A Cacophony of Katydids

 The good news is, Rachel Carson was wrong.   Well, she may prove to be right one day about a “Silent Spring”, but it has not come to pass yet, at least not here in the Hill Country of TX and more specifically, not in my yard.  The katydids, which appeared as early as April, have gone through their several stages of instars and now, with new wings developed, are having a grand time staging nightly rock fests right outside the window.  It finally got hot enough to close our windows at night, but even with that, the walls veritably thrum with their stridulations, which is the technical term for the sound they make rubbing their wings together.

 Again, TX is keeping me off balance, calendar-wise.  This should be a late July, early August sound in my NE mind and yet, here it is May and the band is playing.  A lot of people complain about the noise, and bring in the exterminators, but I, of course, think it is divine.  Yes, they eat leaves, flowers, and stems of things but I seem to have enough leaves, flowers, and stems of things to go around.  So far, I have not had the place denuded because of them.  So, no exterminator for me, thank you.  Besides, even the gardening books claim they are not a threat to crops, more, just a noisy nuisance, and I feel quite sure, their racket would warm the heart of Rachel if she were still among us.

Like everything else in TX, these katydids are HUGE!  And they not only come in the classic green, but in chocolate brown, and some with a thorax that is red and all with the impossibly, long antennae that this family of Tettigoniidae is known for.  I know most of you know they make their noise by rubbing their wings together, which is why, in Eric Carl’s children’s book, “The Very Quiet Cricket” the cricket (cousin to the katydid) is so quiet. It simply isn’t an adult with wings yet, until the last page of course.

The females have an impressive sword like ovipositor (egg depositor) that looks more like a machete than a sword on my humongous ones, and later in the fall (well, in the rest of the world this would be in the fall, who knows what will happen here!) she will slice into a twig or branch and lay this wonderful column of eggs that will overwinter and then spring out in spring and begin the march through the 5 or so instars all over again.

 Each time they shed their exoskeleton and have a new one it is called an “instar”, a new word for your crossword skills, finally resulting in those wonderfully veiny wings that look like leaves and provide such effective camouflage.  It is only the male that has the rough edges that produce the sound that is music to the female’s ears.  You also probably know that her “ears” are located on her front legs.  They are a species that has “incomplete” metamorphosis, no pupa for them, just give me wings and let me fly.

 What has been amusing is, when they can’t fly, they just hop out of my way, appearing far more like frogs than insects and consequently, have provided a good surrogate for the toads of my Cape Cod yard that I, and the dog, both miss.  Birds and praying mantis find them high on their menu so, for the zillions that I had covering my porch, they may not all make it to the egg laying stage, which is as it should be.  So carry on Katydids, the dog and I both find you more than entertaining, and, as I have sleep issues anyways, it is fun to hear who is still going at 4 AM. There is always that one hanger-on at any party that just doesn’t know when to quit.

Man, next year, I must attend the Austin “Insecta Fiesta” where the worlds largest katydid makes an appearance, surely of the same species that I have on my porch, and one can witness the somewhat squeamish sport of “cricket spitting”.  I would say “only in TX” but no, this got its start in Purdue, in Indiana, for crying out loud.  

 You insert a cricket in your mouth and spit it as far as you can. In Indiana the record stands at 32’, but the Texans were all excited about the Guinness possibilities of their “spit” for it was the first “outdoor” cricket spit.   If they had “film at 11”, I am afraid I missed it.  Well, that’s what makes life so interesting, always something to look forward too. 

The sun has risen and I hear that the daytime crowd is warming up, for there are some species that call by day.  And, here’s another skill I might want to perfect in my dotage.  They say that each species has a different call, so some day I must get a high-powered hearing aid and see if I can tell the difference.  But now, there’s breakfast to be made. Happy “Noisy Spring” everyone!

Innocent Until Proven Guilty

That’s pretty much the doctrine that I am living by here, at least in the first year on our Texas property- Innocent Until Proven Guilty.  Of course, it was that doctrine that resulted in a dog that needs to be de-burred each day.  A doctrine that led to my medicine cabinet being full of things like “chigger-aid”, and most recently, it led to an overnight disappearance of grape leaves on our grape vines; yet, the doctrine is still in place.

Past blogs have dealt with the burrs and chiggers, and how I came to provide such a haven for both, but the disappearance of the grape leaves, and quite a bit of other foliage, I think you can guess.  The “Very Hungary Caterpillar” was, under this “Live and Let Live” policy, given free rein to enjoy all that lay before it, and it did. 

