A SERIES OF SMALL EVENTS

Everything that happens in this tale is due to a single small event ... a "small bang" if you will.

This single event was my decision not to mow two small Passion Flower vines (Passiflora incarnata) while flying around on my son in laws' 54-inch cut, zero-turn mower. 

As I zipped around the "house yard" that day, I spotted two young Passion Flower vines about 8 feet apart and lying prone on the ground.

It only took a moment to hop off the mower, grab a few pieces of cut bamboo and stick them in the ground next to each vine.

Once the vines were vertical, I continued mowing, confident that they knew what to do next.

 It only took a day or two to prove me right. It was a positively Thigmotropic moment.

Now I knew they'd be okay.

Both vines latched on to the makeshift trellis I had provided and got busy doing photosynthetical stuff.

Soon I was rewarded with the incredibly complicated beauty of the Passion Flower blossom.

I wasn't the only one rewarded by the beautiful blossoms of course.
I think this is one of our Cicada Killer Wasps, but I haven't bothered to officially ID it yet.  

 Of course, flowers being sex organs, it wasn't long before one of the vines got knocked up.

A few days later a female Gulf Fritillary butterfly found the Passion Flowers and placed her yellow eggs here and there on both vines.  
The eggs are truly tiny so this is actually smaller than a small event.

Not long after the eggs arrived, so did tiny punk-rocker larvae. Eating and growing constantly and molting most prolifically.
This photo shows a newly molted Gulf Fritillary cat next to its darker, smaller former skin.

 The larvae turn from black to orange as they grow. This might seem like a big event, but orange is the new black after all.

What happened next was a big event masquerading as a small event. The first of the Gulf Fritillary cats felt the metamorphic tug of its genes and began pupating. 

Of course, there were more of these beauties along the way. 

Then a new guy showed up and he was hungry,... really, really hungry.

He devoured this very important leaf ... right up to the attachment to which I had become attached ...

Something had to be done.

The new guy was so close to eating or cutting off the pupating guy that I caused another small event. 
I moved him to the neighboring Passion Flower vine where he could eat with abandon, but not threaten the changeling.

I kept checking on the pupating progress, hoping to catch the emergence. That was a long shot I know, and as predicted I missed it.

 Other small events in this chain of ... well, small events happened not due to the Passion Flower, but simply due to the presence of the bamboo stake.

This tiny native Anole seemed to love sunning there.

So who else showed up in the passion zone?

Let's see ... the ants were there from day one, patrolling the vine and maybe benefitting from what looked like nectaries along the stem. (Haven't checked that out, but they looked like the nectaries on Partridge Pea.)

One morning a small brown Preying Mantis showed up. I tried to photograph him, but he kept putting the vine between us.

A native snail, the White Lip Globe Snail (Mesodon thyroidus) also arrived at passion central and was eagerly devouring leaves before I plucked him off.

He was sent on a high arc trajectory into the surrounding woods. 

Something seems to have eaten the small developing fruits long before ripeness. My guess is that was the work of our deer, which are NOT small, ... except when compared to deer from almost any other state.

I suppose a tale about a series of small events should not grow too big or drag on too long, so it ends (almost) here.

Sometimes the smallest thing ... like an impulse decision to not mow a "weed" can result in wonderful chain reactions, a few of which I got to witness by dropping by once in a while.

(Imagine what I missed!)

Ahhh, you're welcome little buddy.

Dewsday Morning

Saturday was cool and rainy, so I took a photo walk without the Bear dog.

He doesn't have the patience for nature photography.

The rain had walked this path before me.

Miss Guara wearing her diamond necklace.

The palmetto that I burned in last winter's micro-controlled burn is thriving and making more frondifinous fuel for this winter's burn.

I have a lot of old laurel oaks that apparently are near the end of their short (in tree terms) life span. Every once in awhile, one just ups and quits, like this one did about a year ago.

It's mostly a main trunk now. The branches have succumbed to gravity and lie around the base.

There is a mad scramble for light going on as holly, bay, and oak saplings race for the sun.

The wild persimmon tree was all "Fally this, and fally that."

I tried to ignore her, but she kept showing off.

Spider Structural Support, Inc was busy down by the pond.

