Wordless Wednesday: Gulf Fritillary

Say hello to my little friend!

Over the weekend, I was photographing a salvia plant in a pot next to the outside wall of my house. When I uploaded the pictures to my computer, I got a surprise.

There was a crack in the mortar between two of the bricks and, in that crack, a green anole had found a resting place.

Nature abhors a vacuum, we are told. If a niche exists in Nature, some animal or plant or maybe both will find it and utilize it. This little anole found such a niche and made himself right at home in it.

Monday Mystery: What is it? (UPDATE)

When I first saw it flitting across my yard, I thought it was a strange butterfly. Then it landed on a pot of pansies and I got a closer look and realized that it was no butterfly.

So it was clear what it wasn't, but not so clear to me just what it was. It still isn't clear. Do you have any ideas? What is it?

UPDATE:  See comment below. A reader has solved my mystery! The insect is Melanchroia chephise, the White-tipped Black or Snowbush Spanworm  Here is a link to many more images. It is a moth which is endemic from Florida to Texas, south to Paraguay.

Silent Sunday: Signs of spring

The end is near

Photo courtesy of Huffington Post

Punxsutawney Phil has spoken. His prediction is that spring is coming soon. No six more weeks of winter ahead for us! The furry critter came out of his burrow this morning and didn't see his shadow, so we can get on with planning our spring gardens.

Phil lives in Pennsylvania, of course, and I'm not sure how much validity his prediction has for Southeast Texas. If he had emerged from his burrow in my backyard this morning, he would definitely have seen a shadow. My world is full of bright sunshine. Maybe he would have blinked once and scurried back inside. On the other hand, it is 70 degrees out there. Perhaps he would have just curled up for a nap in the sun.

It seems that all the signs of Nature, not just sleepy groundhogs but also birds, butterflies, flowers, insects and frogs, are pointing toward an early spring. Actually, in my part of the world, we have not had much of a winter, really only three or four weeks when you needed a sweater to go outside, and now that February is here, it seems very unlikely that we will have many - if any - more weeks like that.  

Back in November, I wrote about finding a woolly bear caterpillar at my doorstep and about how the color of it predicted a long, cold winter ahead. Well, the winter that we've actually had has been enough to make me lose faith in woolly bears. In the weeks ahead, we'll see if faith in groundhogs is vindicated.

This week in the garden - #49

"Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle ... a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl.  And the anticipation nurtures our dream."-  Barbara Winkler

This week in my garden, I can see the miracle beginning to happen. Buds on the fruit trees are getting fatter every day. The leaves of the amaryllises are poking above ground. The old loropetalum is full of its fringy fuchsia blooms. A few of the daffodils look like they might actually bloom for me this year. In the garage, under my grow lights, the little tomatoes, eggplants and peppers that I started from seeds are growing and promise to make healthy plants by the time I'm ready to plant them in the garden.

And the gardener herself is beginning to get antsy, wanting to get outside and get her hands into the soil. It's been hard because I've still been a bit under the weather from a respiratory infection this week. But the weather is getting better every day, and so am I. Next week I may actually burst into bloom!

Wordless Wednesday: The queen is back