Wordless Wednesday

The Bug Mother

Yesterday, I visited a friend who calls herself a Bug Mother. Her “children” are Giant Spiny Australian Leaf bugs (Extatosoma Tiaratum). Right now she has nine of them; three are babies, three are molting and three are young adolescents. I took a photo of her holding one of the adolescent bugs.The adults will be twice this size.

Below are links to two articles she wrote about her bugs last year. I find them fascinating.

Becoming a Bug Mother Apr-2014 Page 12-15
Follow-up to “Becoming a Bug Mother” Aug 2014 Page 10-12

266,000 and More to Come!

Last Saturday, twelve of our local members of the PNW GreenFriends Litter Project met at Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Our goal, to pick up as many cigarette butts as we could in an hour and a half. The Litter Project was formed in 2011. Most of our members come from the Pacific Northwest part of the United States, but we also have members from other parts of the U.S. and around the world.

When I started picking up litter, I thought that cigarette filters were harmless cotton and often passed them by in favor of the bigger pieces of litter. Soon I learned they were anything but harmless. They are made from cellulose acetate tow and they can take decades to degrade. Investigators in a San Diego State University study once discovered that if you put fathead minnows and top smelt in a liter of water that also contains a single cigarette butt, half of the fish will die. Continue reading “266,000 and More to Come!” →

September Garden Moments

My one melon. The plant was given to me late in the season by friend Saroja! Ymmmm. I wonder how many of the tiny melons it would have produced if it had the whole summer to grow.

Almost everything in the garden has finished producing. But I can start preparing for next year; in this case harvesting bush bean seeds.

The plant that is doing its best to ignore the season is the one that produces the big red and yellow dahlias. In the many years it grew in my back yard, the plant produced one flower a year. When I moved it to the sunny front yard two years ago, it took off! The photo on the right is of a part of the plant that was knocked to the ground by wind and rain a few weeks ago. It still is blooming! And so is the rest of it.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Monochromatic

The pictures in this post are of a fountain, and the area surrounding the fountain, at Cal Anderson Park in Seattle. The white substance you see is water cascading down the structure.

Written for Weekly Photo Challenge: Monochromatic

What Is Your Guess? (The answer to the mystery has been added.)

Tell me about the photo I used for this week’s Wordless Wednesday. What do you think it is?

On Friday I will put the answer here…..

Answer: A few days ago I used half of a small jalapeno pepper from my garden. It was dark green at the time. A few days later, I noticed that the remainder of the pepper was turning red and there were tiny fruit flies on it. I was surprised since it had never occurred to me that fruit flies would be attracted to something that was hot instead of sweet. If you look closely at the original picture you will see that there are four fruit flies visible. Two are dark, one is light and for the fourth only one wing is visible.

Wordless Wednesday

The Glory of Nature

Of all the flowers in my garden, the ones I love the most are the purple asters. When I arrived home yesterday, I noticed that that plant was brimming with small bees. I pulled out my camera and started snapping photos. I was amazed when I looked at them later. Such incredible beauty.

Playing with Filters

I love the true beauty of nature so much that I almost never think of using the filters. Today I decided to take one of my favorite photos from this season and see what it would look like if I applied filters to it.