The rugged little kumquat tree surprised me with some dangling, ripening fruit.

This poor neglected tree gets frozen back to a stump about every third year or so, but it always picks itself up and starts back up again.

The yellow leaves are the kumquat's way of saying, "Hey! I'm anemic here! Helloooooooo! How about some fertilizer?"

It's not easy being a fruit tree at PFHQ.

Coons, Bears, and Hogs

This Gulf Frittillary cocCOON is attached to the underside of a garden hose where it leaves the faucet. It is a pretty radical looking coccoon to start with, but what really lepidopterates my mind is the fact that just a few hours earlier, it was a caterpillar hanging there.
In the morning walk with Bear, I spotted a faded orange GF caterpillar hanging from that spot puparing to change to a new phase in it's career.
I didn't have my camera ... (remember, I was attached to Bear by a leash) so I missed that shot.

Speaking of BEARS, our Bear got a new toy last week. It's an inhairitance from a fine dog who owned a best buddy of Junior. That pup is gone now, but his toy lives on by tormenting Bear relentlessly.
There is an inner ball that rotates in the larger outer ball and that inner ball has slots for inserting doggy treats. As you roll it a treat occasionally drops out.
Bear rolls it a lot.

It's noisy and challenging and Bear loves it.

The HOG plums are ripening and falling.
 I am especially proud of these little ripened ovaries as I planted their momma tree from a seed. Forced by competition with a black cherry tree (that I also planted from seed), she has grown uncharacteristically tall and straight. I think her DBH must be a good 5-6 inches now.

I have been collecting her fruits for the seeds this year. I want to start them and then plant them as a hedgerow along my southern boundary. It's mostly woods on the adjoining property, but the occasional occupants did some recent clearing and it makes me grouchy to see it.
Plus, these are great native wildlife plants with...
 ... plum purty flowers in the spring.

Ever Get That Feeling?

Ever get that feeling you are being watched by tiny, yellow, conehead creatures while walking in your woods?

Really?

Me too.

Weird.

FC BBC

Here is my BBC ... Backyard Blossom Count for March 2011.


The pear tree is popping out and hosting company.
I missed the apple tree, but it was full of pink blossoms a week ago.


The dogwoods are just opening this week. This one still has that greenish, "I'm barely beyond bud" look.



I used to know this one, but don't feel like looking it up at 10:40 pm when I have to be in Orlando by 8:00 am tomorrow.
Ack! Why I am blogging and not sleeping?




Innocence.
The flower of course.
Not me.
The giant finger is simply a size reference.






Farkleberry.
Man oh man I love this scrubby tree.
Love carving it into whimsical sticks. Search the blog if you are curious.



The first bloomer around here is usually the Carolina Jessamine ... I should have named one of my girls that.
Such a pretty name.
Jessamine loves climbing up over other plants and then covering them in yellow blossoms in the spring.



Jessamine is a really great native flowering vine. Just sit back and it will do all the work.

It's high, low ... just all over the place right now.

Hog plums are blooming and buzzing near the old FFA pig pen. This tree has a buzzy soundtrack as you walk past.

There's a pasture down the road that looks like it is sporting a cloud on a stick. A very round symmetrical hog plum is in full bloom and it is just gorgeous.

And last, but not least, the wonderfully bell shaped flowers of my rabbiteye blueberries.

It looks like an incredible crop is again in the making.

Soon I will be posting about blueberry this, blueberry that, yada, yada ...

Well that's about it from PFHQ where all the flowers are good looking, the dog is intelligent, and the weirdness is above average.

As I whined about earlier in this post, I need to be in Orlando (a 2 hour ride) by 8 for a state Science Fair training and then I hope to bask in the glory of the Basspro Outdoor Center after the training is complete.

When in Rome ...

Fall Color Bites

When the swamp sunflower leaps up ... sometimes as high as 9 feet or so, you know fall is here.
They are blooming like crazy, signaling the end of constant heat and humidity down here. For now, yellow is the primary color in the PFHQ wildflower palette, with some purples courtesy of ironweed and blazing star tossed in to the mix.


Somewhere in there is a spittlebug.

Fall color with a bite.

I'm making datil sauce again this week. The seeded peppers will go into the sauce, but the seeds will go on to a paper towel to dry for a few days.