 Again, ignorance is to blame.  Very early in the spring, a moth caught my eye that was fairly small, but had the largest white spots on black wings, and orange markings on its legs that reminded me of pollen baskets on a bee.  My first thought was that it was a butterfly, for it’s colors were so striking, and it was out by day, and it had very slender antennae even enlarged on the ends-all hallmarks of a butterfly.  However, when I couldn’t find it in any butterfly book, I took a closer look, and saw that it didn’t have the “club” at the end of the antennae, just a thickened antennae and, more characteristically, it rested with its wings open.  Ah, a moth then.  Well, moths are far harder to ID for it seems there isn’t a big demand for Moth Identification books, so good luck when you want to know who is who. 

I tried googling it, putting in identifying marks, plus our location in Texas-nothing.  I did find out though that there are over 7,500 different moth species in Texas, and less than 500 butterflies.  Giving refuge to every caterpillar in the hope it will turn into some fabulous butterfly seems statistically unlikely then.  Plus, that explains the lack of moth Id books; that would be one large text to lug around.  I took to calling it a “Mortadella moth”, a nod to my Italian ancestry, the white circles on its wings, reminded me of the white fat globs in mortadella sausage.  Not that that really seemed to paint a clear picture to those I explained it too; apparently not a lot of mortadella connoisseurs here in Texas. 

Either way, it was a lovely little moth and seemed to fly up in clouds from the grape vine when I would pass by.  Charming.  Now run the tape ahead a few weeks, moths have disappeared but in their place, about a zillion caterpillars with striped black white and, orange bodies and charming yellow spotted faces, like yellow ladybugs with a caterpillar body, start showing up. Within a week, the once covered with leaves, grape vines, are stripped to the core. Stink.

My husband was able to find, in the, as yet, unpacked books, the Golden Guide Butterfly and Moth book from 1964 and don’t you know, there it is, the 8 Spotted Forester Moth, at least that is what it was called then, and what do the larva eat?  Grape and woodbine.  And they are double brooded.  Not sure what that means but it doesn’t sound good.  Due to all the fabulous rain we have been getting, the grapes are making a valiant stab at leaf growing, part two, but I fear the caterpillar may see their effort and raise it with, leaf eating, part two, if double brood means this cycle will repeat.  But even knowing the havoc they will wreak, could I really start whacking away at a moth that is so reminiscent of a sausage that hails from my family’s hometown of Bologna?  I think not. 

So we need to amend that- “Innocent even AFTER being proved Guilty”.  And to be honest, this is only one species of caterpillar from at least a dozen different kinds that covered my deck, crawled up our walls, shed their exoskeletons all over the place and were allowed to make it to the pupa stage, which they are now in, all in the name of science and a general curiosity to see what leads to what in this Lepidoptera rich yard I have inherited.  Expect more blogs on remorse to follow.  Well, remorse isn’t really the right word, for I am enjoying it all, even if some plants, perhaps, wish I would take a more protective role.  Enlightenment is maybe the better word.  Stay tuned then, more enlightenment to follow. 

How Green Is My Texas Valley (Yard really)

Very green, as it turns out. Vibrantly green. Again. I wrote of what an unexpected delight it was to realize, at the right season, I didn’t really live in a desert but in a jungle and then the heat and humidity arrived and the grass withered and life looked pretty crispy again. Oh, but Blessed Rain, Buckets of Rain, that’s what we’ve been treated to this week and it looks like spring all over again. The speed of growth here dazzles me. Tomatoes that I wouldn’t even have in the ground yet on Cape Cod, (planting by Mother’s Day was my goal but a tad risky, mostly they wanted you to wait until Memorial Day but who could wait that long when days were long and lovely?), already have baseball size tomatoes on them, banana peppers are long and practically touching the ground. Yikes, if all goes well, I will be canning by June.

Ironically, I have this stolen minute to write because a class I would have done on the freshwater marsh was canceled. The irony is, last week I was worried that there wouldn’t be enough water for the kids to scoop nymphs out of and now today, it was canceled due to floods! Go Texas, nothing in moderation apparently. And here is a wonderful bonus to the rain. A flower called a Rain Lily (Cooperia Pedunculata) seems to appear overnight whenever we have a heavy rain, and it can do this from spring to fall. Last year it must have waited patiently in its bulb for the rain that never came, but so far, this year I have seen it appear twice. What a treat to “walk the land” yesterday to find I had dozens of them scattered about both in beds and along the path. I know I have paid a price in chiggers and burrs for leaving a swath of plants alone that border the winding path, but from that 1 ft or so width of wildness I have been treated to Rain lilies, Mexican Hats, Texas dandelions, Stemless primrose, Prairie Verbena, etc and so have mitigated the pain of the burrs and chiggers. Back to the Rain Lilies, they are also called Fairy lilies and I wonder if that is because they begin to unfold their buds at night, then, are in full bloom by day. They truly appear so suddenly and so completely that they have a magic quality about them. And they disappear just as quickly. I went to take pictures today, after the rain, of the ones I saw yesterday but they were already on the wane. Of course, something like 2” fell in one hour and any delicate petal would have taken a beating I suppose.

