A mama green lynx spider…. And on the other side you can see all her babies. Furious fire ants. A centipede…I see lots of milipedes of different sizes, but hardly ever a centipede. Mating wheel bugs. You can see the wheel on their backs. These are predatory insects, so I am very happy to…
Category: Nature Finds
Nature Finds: Insect Life Autumn Jambore
Giant millipedes mating in the path. Get a room, you guys! A daddy-long-legs orygy? Where are the mama-long-legs? This little guy looks up to no good…. This past week I did a presentation on Sustainable Agriculture for my mom’s college class. Just like last time, it made me lose hope for humanity a little…
Nature Finds: Spring Things
The insects and animals have been popping up all over the farm, busy, busy, busy. In the very warm and wet spring weather we’ve had, mushrooms are sprouting up all over. I had never seen this lovely, curly oyster mushroom look-alike. They are all over where the hay bale was on the first line. A…
Nature Finds: Spring
Spring is really here – a little late this year (for Florida). Many of the plums have finished blooming in town, but the Chickasaw plum in the garden just burst into flower. Even the shy dogwoods are white in the woods. The late-blooming blueberries are now covered in flowers. The bushes are so tall now…
Nature Finds: Bagworm and Wingless Moth
The insect life has mostly been hunkering down and hiding through the cold spells (which have been very long this year), but the slightly warming weather has brought a few cool nature finds out of the woodworks. The first photo was easy – it’s a bagworm. I love the way they make their cocoons from…
Nature Finds: Lichens
Brrr……we’re getting the usual freezing cold January weather. My uninsulated block house is like an igloo. The walls are sweating. The temperatures feel so extreme here. I think it’s the humidity. The heat is intense, and the cold is also intense! When I lived in the mountains of North Carolina during the coldest winter…
Nature Finds: Insects
This was the largest snail I’ve seen of this kind. The snails really like it by the sink – I guess all the moisture. This little caterpillar looked like he was a piece of a branch, or maybe a bird dropping. I think he wanted us to think that. This beautiful dragonfly with black-tipped wings…
Nature Photos – Thistles
We’ve had some gorgeous thistles blooming at the farm this year.The flowers look like sea anemones. The goats love eating them. Some of the sow thistle stalks got to be taller than I am. They bite them off at the bottom and crunch them down until they get to the buds. It’s funny to watch. …
Nature Photo – Paw Paws
The paw paws are blooming now. They have such a striking presence in the pastures. When I was a kid my parents would go to the Ordway-Swisher Preserve for my mom’s Masters research on Opuntia pollination, and the first little way along the road was covered with pawpaws – quite a sight when they were…
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 