Backyard
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Interior
Underneath the bathroom faucet: a small, pale spider.
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Snug as a snail in a snail
I like the idea of one gastropod hanging out in the shell of another. You’ve seen this before: the Queen Conch shells I lugged home — not from the Caribbean, but from Dead Horse Bay’s eroding landfill — provide an excellent shelter for terrestrial snails. Cepaea nemoralis, the Brown-lipped snail. A new squatter, as an…
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View from the Back 40
March 26th.April 3rd.April 9th.April 16th.April 25th. Overnight, and I mean that literally, since I took a photo yesterday afternoon, the lower levels of this ivy were mauled. Perhaps the hellions next door? The construction waste, knotweed, and even mulberry that filled the neighbor’s backyard was recently cleared out. Now screamers populate it. Not a net…
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Back 40 Mugwort
The Rock of Repose holds back the line of advancing Common Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris). This sneaked in under the fence from the Mugwort/Knotweed jungle beyond, but you can find it everywhere in the city as it advances to cover the globe. I’ll say one thing for it: fresh (and uprooted) and dried out (in winter),…
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Back 40 Pin Oak
My squirrel-planted Pin oak (Quercus palustris) enters its second year. The twig-like sapling is 7″ tall; this terminal bud is about a quarter of inch long. I had two of these last year in my Back 40. One I yanked accidently during a weeding frenzy. I replanted it when I saw what I had done,…
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Moth Fly
Friends! Are you troubled by little gray-black flies that, upon closer inspection (don’t be shy, get a little closer, the details are remarkable) look rather moth-like with their hairy wings and bodies? Do you wonder why they seem to be hanging around your sinks? Or, like this one, in the hallway, just waiting for my…
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Weekend Update
On various errands this rainy weekend. Still, there was no stopping the sights to be seen as soon as I walked out the front door. The tulip, that bulb-bundle of joy, is one of the few store-bought flowers I actually appreciate.The Amelanchier is in bloom. Traditionally, this means the ground is thawed out enough to…
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View From the Back 40
The Saucer Magnolia (Magnolia × soulangeana) in a neighbor’s backyard today: A busload of girls from St. Flora’s trying to keep their pink uniforms from blowing away in the March wind. The hazards of early blooming: tonight’s forecasted hard freeze may KO the ornamental fruit and magnolia blossoms that have run riot for the last…
Backyard and Beyond 