Lots of Creatures This Month

I've been keeping my eyes open for the little things.

three eggs in my fern

 5 little bird eggs

a robin egg

a Flicker

ladybugs

a little snake friend

fluffy baby birds

my little snake friend's momma

I'm not sure what he is but he sure is pretty.

An empty eggshell after the rain.

He's back.

Snakes are everywhere.

I watched a Bluebird take some eggs out of the 

Bluebird box.  There were four of them.

Jan next door must have goldfinch food out.

Caught me another one!  I couldn't reach him with my hand so I had to get the small rake.  I think he was happy to bet out of the window well and back into the weeds.

Comings and Goings In The Yard

 There are lots of creatures great and small that come through or live in our yard.  Somedays I see lots and sometimes not hardly any at all.  On these two days, I found one and one about ran over me at the bus stop.

I was cleaning out the last of the squash plants and saw this and thought it was a piece of corn that had started to mold.

On closer examination I thought might be some type of bug.  Was it good to have in the garden or not to that was the question?   From what Google Lens tells me it might be a dry-Mexican bean beetle.  If this is the case it is bad news.  Doing research to see what I need to do  Mike Meadows what do you think?  You are my go-to gardening guy.

Then Adi and I were at the bus stop waiting for Ava and Jon Milligan was picking up Louie when I hear a voice...Jan...it took me a second and then I saw this big buck.  Others have seen him in the neighborhood.  He ran right across the yard in front of us and into the woods.  Beautiful.  I couldn't get my hands and camera to cooperate so this is the shot I got.  Maybe I should be taking my big girl camera to the bus stop.

Mysteries

Looks like all these guys are on the vacation of their lives.  My poor pumpkin vines.  We got not even one pumpkin out of the actual pumpkin patch.

I'm thinking these are three separate stages of the dreaded stink bug or probably more likely squash beetles.

The squirrels have had a banquet on this beautiful, huge tomato from Mr. John's yard.

There are some beautiful strawberries left.  Amazing.  Early fall we will be cutting them back to about 2 inches tall for the winter.  We will cover them with straw and hope they go nuts next year like they did this year

Sad last really small and ugly cucumber.  They were a bust this year.  We planted twice.

The last little pumpkin on the vine.

Then I found that all the rest of the little pumpkins that were trying to hanging on were covered with some kind of mold.

Bug dance party on the pumpkin leaves before I burn them.

 

Tomato Hornworm

 

I found a tomato hornworm on Murph's shirt today.  It took me forever to get it off his shirt.  And I'm not sure which bed that he decided to take a piggyback ride. 

I borrowed a bug house from Emmy and we are going to try to see f we can keep it alive and hopefully get to see it morph into a hummingbird moth.

The last picture shows all the stages.  Also, I learned that if you shine a blacklight on your tomato plants at night the hornworms will glow in the dark.  I downloaded an app and went out to see if I could find any more...no luck.  But I will keep looking.

Carly Rae is going to help take care of him in the coming week since she is the Science Coordinator of the Preschool.  And she has already named him Green Bean.  I think that's pretty perfect.