Quit bugging me!

I don't know what it is with insects lately, but they are really bugging me!

 This morning I stepped away from my honeyed lemon tea to throw a load of curtains in the washer. As I'm tossing the curtains in evenly, an earwig comes out of... somewhere... and dives into one of the curtain folds. So I did what any hot blooded creature would do. I shut the lid and hit start. I figured either he will go the "all drains lead to the ocean" route (except we have a septic system so hmmm...) or he will survive and be thankful for his energetic, sudsy bath. I didn't see him in the tub of the washer when I took the curtains out, nor did I find him in the dryer lint trap, sooooooo your guess is as good as mine as to his location.

I went to recover my tea and not only was there a fruit fly perched on the edge of the rim, there was another one swimming merrily along!

AND one of my besties neglected to keep watch over her drink this weekend while she was outside and was stung right on the lip by a bee for her negligence. 

Just goes to show, ladies: never leave your drink unattended.

 

A Scottish flower post

My family teases me regularly because my photo storage from my phone has not saved or whatever for a good 600+ days. I have too many photos, many of them nature-related, and they give me grief about "how many sky pictures do you need? How many flowers? Why are there pictures of bugs? Mother!"

I can't help it. Sign me up for an intervention.

Anyway, the photo above (which may be the one I'm proudest of- not bad for a phone picture) is of a thistle (Scotland's national flower) in the foreground and Stirling Castle in the background. Just the castle itself is going to take more than one post as I took a tour and tramped all over the place and then I remembered that Tino wasn't in any of the pictures so I retraced some steps and took even more photos.

But that is not this post.

This one is of some of the lovely flowers I encountered, so if you're not a flower person I hereby give you permission to skip it. No worries.

Above, a Blueblossom and below, a diligent Scottish bee working on a thistle.

These possibly had nametags which I didn't have the foresight to take pictures of, so I dunno what they are, but they're in part of the impressive Queen's Gardens at Stirling Castle.

This tree, (feel free to click on the photo), has a sign saying

"Apple 'Stirling Castle' First Raised in 1831 Cambuskenneth"

Seeing as my great grandmother Frances was born in 1900, that's one seasoned apple tree!

Roses and a view of the walls to give a little idea of height.

Above, a Catawba rosebay which is apparently a fancy way of saying it's a kind of rhododendron.

Below, my app says these are European Beech.

Above, Oriental poppies.

Tino with a Blueblossom, below.

Above, Colorado blue columbine and hybrid tea roses below

Another view of the gardens. The sheer wall up to the right leads to the balcony off the nursery where the children played, up high, no doubt overheard by the women lounging about in the Queen's Gardens.

Looking forward to sharing more of Scotland with you!

 

I’m ready for my close up

Most of these are unedited, pulled straight from my phone. Sorry for the lack of polish or professionalism. This is real life, folks, no filters. 

Damon, who is back to sleeping like a nomad now that school is out, on the morning of his birthday:

Bosley being cute.

Damon said the blisters on his nose looked like eyes, so here's a face with a tongue sticking out.

Apparently you're never too old to play with a box. I believe it was accompanied by "hat on" which is something Damon used to say that cracked my parents up every time. They (and we) still use it regularly.

Nameless out front Snek in the phlox. He truly is tiny so don't be alarmed, but I did zoom in to catch his face. My previous attempt had him hiding behind a leaf.

Moth in my lupine. I was so glad I got this picture and a few others because that night we had a downpour strong enough to knock over some of my tomato cages. I put the dogs out in the morning and this lupine, the tallest, was prostrate on the ground!

Daddeeeeeeee, my rose bush came back. He's still tiny and I don't think he's getting enough sun to thrive. We may have to rethink where to keep him.

Any chance to play with my phone...

My bad, someone not ready for their close up, haha!

 

Critter round up

LOTS of fun critters to see on our Mexico trip!