For those of you who need seeds, the deal is the same as last year.

Start them just as you would any pepper variety. Even down here, I won't be starting mine until January, so if you order some, keep them in a cool dry place until the time is right for your growing zone.

This weekend's weather was so spectacular ... I would normally have gone into the wilds, but a new PF addition required me to completely rearrange the barn to make room for ... well, ... it's a surprise.

It was great weather for tossing, cleaning, and rearranging. I got a ton of stuff done, but did not step off the property all day.

I will spill the beans tomorrow on that whole surpriseythingy.

... and if anyone uses the term, "Midlife Crisis" in their comments, I may hunt you down.

Cypress Galls

Here is that thing I hinted at last week.
Remember?
The swamp thing I had never seen before.

I was sloshing along in the skeetery swelternicity of a September swamp, when ... these little things popped up on the radar.

My brain did a little flip flop as it tried to process the concept of flowers on a conifer like cypress.
I peered in.

They sure looked like little flowers, but obviously, this could not be.
Not in the "naked seed" clan.
So I did what I always do when these conundrums pop up in the wilds.
Photo, photo, photo.
Google, Google, Google.

It turns out these are galls produced by a midge with a 20 dollar scientific name.
Well now, I get galls.
I don't actually GET galls, I mean, I know what a gall is.
Essentially they are little plant tumors caused by different insects who park their eggs inside to develop.
My oaks are full of galls and I have even cut one open and posted the pics a long time ago here at PF.

These cypress balls were so blatantly, in your face obvious, that it boggled me a little bit to think I had never seen such a thing.


What else have I been missing?

Gecko Crunch And The View From On High

Here's the view from the chimney of PFHQ. I'm up there a lot lately.

The pucker factor is as high as my perch ... I don't know how those sheer vertical rock wall climbers can stand it.

Looking this way, the cedar siding encased chimney is at my back. The dormer nearest the chimney is tres, tres convenient as I am able to brace myself against it and paint the chimney siding with a brush on an extension pole.
It's pretty exhausting since I am essentially doing a modified chimney (coincidence) climb, ... you know, the kind where the rock climber braces her back against one wall of a narrow vertical opening and her feet against the other wall?
I prop my little hand paint bucket in the angle where the vertical chimney meets the steep slope of PFHQ's roof line, brace, dip, and then lean to paint.

Every part of me, mostly, is tensed and working to hold position and paint.

It's hot up there too, so I tend to save chimney work on this side for the last painting of the day, when the temperatures have cooled down to 93 or so.

Did I whine enough?
Any pity out there?
No?
Dang.

It's not all misery and heat up there. The picture above is the view looking south from the chimney.
A few days ago, as my paint ran out and my supply of sweat was dangerously low, our pair of resident barred owls landed on a branch a few feet away. They were shoulder to shoulder, as close to each other as they could get.

They just sat there watching me.
This would be the day I was strictly business and did not bring the camera up with me of course.

Today, I'm going back up to paint the chimney trim, but I'm going to do something easy like the porch ceiling first while it's hot.

My two weeks of training in Gainesville is now complete. Yesterday, I took the slow way home. It was a hot afternoon and almost nothing was moving in Devil's Hammock, but the wildflowers were blooming.

I apologize on this one, I just took it yesterday and I haven't opened my Florida Wildflowers and Roadside Plants field guide yet to ID it.
Feel free if you can beat me to it!



There are times in Florida swamps when I have NO problem picturing the Carboniferous Era scenery. I wouldn't be surprised to see a dragonfly with a 3 foot wingspan to zip by.

I had worried a little about our resident gecko. There are two and they like to snooze in the gap between the siding and the trim during the day.

With all the powerwashing and brushing of paint, I was concerned we might have accidently smooshed 'em.

So, last night I was relieved to see the chubby one up on the porch ceiling.

As I watched him, a spider came strolling by ... danger close ... and sure enough, the gecko snapped him up!

I dashed in for the camera and got this heavily cropped shot. You can see a spider leg sticking out of his mouth.

Now I have some homework to do, but I have some excellent photo ops coming up on the way to two more days of (different)training next week.

Whatever happens, I'll share it with you.