Love That Mushroom Compost!

There is a mushroom farm in the neighboring county and we have in the past bought some of their compost from various venders. It has been about three years since we did this. So it was time. On a recent  Saturday, we went to a landscaping company just a mile down the road and got a shovelful.

It is GOOD stuff, though fragrant.

Once home, we broadcasted it into bushes and butterfly gardens and bulb beds, using pitchforks, shovels, buckets and wheelbarrows.

We are creating new beds around the new screen porch and so we put it there too.

On Sunday, B tilled it in to these new beds to mix it with the builder’s sand.

We are on our way to some good growing.

Big Spider

There is a gap somewhere in the screen porch that allows critters to get in. When we find them,  we carry them out. This spider was quite large.

The multipurpose net was just the thing to take this one out.

Though it does have a fiddle-shape on its back, I don’t think it was a brown recluse because they are usually much smaller.

Aerial Acro-bats

On this perfectly gorgeous evening, three bats accompanied me on my neighborhood walk. One was larger than the other two, so I am not sure if there may have been more than one species. They kept me entertained the whole time with their amazing aerial acro-bat-ics that rivaled any air show I have ever attended.

Mailbox Monday: Okay! Whatever!

This one is down the street from us and we have often wondered about it.

And this eclectic collage is different:

Watch Your Step With Walkingsticks

I was cleaning out some cast iron plants (Aspidistra elatior), and came across this walking stick pair. The male is really hard to see as he is tiny relative to the female. While I thought they looked like walking sticks, I was not positive and so I wrote my resource at IFAS and here is his response:

It is the twostriped walkingstick, Anisomorpha buprestoides.  In the case of the pairs, they are mating, and the smaller one on top is the male.  It's a common walkingstick in much of Florida, but you do have to be careful with them.  When disturbed, they will spray an acidic defensive chemical from the end of their abdomen.  They often aim for the eyes, and the chemical can cause pain and possibly temporary blindness in small animals.  Pets often experience this.  They feed on foliage, probably of various hardwood trees and shrubs.  I've kept them in captivity for a while and fed them oak leaves.  In the populations around the Ocala National Forest, the stripes are a much brighter shade of cream/white than in other parts of the state.  There's an excellent article about this species on the web at   http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/creatures/misc/walkingstick.htm

 

I had no idea.

The webpage describes how awful the spray was for one man’s eye.

So, keep an eye out for walkingsticks ---and then to keep your eyes, keep your distance.

Such a Pretty Scar

While hiking at the coast, we noticed this old cedar tree  had recently had a large limb torn off. All that brown on the ground is the limb.

But look at the beautiful and fragrant wood that was revealed.

We were amused to see an opportunistic palm was growing in the fork. A bird had probably dined on one of the palm fruits and then perched there and made the seed deposit.

P-P-P-Piglet Prickly Pear

A couple of weeks ago, B and I took a Sunday afternoon trip to the lighthouse. The prickly pears were blooming. Actually, I guess that would be “fruiting,” as the blooms are gone now.

This cactus reminded me of Piglet from the Winnie the Pooh stories.