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.

What's Eating You?

Or more to the point- what’s eating ME? I am itching as I write this, and after some research, I not only know who the perpetrator is, but it’s entire life cycle. So, of course, I am going to share it with you. Anyone who has lived in the South or West, or probably even the Midwest, will start to itch along with me as soon as they hear the answer. Chiggers (Trombicula alfreddugesi)- those omnipresent, microscopic, aren’t-felt-until-three-hours- later, flesh eating, members of the mite family.

Not a Cape Cod issue, for they aren’t fond of winters, but welcome to Texas, they LOVE it here. And by letting my grass and wildflowers grow I set up a pretty perfect habitat for them. How kind of me. At first, I thought these random red welts were from spider bites. We are all quick to blame spiders, aren’t we? Yet, I don’t know too many microscopic spiders so, how I thought they might have snuck up and bit me, is a bit of a mystery. Actually, a chigger is a mite, which puts it into the same family as spiders, so I was close.

Of course, everyone and his mother here knows about chiggers, but it is interesting how many false facts are involved. No, they do not burrow under your skin, nor do they drink your blood, and really, painting the bite with nail polish isn’t a medically sanctioned cure. What they DO do is pretty fascinating. Ready to hear more than you ever wanted to about chiggers?

They actually only feed on living things when they are in their larval state, and this, just one little, three-day meal is all they ask. Then they will be on their way becoming nymphs and adults who are happy to eat plants and other insects. Really, just one meal, not a lot to ask, is it? And that one meal is obtained by looking for a tender little spot in say, a pore or a hair follicle where they can inject you with saliva that dissolves your skin cells. See, they aren’t eating blood; they are sucking up your dissolved skin tissue. Think of yourself as their favorite Slurpee.

Your skin, however, is pretty put out by the effrontery of this and quickly hardens the cells around the bite. That is what makes the welt you see, your own body did that. “Thank you very much” thinks the chigger, for now, it can sit there alternately injecting its enzyme and slurping up your cells through this straw your body so helpfully provided. After about three days it is sated and drops off going on its way. You however, continue to itch for up to 10 days because of those hardened cells your body made and until they dissolve and get reabsorbed into your skin you will know they are there. Especially at 2 am.

So what is an outdoor-lover like myself to do? We did cut more of the grass back trying to limit their habitat, but many wildflowers are still blooming, so the edge along the path is still left high for their sake. God bless Google for it gave me a whole retinue of things to try as a preventative. Such a retinue that it becomes another major reason my time is so limited.

Each time I come in from gardening, which I now do in long pants, work boots with socks pulled up a la, Cape Cod tick prevention style, I first use a towel to briskly wipe down arms and legs. Did I mention they are 1/150th of an inch wide? One would think a towel could brush them off. Then I remove all of those clothes and wipe down arms and legs with a cotton ball with alcohol on it. Then, if time permits, shower, change into all new clothes and go about the day. And although I have faithfully done this each day, each night I have discovered new bites. Not legions of bites as I see in the rather disgusting medical pictures, which by the way, I am having the good taste not to include here. Mine don’t coat my body, but do make a nice dot-to-dot pattern.

Here is something else I love, one article said the tricky part is they could get on you and zip all over the place reaching your head in a mere 15 minutes for, and I love this “they have long legs”. Now I am trying to picture how anything 1/150th of an inch could have LONG legs. But they are right for they do seem to get around- I have bites everywhere. They seem to especially favor those hard to get to areas where the “sun don’t shine” and no one should itch in public.

So, I guess I exalted too quickly on the lack of ticks. And retroactively, I can see that picking off a mere thirty ticks a day from my dog wasn’t quite as time consuming as my new regime. Ah well, there really is no paradise this side of the real paradise so I shouldn’t be surprised and really, just like my first scorpion bite, it is all sort of fascinating in a “your not in Kansas anymore” way. OK chigger lecture over, back to your previously scheduled life.