Pelicans

I fished a struggling bee out of the ocean and tried to let him dry off in a safe place. Poor thing had sand stuck to him and wet wings and all that. I fished several others out of the various pools, and was pretty discouraged how few of them survived. Dada mentioned how high the chlorine-to-bee ratio would be and I think he's probably right, as usual. Unfortunately, I even stepped on one poolside which stung my bare foot, poor bee. Muggin teasingly quipped, "serves you right for saving the other one!"

I promise there are fishies in the water! Little ones. =D

And, holy cow, we saw a Blue Footed Booby! In real life! Props to Muggin's sharp eyes. 

I'm a big fan of the tiny lizards, but they are fast little buggers and pretty camera shy!

Cute crabs on the rocks!

 

Zucchini, anyone?

We've already established that I'm not the most OCD of gardeners, so this post will surprise exactly nobody. Some of what WILL drive anyone with OCD a little crazy, though, is the warning understatement my phone displays about "this platform is not supported and could possibly therefore result in unpredictable behavior"... y'think? Like, adding all the pictures I uploaded is too much to ask? Or posting them in the order that I click them? Hmph.

My apologies. Technology strikes again.

And they're, big surprise, out of order! *sigh* Here we go.

This is white mullein, even though it's yellow. I didn't plant it. I didn't even know about it. I found it and then used an app called Picture This to identify it, because one was growing in the garden and I thought it was pretty so I left it alone to see what it would grow into. I know, you're all dying of not surprise. 

I may have already mentioned that I planted corn this year. My incredulous husband reminded me, "you know that it takes like four rows of it to be able to even pollinate, right?" Nooooo problem. Four rows of five seeds each, voila. 

Something tells me that's not quite what he meant.

But lookie! I have corn! Granted, the bunnies ate most of them, but I have 5 or 6 that are struggling along and some even have tassels. Woohoo!

Somewhere along our 20 years of marriage we got a morning glory plant. I left them with Grandma Barb while we did one of our moves, and they took over most of her front yard along her porch, much to her delight. Purple was her favorite color, so she encouraged it, trellised it, potted it, and it just went wild. I have some wild ones growing both out front and out back, and they always make me smile. 

This guy below is Borage. He's supposed to be excellent for your pollinators, so I planted some both last year and this year. Apparently it is not safe from baby bunnies, as I had at least five good-sized seedlings ready to transplant one day and the very next when I went to put them in, they were gone. Completely disappeared. The plants in the same tray with them were untouched. Hmm.

So I started over again with seeds and was excited to see that I'm growing a clump of them in the back corner of the garden and a smaller group in the front. They get pretty tall, so I popped one group into a tomato cage and that seemed to help them stand up a little better. The ones in the back of the garden are mid-thigh or taller on me. 

Yes, I'm growing broom handles. Haha. That's how brooms are cultivated, didn't you know? Home Depot has huge plots out back and...

Anyway, on the left are my handful of zinnias, and the broom handles my Dad gave me all mark where I planted tomatoes. There is a tomato plant in a cage, too, and the cucumbers were behind those. The cucumbers been really wimpy this year and don't taste very good, perhaps because the water situation has been so weird? We have an incredibly wet spring and then it's been dry and cracked all summer. I confess to not watering perhaps nearly as much as I should have.

I LOVE these little blue flowers. They grow along the sides of the roads wild and I asked my dear, sweet husband what they were. He said, "weeds." I've argued that they're not weeds. I looked them up, too, and the name?

Blue Weed.

Ugh.

Also Chickory!

HaHA!!

Above, tomatoes and basil. I've been finding those bright green "very hungry caterpillars" munching happily along, much to my consternation, as they grab onto ME when I pull them off the plants. I've been flinging them onto the roof of the shed where some sharp-eyed birds have been swooping down to carry some of them off. 

Along what's left of the creek out back is regular mullein and some truly white white mullein. I was hoping to catch the bee who was nuzzling the yellow ones, too, but I guess she was camera shy. 

I only planted two acorn squash seeds this year, so to stumble across zucchini and spaghetti squash vines this year is making me laugh while my husband facepalms. Hey, free zucchini? I'm okay with that. Anyone want some?

No sign of the acorn squash, by the way. Maybe they'll show up next year. Teehee.

