Sep 21
Came across this guy on my walk a few days ago. Shot with my Canon S1 compact in very low light so the quality wasn’t great but one click of a preset in Topaz Labs new B&W Effects and it’s not bad! The software is available for $29.99 for a short time. Worthwhile in my opinion.
Sep 20
I may have mistakenly relocated a Queen caterpillar the other day. I thought it was looking for food (my Milkweed had been devoured) but my friend Laura M. told me it might just have been ready to morph. If that’s the case, the caterpillar is probably hunkered down on the new plant. I couldn’t find it the other day but will look harder the next time I walk by his new home.
Anyway….I decided to look for two new Milkweed plants and found some healthy 5 gallon specimens at Black Mountain Nursery (Dynamite very near Tatum). As I was getting ready to plant them, I found quite a surprise! One plant has a chrysalis and the other had a caterpillar…both Queens. Yipee! These aren’t the greatest of photos but they will do as a start to documenting their progress. From now on, I’ll use my SLR to get some good detail. My butterfly education continues! Thanks again, Laura 🙂
Sep 19
Any time I’m using tools, I’m happy and I got to use one of my favorites today….my pink fence post driver! It’s exciting (to me, anyway) to be able to put a steel post into our dry/hard Arizona soil with not too much effort. My project turned out to be tougher than I thought, though. This tree has never been able to withstand the strong winds we get a couple of times a year so it has been tied down for the last 5 years. I got tired of tripping or falling over the wire tie downs so I asked my metal artist friend, Joan Waters, to help me figure out something a little less annoying. We put our heads together and came up with a tree collar with supports. The tough part was trying to get the driver over the poles because they were so close to the trunk but I did it. All in all, it looks a lot better than the wires. It remains to be seen if it can support the tree in high winds but I’m hopeful.
Sep 16
Sadly, I could not find the Queen caterpillar this morning. This is actually the second time I’ve tried to relocate one of them to another plant with more for them to eat. The first time was in 1999 and I put it on another plant in my yard but in that case too, it didn’t stay. It might have been my imagination but when I relocated this latest one, it seemed disoriented. I had visions of it trying to find its way home! 🙁
Lessons learned. First I’m relocating my Milkweed to a non grub infested area of my yard so they can grow large and full of flowers. Second….I will let nature take it’s course from now on!
Sep 14
One part of my yard has an infestation of turf grubs which have probably come from the nearby golf course. I’ve tried every natural pesticide to no avail. What these grubs do is eat plant roots which doesn’t kill the plant but stunts its growth. For instance, I’ve tried for 5 years to establish some Milkweed (asclepias subulata) but the plants have barely grown in all that time. Even so, I typically end up with at least one caterpillar a year. This year there was only one bloom and very few offshoots so the caterpillar (a Queen) was out of food very quickly. I remembered seeing a good sized Milkweed plant along a path I hike every day so this morining, I decided to cut off the stem my caterpillar was on and relocate him/her. It was about a mile and I’m sure everyone wondered what I was carrying. I found the plant and waited for the caterpillar to start moving and it did crawl over to the other plant. However, it seemed to know it wasn’t home because it moved back and forth, up and down as if to be smelling. I will go back tomorrow morning to see if its still there. I’m hopeful it makes the journey to becoming a Queen Butterfly!
Sep 11
I found these tracks after our last big rain and thought they looked like Raccoon but since we’ve never seen one in all the years we’ve lived up here, I wasn’t sure. I checked the Arizona Game and Fish website and it does look like they might have been made by a Raccoon. They say they are typically in riparian areas or where there is an abundant source of water. There is a large wash with a spring in between our neighborhood and the Preserve but maybe they like the swimming pools in the neighborhood more 🙂
Sep 10
Last year, one of the hard working Preserve maintenance volunteers spotted an area with a large population of Devil’s Claw and told us about it (thanks Joni!) so as part of the McDowell Sonoran Preserve Flora Survey, we documented it this summer. I didn’t get as many photos as I planned but I did get a shot of the pretty pink bloom and also of the very cool seed pods (captured yesterday). You aren’t likely to see this plant while hiking as they are typically in wide washes which are usually off limits to hikers. Seeing unique plants like this is a great reason to join the flora survey! The survey starts up again in a couple of weeks. If you’re interested, contact Melanie at the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy. Phone number: 480-998-7971.
Sep 3
Almost forgot to post a photo! Here’s a shot from my office window last night. I then subtracted a little color.
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