Still I spotted some others that are just budding, so I will try to capture a picture tomorrow then. I also look crazy because I set out every trash bucket and 5 gallon container I had to catch all this glorious water. We have a well, so it isn’t that we pay the high water prices others do, but I know how precious rain is and this ought to provide at least one, free, fruit tree watering without feeling guilty about the aquifer. I really need to look into buying those large rain barrels. We have a “rain chain” which at first glance I took to be a most pathetic Tarzan swing, but what a job it does at delivering all the rain from the roof into the barrel below-full in no time. Like I said, I defiantly need bigger barrels. Well, I have squandered much of my free time from the canceled class on trying to make the pictures I took of the yard into a slide show to send friends. I made it, even added music, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to send it, or where it is actually saved. Really, this old dog might be learning new tricks of which plant is which but remains steadfastly untrainable in the technological arts. If I manage to include some pictures of my “how green is my TX yard” then consider it nigh upon miraculous.

I can’t count on too many, “cancelled due to rain” days, but if another comes along the blog that’s clogging my brain at the moment is one about the incredible array of locust,

grasshoppers, walking sticks

etc that hang out on my deck daily. First I have to figure out who they are, what they do, and then I can share that with you.

It all takes time though, and what do I keep saying I have little of –time. But this full life with little time is suiting me well so far. Some hot unbearable day after I get caught up inside, we shall just run the tape backwards and share all the things that wowed me in these past fecund months. Also a “Hats off to Lepidopterists” blog awaits writing. Enough Pat, enough.

Giving Succor to the Enemy

It started with the plants. Newly arrived in January, trying to acclimate to life, not by the sea, but in a desert, or what I perceived to be a desert, I greeted each new little plant that made a showing on our land with delight and admiration. As winter turned to spring, and a Texas spring seemed to begin in February, more and more unknowns began sprouting up. I was delighted to spot the iconic Blue Bonnet in my own yard, and the reddish rosette ground cover began to shoot up wonderful swathes of purple flowers, Storks bill.

Fabulous! And what is this sweet yellow flower that runs throughout all the others and covers the bare rock? I didn’t know, but by buddying up and growing among the celebrity Blue Bonnets, it would surely be allowed to remain. Ah, but time would prove that that was a foolhardy decision. For what was that sweet yellow flower? A burr of come kind, a burr that would put out thousands of burrs, a burr that would make my dogs life miserable and add 30 minutes of burr-picking time to my day each morning. I was looking for an image of it, and thought it was Sand burr;

the scourge of many a Texas field, but that plant looks even more deadly. These burrs lack the long piercing part, although I have retrieved one of those from my dogs foot. It stopped him in his tracks. Another plant allowed to go its merry way, for a time anyways, out of my slow learning curve, was something, I think, is called Star thistle.

I can’t find it in my books, but I had mowed around it, gave it extra water, expecting some lovely flower to emerge when someone at the nature center pointed it out to me and said, if I had this, I should pull it immediately, bag it, incinerate it, call in a priest etc., etc. And here I had been nurturing the little dear. So each day I went out to hand-pull bags of it. I wear a tennis elbow brace now, thanks to this thistle, but it is mostly gone. I am trying to stay away from herbicides, and there is something satisfying with pulling things out by the roots. Still, it always gives me just a tinge of guilt to realize how judgmental we all can be about who should be coddled and who executed in our yards. But there you have it, if it’s a hindrance to us, out it goes. I DID leave the Texas thistle

along the fence line for I know goldfinch love to both eat the seeds and line their nests with it, and the flower is this wonderful huge violet ball. I wish I had the Musk thistle

in my yard, but I haven’t noticed it yet. HUGE purple flower head, gorgeous. I also make way for the Texas Dandelion, a lovely, pale yellow flower with dark streaks that lines the outside of the stony walkway where the mower can’t reach anyways. And the Stemless Evening Primrose,( “a common lawn invader” the books say- invade away, imagine a saucer of yellow and scatter that all over the lawn)

and the Prairie Verbena, and Winecup

and so many others that were worthy of the succor I gave them. Giving succor to the enemy in the form of letting every hairy, undulating, caterpillar have its way here will also probably prove to have been a mistake. But that requires another blog entirely. Now, I need to get at it: tomatoes to be tied up, (“insta-fruit” seems to be the Texas way, for the garden is growing faster than any other I ever tended), a dog to be walked, birds to be fed, and of course burrs to be picked. Clearly it is a full life here in Texas, fuller, by far, than I ever imagined.