As I worked in the garden a while back, a gulf fritillary butterfly came and landed on my pants leg. I stood very still and took a picture or two. After a while, I decided to go on with my work.
To my surprise, it hung on…
It stayed with me (on me) for over 10 minutes while I walked around picking beans and cutting flowers. A nice encounter!
These garden colors are like the summer temperatures: hot, hot, hot!
Notice the little critter legs coming around the right side of the last marigold.
B has been an insulin-dependent diabetic since 1982. He takes two shots a day. That is 730 shots a year. Just this week, he was preparing an injection, when he made an interesting discovery. The syringe he had just unwrapped had no needle.
That is the first and only defect he has ever found in the thousands of needles he has used. Not a bad record for the syringe producer!
On a Sunday drive recently, we flushed a covey of quail.
Well, a covey of one, anyway.
We had earlier flushed some very young ones. This one was alone and walked down the road a bit before finally stepping into the weedy cover along the side.
Carolina wrens will nest in just about anything here, including the pocket of a raincoat left to dry. (Been there, done that.) They love to nest in wreaths on our door and hanging baskets, even the newspaper box. This sad little impatiens used to be beautiful. You can see the empty nest in the middle. You can also see the defoliation. This was not done by the birds. Wrens, like all birds, bring food to their babies. This defoliation is the result of one live caterpillar that did not get eaten and instead ate up the impatiens plant.
Once it had eaten most of the leaves, its cover would have been very limited. I wonder if it was finally discovered and eaten before the babies fledged.
