This year was a hard year with no rains coming for 8 weeks during the months of April and May. Virtually the entire peach crop of Georgia was lost due to drought drop, and the rabbits in my yard ate zinnias and other plants they normally left alone. This meant that most tree frogs in… Continue reading Baby Tree Frogs 2023
Patrolled by Owls
When you sew native pollinator seeds, stop mowing, and allow natural meadow to emerge an replace a lawn, you will have many visitors. I’ve noticed that since my yard now has many songbirds and chipmunks and shrews and rabbits, there is usually a hawk or owl watching it hungrily. Needless to say, I see many… Continue reading Patrolled by Owls
Mississippi Valley Chert Gravel Fossils
The chert gravel deposits of the lower Mississippi River valley were formed by glacial and alluvial processes, which tumbled and smoothed stones from all over the drainage of that great basin, from Montana to Minnesota to Pennsylvania and every place in between. The fossils found in the chert gravels of the the lower Mississippy valley… Continue reading Mississippi Valley Chert Gravel Fossils
Seed Harvest 2022
Each year I feel anxious until I have some seed gathered for next year. The tangles I have growing in the front an back are pretty dense in terms of the number of species of vegetables and flowers. The vegetables include tomatillos, groundcherries, peppers, squash, pumpkins, okra, and several varieties of heirloom tomatoes. The flower… Continue reading Seed Harvest 2022
Sunflowers and Butterflies
The front and back yards are tangles of heirloom vegetables and wildflowers of many different types, and that draws a lot of butterflies, especially the large yellow tiger swallowtails. Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia rotundifolia) and various varieties of sunflowers dominate about half the area with full sunlight, with cosmos, coneflowers, and zinnias making up most of… Continue reading Sunflowers and Butterflies
Eutrophic Collapse
Eutrophication is when the phytoplankton population explodes and depletes all the oxygen and kill all or most of the animals. This happens when nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients build up and cause the algae to bloom. The ecology in Experiment Tank #6 crashed from Eutrophic Collapse. How did it get overwhelmed with nitrogen and phosphorus? Because… Continue reading Eutrophic Collapse
Flower Meadow & Rate of Change
The large maple in the back yard was home and pantry to all sorts of birds and animals, and so I wasn’t happy taking it down, but it needed doing. The maple was asymmetrical and leaning over the house. The issue was using a lot of energy to change things very fast and move all… Continue reading Flower Meadow & Rate of Change
Male Rhinoceros Beetle
This is a male specimen of the eastern Hercules beetle (Dynastes tityus), a species of rhinoceros beetle native to the eastern US. I saw one of these only a handful of times growing up, and I was amazed each time. I associate them with years when June is rainy, and the plants are fat and… Continue reading Male Rhinoceros Beetle
Young Adult Green Frog (Lithobates clamitans)
This is a young adult Green Frog. It is much smaller than the old blue-faced males in the ponds, but it is still an adult and reproductively active, capable of laying a clutch of several hundred eggs in a night:
Experiment Tanks
I had some downcycled plastic barrels that I had previously used as rain barrels before discovering how much maintenance it took to ensure mosquitoes weren’t reproducing in them. I cut these in half and plugged any holes and set up eight of these as breeding tanks for mosquito fish and tree frogs on my back… Continue reading Experiment Tanks