A close up of the mulleins. I can not get enough of wildflowers.

There's the spaghetti squash on the top and middle, and a baby zucchini coming along on the bottom.

And the white mullein that I found in the garden that started the investigation. Beside the broom handle. No, on the right. The one on the left is basil.

So how does YOUR garden grow?

Boys, bugs, mums, and other assorted musings

No matter how big he gets, this kid is irresistible when he's sleeping. The camera loves him and somehow he is even more kissable when he's snuggled into a big chair. 

I often wonder how he's going to fit at, say, 17...

We had some insect adventures at the bus stop this morning. There was a two hour delay due to fog. Some of you are rolling your eyes, but I swear we've already covered this ground; we live out in the boonies and bus drivers probably can't see the kids, not to mention any deer, in fog you could saw through with a butter knife. It lays especially thick on the fields, some of which are being harvested. At any rate, it's rather pleasant to eeeeeease into a Monday...

So the sun was fully up and shining away by the time the Damonater struts down the driveway at 10 AM. Birds are twittering away, the squirrels are in full... uh, squirrel, and the bugs are zooming every which way. We had an overly friendly bee checking us out thoroughly. I've always tried to teach the kids to not swat at them, but to stay calm and remind the bee that they're not a flower. It must be confusing to find bright, colorful things that smell like... kids. Oh, never mind. You're not a flower. Got it. Moving on.

This bee was not easily convinced. We had been swatting a pesky mosquito which we both missed when I heard a buzzy drone in my left ear. Damon exclaimed, "bee!" so I ducked a bit and she headed around to my right ear. I felt like I was living that scene from "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" where they talk about, "I'm on the east side, I'm on the west side" that you can see here in case you need a fun distraction. I had nothing to do with either the original movie nor the video clip. Anyway, this bee was not to be deterred from her examination of us. Once she'd repeatedly zoomed around both my east and west sides, she headed for Damon.

He hunched his head down into his shoulders, clasped his hands tight and screwed his eyes shut. Right now I'm curious- is that the universal sign for "potentially stinging winged insect of undetermined malicious intent"? I think it must be. She gave him a complete thrice-over before landing on his forehead right where his bangs meet skin. She only stayed a few milliseconds but it was long enough for me to spin it saying, "awwww, she gave you a bee-kiss!" Off she zoomed, probably to go play amongst our crazy, leggy mums. 

The bee crisis averted, we then did succeed in pulverizing the mosquito that finally landed on Damon's shin. As the bus approached, an Asian beetle/ladybug imposter crashed our party and landed on Damon's backpack. I told him he had a hitchhiker who looked pretty confused about being on a backpack, and off she went with him onto the bus.

I can only imagine the adventures she will have today.

I keep forgetting to get the fall bin out of the attic so the kids can finish decorating, but we did get a good start:

For those of you who live where the weather is a bit more predictable in October than Ohio's weather is, I thought I'd enlighten you on why it is important to wear layers:

I snapped a picture of that after doing a double take when I looked at the weekend weather last week. Yes, those are snowflakes, sun, and rain all on Saturday, with a high of 83. Once again, Mother Nature said, "hold my beer." And while we didn't see the snowflakes, thank goodness, it did reach the lower 80's. In October.

I blame karate. Yesterday was the start of the fall dress code, which means full gis must be worn instead of just the pants, belts, and whatever karate-related T shirts you own. Naturally the first half of this week is going to be in the 80's. In October. 

Following the layering rule, this is what I strolled to the bus stop in today:

Yes, that would be a sundress under a corduroy jacket. Good thing we didn't pack them all up already, right, Mommee? I wanted something long and loose over my ACE bandages which are compressing my top half enough that I still look pregnant on my bottom half. The nail polish is Avon's Mudslide, just perfect for fall, and the boots were on clearance at Charlotte Russe several years ago. They make me feel really tall. I'm back in my bunny slippers now, but it was nice to clump down the driveway in the boots. Just gotta remember to watch out for those slippery acorns.

Enjoy... what is this, officially? Indian summer? Anyone?