"Back to the Days of Christopher Robin"

You probably have to be a card-carrying member of AARP to have that phrase set off a song in your head. Loggins and Messina wasn’t it? A number one hit a long time ago, and lately the chorus plays happily in my head each morning as I think about ALL there is to do in the yard. For you “Under 50” folks I will include the lyrics but you should Google it so the catchy tune can be embedded in your waking mind also.

“So, help me if you can I’ve got to get back to the House at Pooh Corner by one
You’d be surprised there’s so much to be done
Count all the bees in the hive; chase all the clouds from the sky
Back to the days of Christopher Robin and Pooh”

You see, in all my previous homes, and thanks to the Army there have been about 14 of them, I generally had variations on a theme of a normal, suburban-sized yard. The geographical location was always changing, taking us from soil in VA that was mostly clay and seeds needed to join Gold’s gym in order to have the “oomph” to push up through it, to New Mexico, where a neighbor did his gardening with a flame thrower (the all-lava, rock yard) and the Cape where sand and salt and so much shade defined what would and would not grow. But who could have foreseen that this move to Texas with its limestone and caliche soil would result in the biggest and best yard I have ever had! All thanks, as I have pointed out before, to the hard work of the previous owner who obviously loved to spend all her time and money outside-a kindred spirit.

But the trick is, a yard like this does take time, which I happily give, but because I also leapt into many a volunteer position to help me feel at home here, I am finding “writing time” is what is missing. But there is SO much to write about! So many things change each day. For the past month we have been inundated with Red Admiral butterflies, but now, as quickly as they came, they seem to have, practically overnight, disappeared. For in the insect world, a month is often all you get as an adult. Come out of that pupa, find a mate, enjoy life, and then fade away. At least that is the Red Admiral’s life span. Hopefully another generation has been laid on the nettles and by June they should be dining at the feeder again.

Ah, the feeder, you see that is why “there is so much to be done”. It’s not enough just to try to weed, mulch, plant and water the many flowerbeds and vegetable garden, but there are so many critters to be fed. Always, my Italian heritage raises its “mangia, mangia” (eat, eat) head. On the Cape, I was a slave to not only, birds in the form of sunflower feeders, thistle feeder, hummingbird feeders, suet feeders etc but also to the chipmunks and squirrels who would practically come bang on the windows if they found the larder bare.

Here in TX, I have all of the above, but have switched out chipmunk food ( a moment of silence here, I still grieve their loss) for butterfly food, and lizard treats and cleaning up after the raccoons. By the way, no sooner had I written the words, “let the raccoons have the spoils each day” of the butterfly fruit remains, then they managed to climb up the tree the feeder hung in and broke both the branch and the feeder and, on the way down, took out a window box. Cleaning that entire mess added to the “Christopher Robin” chores yesterday.

Plus, each day I must “walk the land”. The very first month I arrived I started volunteering at the library and found a book written in the 40’s by a Texas naturalist. In it, he said it was imperative to “walk the land” for a good year before you decided to buy. Feel it under your shoes, know it inside and out. Well, I think I had “walked the land” a total of 30 minutes before I put in my vote that we should buy it, so I am making up for lost time now, “walking the land” not once, but at least 3x daily. It’s amazing how many new things pop up; a new flower, a new emerging fruit on a tree and, amazing how many things threaten to expire daily if I don’t water them. There is a chore I didn’t have on the Cape, at least not daily- watering. I miss God doing my watering for me in the form of rain. The previous owner had an elaborate hose-timer system going, and now, we have bought the needed manifolds that make one hose four and the timers to go with them, but assembling it all will take my engineer husband and he has less free time than I do, so this could take awhile. Meanwhile, its “bring the water Gunga Din” and so, more time slips through my fingers.

But I am NOT complaining, although it may sound that way. Picture me doing all of the above with that lovely song playing in my head and a smile on my face. Oops, but now, not only must I feed everything, but I am “ON” to help at an all-day, Earth Day event at the school on post at Ft Sam. Combining my, “so much to be done” C Robin character, with my constant imitation of the White rabbit from Alice in wonderland, I must run. Hope you have a day that calls upon you to “count all the bees in the hive, chase all the clouds from the sky”. It may all take time, but it is so therapeutic.

