danger and butterflies

2 green lynx spiders and a bumble bee, bad day to be a pollinator. 

They're not helping the watermelon vine much either...

 A coupla black widow spiders... I spotted the top one while picking watermelon, the bottom one is nesting among the potted plants...

And... this guy.

I was walking to the house from the garden, and heard a cicada... only...

the buzzing didn't change tones... just didn't sound quite right...

looked around, saw that the cats had this guy surrounded!

I gathered up cats, tossed them in the house and shut the door... 

gave this big guy time to get out of dodge.

Had a heck of a butterfly hatch, they're crawling over everything!

If I stood back and shot the entire lantana bush, I could probably get 20 or 30 in the pic... unfortunately, they'd be difficult to spot without enlarging and getting a magnifying glass.

I watched this gulf fritillary lay an egg on the passionflower vine and then make a fuel stop at the flower... wonder what the passiflora thought.

 You don't get butterflies without caterpillars, but what's this guy doing on a blackberry bush?
Should be on a cassia...

Buckeye caterpillar on agalinis.

Buckeye visiting eupatorium hyssopifolium.

Armyworms eating amaranth

gulf fritillary visits cucumber vine.

Checkered frit visits dune sunflower

bugs n stuff

black form tiger swallowtail

Buckeye caterpillar on Seymeria cassioides

I wasn't paying attention, and nasty milkweed bugs had a population explosion on the matelea

Dragon fly... my zika defense...

Wasp visits winged sumac flowers

Sand wasp visits monarda punctata

Sulphur yellow visits salvia

And who's this on the pokeweed?

Manducca visits 4 o'clock flowers in the dark...

gulf fritillary visits salvia

Anole on a watermelon

Always thrilled by the naturals... partridge pea

Centrosema

And whorled leaf milkweed

fruits of the season and other stuff

I'm not sure this is glass gem any more....

The deer berries (Vaccinium stamineum) are starting to ripen... good luck beating the birds to them, though... all the information online sez that they're only fit for the wildlife... but they're actually quite tasty... you have a window measured in minutes between ripeness and when the birds eat them.

Seashore mallow (Kosteletzkya virginica) first bloom of the summer.

Red spoted purple butterfly visits rudbeckia triloba.

I really like this combination of the white hibiscus and the snake cotton...

I'm getting watermelons from the new section of veggie garden...

Here's mixed group... rudbeckia and 2 hibiscus.

I finally got some ripe fruit from the dwarf paw paw tree... Ate the fruit and potted up the seed.

Sometimes I get lucky... Didn't bait the trap... just set it in the path. armadillo above, rabbit below.

Finally... a rose of sharon with blooms on bare branches... dry here... this tree dropped it's leaves back in June... blooming anyway... these things are tough.

garden critters in july

 Spicebush swallowtail nectaring at cnidoscolus

 Gulf fritillary starting a family...

The frit caterpillar...

silver spotted skipper also visiting cnidoscolus

Wheel barrow full of smilax tubers... one clump... now, if there were any decent recipes!

Fence post lizard

 The dreaded squash vine borer moth

Very attractive bug for being so unloved...

The SVB grub...

Another pest...

Gopher tortoise in the new section of the garden... chomping horse turds!

Isn't this funny! I've been attracting butterflies with truckloads of horse poop ever since I got here... didn't know that the turtles also liked it...

Truckloads of poop... each pile represents an entire truckload... The idea is that after setting on top of the ground for a couple weeks, the sand softens up... makes digging out roots easier... Of course... as dry as it is... seems almost hopeless... 

Rose of sharon....  I'm considering grouping some of my white flowers... call it a white garden...

White flowered cleome...