Each bundle of flowers will contain several dozen individual blooms (see below)
People who know these kinds of things are particularly neat to me (like you!) I know they have a long life cycle if they make good decisions but didn't realize they were considered different creatures based on their developmental stage
We're lucky in that we have two ponds and many seasonal vernal pools in our wooded property, so we get to see a lot of really cool amphibians
We surprised each other in the garden today. Best guess is Notopthalmus viridescens, but the species has a lot of variation within the population apparently.
That's my misunderstanding. Didn't know people could follow, but here is a splendid dagger I was able to photograph:
I'm up to 215 observations and 136 identified species 😁
I hear you, I try to get pictures of every critter my nearsighted self can see. I've gotten good close-ups of a few Ichneumonid wasps and I think two or three different cuckoo wasps (Chrysididae), but our state is awash in hoverfly species too. I did try to get a good close up of them but the resolution blew out to the point that iNaturalist didn't see anything. We're LLYLCK on iNat if you're curious to see who we've been able to spot
That's possible, but a quick look through the members of that family in our area suggests that they're larger than the individuals pictured here. Each of the flowers in the picture is about the size of the head of a pin. Either way thank you for introducing me to a new term
They're both visually and olfactorily beautiful and are a lovely native of the northeastern US
They're (I think) some member of Syrphidae but I do not know specifically.
eta: "I think" because @JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social introduced me to a new word
If you zoom in there are so many tiny pollinators
This native plant finder can help you find native plants that will attract the insects and other life you're hoping to entice. The associations listed are the research results of Doug Tallamy and other researchers. And as Tallamy says, plant for specialist insects and you'll attract generalists as well.
Off the top of my head, plants like canadian ginger, serviceberries, purple flowering raspberries (R. odoratus), and members of the worts can do a lot of restoration work in moderate to deep shade. Having a patch of grass that doesn't get mowed is a huge boon to many insects, as is leaving any mowed grass clippings around other plants as mulch. Lightning bugs in particular require grass debris or patches where it got so long it fell over to complete their life cycle.
My favorite wasps are the wood-boring parasitoid varieties. Ovipositors twice as long as the rest of their bodies, and they drill holes in trees and logs to get to the grubs in the wood to lay an egg. They're incredibly chill to be around and tons of fun to watch while they work
Our demo/reno that was supposed to start a month ago is due to start on Monday of next week... 😑
Turns out code enforcement gave us incorrect and incomplete information, then waited til the last day before his two week vacation to inform us that we needed to get a variance, since our house was built nearly twenty years before the town adopted zoning codes (no "grandfathering" here). Then he gave our contractor the wrong appeal form, which caused a ruckus at the appeal meeting. After the appeal was successful, he told our guy that literally anyone in town could appeal our variance in court (that's not how it works). So our guy is spooked and drew up indemnity paperwork in case an impossible thing happens and now we're five weeks behind schedule.
Bright side, almost everyone on our dead end street wrote very kind letters of support for us and our appeal was successful and our contractor has all of our permits in hand. I've also been asked by two different board members of our local land trust to participate in an educational program they're launching centered on native plants, biodiversity, and conservation efforts anyone can do with just a few plants. And someone at my Sunday market called me "the real deal" while telling his friend to also buy some plants from me (he came back later to give me some of his own plants for the sake of genetic diversity.
Oh, and we raised over a thousand dollars for our town's library with this past weekend's plant sale. "We", I should mention, is myself and all the wonderful people who donated plants and volunteered their time to help folks pick out plants for their gardens and give planting advice.
I brought home several many more plants than I donated, plus another book I have no space for. It's been nice knowing you plant nerds o7
This morning's plant sales got pushed to next weekend because of high winds and low temps, so I brought home all the shallow tomatoes that were donated so I could repot them. They'll go back to the donations tomorrow, but I took a few pictures for you all to help explain how and why to do this.
Here we have an example of what we're starting with. The plant itself is about a foot tall, but the pot is only 1.75 inches. The plant itself looks healthy but a little stressed. The square pot helps, but the whole thing is very top heavy. Planted as-is, this plant will need immediate staking and support or it will uproot itself. It will still have to expend energy creating new roots, and will be susceptible to summer heat. Let's move on to repotting.
Here's a top-down of our tomato in a 1-gallon pot. We're doing this with the original pot in place so we can determine which leaves will be removed and then safely lift the plant to do the pruning. Once we've pruned off a few leaves we'll place the roots at the very bottom of the pot and then fill the pot with substrate.
So, why do this? Every little hair on the tomatoes is an adventitious root - a specialized structure that will turn into a root in the right conditions. And we've just provided the right conditions. By giving the tomato a larger root ball, we're increasing the amount of surface area from which it can draw water and nutrients to produce tomatoes. This will not only improve the number produced, but also each one's nutritional value.
And here we have our plant repotted. It will have the whole week in a greenhouse with folks watering it to grow more roots before the plant sale. If someone asks me for advice on planting it when they get home, here's what I'll tell them:
If you're planting it in a pot, give it at least a 5 gallon pot, but 10 is better. Place the root ball at the bottom of your pot, and fill with your potting mix and fertility. If you're planting it in the ground, bury it as deep as you can, even up to the bottom of the very top most leaves. Then enjoy your tomatoes.
[Image description: roughly twenty American Persimmon seeds show off their taproots in varying stages of development while resting in my palm awaiting their turn to be transplanted]
I'm really excited that these germinated! We got a notice of poor germination tests from the folks we got the seeds from, so they shipped another ounce of seed out to us but far too late to let them naturally stratify over winter. So these bad Larry's got to stratify in our seed fridge through April.
[Image description: two purplish blue flowers are open above the white-speckled green leaves of lungwort]
I land more on the "ten iterations on every iteration that works" model of evolutionary pressures and the arms/gills race that ensues but I think this is appropriate regardless