Life in Abundance

One of my favorite Bible verses, a "God's Greatest Hits" sort of verse, has always been John 10:10, "I have come that you may have life, and have it to the full". Some versions I have read said that "you will have life in abundance". I love that and presently I am living that. Life in abundance like I never imagined. I owe some serious "mea culpa's" to Texas, at least to the Hill Country part of Texas, in Spring. When I first arrived in January, it was all "beige on beige" but as the rain came, thank you God, and spring progressed, it was no longer "beige on beige" but blue, scarlet, yellow, orange, magenta, pink etc on green. Gorgeous. Abundant flowers, abundant color.


And with the arrival of so many flowers came an abundance of Lepidoptera. Butterflies are everywhere! Actually,even when it was "B on B" in January and I was walking around in my DOA (Depressed on Arrival) state, I was amazed to see a good number of Sulphurs
flitting over the bare winter landscape. For that matter, they helped to lift my spirits in those first weeks; butterflies in January, unheard of in my latitude.

Then in March, Red Admirals arrived and their numbers keep increasing. I have said it before, but that is the fascinating thing about your first year in any new area. You just aren't sure what to expect when, and what is normal. Are there always hundreds of Red Admirals filling the bushes and trees in March and April? You would think some major fleet landed somewhere. They are striking butterflies with those bold stripes of orange, and they cover a blooming acacia tree in my front yard so thoroughly, a quick glance would make you think THEY were the flowers.

The previous owner had left a ceramic butterfly feeder and, what entertainment this is! I have found a great use for my overripe bananas. When I first put them out, they were covered with an insect called a Coreid bug.
Not only did did this bug arrive to dine, but they seemed to always find it the most romantic spot of all. Avert your eyes children. Mystery was solved when I read that they lay their eggs in fruit. Well that was a a relief, for at first, I thought they were assassin bugs lying in wait for the butterflies. Well their honeymoon time is over and now, on any given day I have about 30 Red Admirals, and as of April, many Question Mark butterflies, jockeying for position on the rotting pears, pineapples, bananas,or whatever fruit I have going bad in the fridge.

Raccoons have recently discovered that they can shimmy up the tree to clean out whatever the butterflies failed to eat and all in all this is working well. I thought about bringing the fruit in at night, but the other thing that arrived in abundance is fruit flies, so to bring them in would be to daily stage one of those science fair projects of raising fruit flies. I think not. Better to just let the raccoons have the spoils.

Of course, you can't have an abundance of butterflies without an equal or greater abundance of caterpillars which, some day, I might not be quite as delighted about. They are climbing up the walls, falling in my hair, eating up my marigolds, dining on the Virginia Creeper, crawling on the deck and of course, dropping their fras (poop) everywhere. But thanks to the abundance of leaves, I don't feel threatened yet, and there are so many fascinating kinds, kinds I had only read about, that I am enthralled. I have the Swallowtail caterpillar with the big fake eyes on it's backside, also the kind that mimics bird poop
so that it will look less appetizing, the kind that hold themselves rigid as a stick and some large, white, fuzzy ones that look related to Pekingese! Some visiting children got very exercised about them calling them Asps and acting like one touch would kill me. Probably with such long hairs they would be irritating. But consider this all joy! I love it.

I could go on and on. Walking sticks hang in each corner of the porch, daddy long legs hold major conventions under the blanket that still covers the well, scorpions sleep under rocks, snakes are beginning to show themselves and so far they come in peace. Lizards scooting across the deck are trying to fill the void of my much missed chipmunks and birds are nesting everywhere. Abundance, Abundance, Abundance! The only think I don't have in abundance is time so I had better stop. Backed up blogs have been clogging my brain but there just has been no time to write them. One down, several to go. Life is full of new discoveries to share here, so stay tuned, many more need to go from mind to paper whenever I can find the time. But right now I have insects to feed.