure you, the process was very similar. As the critters grow bigger, they have to molt because their exoskeletons don't grow with them, so they bust out of their old, colorful skins, and they come out looking like this:
"Hang on, I gotta put on my face."
Not terribly exciting at this stage, are they?
A mere 90 minutes later, though, and they look like this:
Cool, huh? Next I'll show you what an adult looks like when it comes out of that spikey little shell--it looks like a green tornado-chasing vehicle, and its transformation is just as cool, maybe even cooler. Join me then, won't you?
Well, it's been a while since I've gotten myself together enough to A) remember that it's GBBD, B) go outside and take the requisite pictures, and C) put said pictures together in a post in a timely manner. So, yay for little victories! And yay for my daylilies, which greeted me today like this:
Well, hello, Lovelies!
These are some of my most anticipated blooms every year. They are beautiful, and they smell amazing--sweet and subtle, like the lovely ladies they are.
Accompanying my daylilies is this ever-blooming hardy ice plant, Delosperma cooperi.
This little clump of sweet alyssum has volunteered itself to grow in this pot. I wonder if it realizes the fight it's going to have against this pot's other volunteer, the winding, vining passion flower (the big leaves that you see going over the edge of the pot). Then again, seeing as how it seems to have walked itself over from those pots you see in the background, maybe it will be able to hold its own.
Two other faithful bloomers are my blue plumbago and my false heather, Cuphea hyssopifolia.
This was one of my most faithful bloomers for a long time, but my golden shrimp plant, Pachystachys lutea, seems to have taken a break over the last few months. I'm glad to see it making a comeback. 10 points for sticking your landing, Pachystachys.
Speaking of comebacks, I thought this poor bougainvillea had kicked the bucket. It didn't have a single leaf anywhere for several weeks; it was completely bare, naked I tell you! As you can see, it's decided that it still has some life left in it; it's decided to put on it's frock and come to the May party.
Seeing as how it's May, you've probably got all kinds of good stuff going on in your garden too, and Carol at May Dreams Gardens would love to see what you've got (as would the rest of us), so head on over to her blog, share your blooms, and see what else is blooming on this beautiful May day! Even if you don't have any blooms to share, you can live vicariously in gardens around the world--come check it out!
I am several selections into The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2011edited by Mary Roach and Tim Folger. So far, everything has been interesting; I've learned a little bit about black market organ transplants and walked away wondering if legalized payment-for-donation programs might not be the worst thing ever (although I don't think that's the direction the article was leaning); learned about something called "high meat" which...ew; read a short bit that I think was an excerpt from The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, a book I read and loved a few months back; found out that chimps seem to be a lot more fertile than humans; and was surprised when I cried during an article about neuroscience and brain surgery.
Over at Reflections of a Bookaholic, we have been issued a challenge: "...turn to page 32 of the book you are currently reading (or the nearest page with text on it) and find the most entertaining phrase to complete the following sentence:
"I would rather read than ________ any day!""
Well, I'm reading on an old Kindle, so I don't exactly have pages, per se, but between the "Look Inside!" option at Amazon.com, and some best guesses on my part, I've found what I think is probably pretty close to page 32, so:
I would rather read than SAVOR ROTTEN CARIBOU AND SEAL any day!
For sure! While I have never actually had rotten caribou or seal, I'm going to go ahead and say that it's not anything I'm in a big hurry to try.
OK, so Kit's life has fallen apart--he's lost his wife, become an alcoholic, lost his job, etc.-- and he's gone off to what he thinks is just a little country retreat in Ireland where they happen to make cheese. The current proprietors have decided that he's to be their new cheesemaker, but his current state has others questioning whether or not he's right for the job.
"And a man in his state is all right for cheesemaking?" "In my experience there's not a state in the world," Fee said matter-of-factly, "that cannot be greatly improved by close proximity to cheese. Especially ours," he added.
Amen to that! Cheese makes everything better.
Speaking of that, I might go find some cheese to snack on before I pick my next read and delve into Hour 15.
by Sarah-Kate Lynch, and I loved it! Here, in Hour 14,