visitor

This beautiful creature was at my door yesterday morning.

Actually, it was *on* my door, under the portico, but later flew onto a sapling where there was just enough light to take these snaps.

I know almost nothing about moths, but it was easy to identify this one in seconds by searching for "MA moth huge brown." It's Antheraea polyphemus; a native silkmoth. And the pheromone-detecting antennae indicate that this one is a male.

In late afternoon, when thunderstorms were predicted, I clipped the branch the moth was resting on and gently carried branch and moth back under the shelter of the portico. The moth was having none of it. It flew high up into the branches of tall trees by the barn. I was able to track it's path much more easily than that of a bird, in part because of it's size but also because of it's swoopy, up-and-down fluttery flight.

In case you might be interested, this link contains lots of information and many pictures of the lifecycle of Antheraea polyphemus, on a blog written by a huge fan of silkmoths. I visited just to see a few snaps, but ended up reading every word. And this link on the same blog documents the process of collecting and spinning silk from hatched-out silkmoth cocoons. Fascinating.

Have you ever spun silk from cocoons? I saw silkmoth cocoons for sale at a fiber fair years ago - again, these were cocoons from which the moth had already hatched and departed - but had no idea of how to harvest and process silk. It seemed likely to be overwhelmingly finicky and labor-intensive considering the tiny volume of fiber produced.

In the "Life is Funny, Retrospective Department," this was the very fiber fair at which I met cashmere goats for the first time.

Mallow says, " Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha."

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nearly wordless wednesday

sketched from Vincent van Gogh's
"Landscape with Pollard Willows"

the spiderwort is blooming!

horse brass remnant,
found by @scottylar

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trying

 

A Peasant Woman Digging in Front of Her Cottage
Vincent van Gogh
1880

We've been having rain.

Frequent rain. Possibly daily rain.

But in a rather peculiar way.

It won't be raining. Then it will be raining, sometimes quite hard.

Then - and by "then" I mean 5 to 15 minutes after a person senses rain coming and rushes around getting all the on-deck hay and lawn chaises under cover - the rain stops. Sometimes the sun comes out. Sometimes it never went away, and there's been a 5-minute sunshower downpour.

We are at the point of General Vegetative Abundance where even five minutes of rain means that being outdoors afterward means wading through soaking wet undergrowth. Exposed soil in a garden bed might be bone-dry a centimeter beneath the surface, but by gosh, the surrounding vegetation is dripping.

I'm beginning to think I need more than one pair of work trousers.

I'm trying not to panic about the vegetable garden which barely exists. First, the usual planting was delayed by the seasonal oddness - and considering how many on-time plantings in my neck of the woods were hit hard by the 26F night in late May, I feel I made the right choice there. But in June, when I fully expected to plant the entire garden in the first week, I've been stymied by a combination of intermittent rain and necessary hours of goat-combing. Also by time spent driving - and then recovering from driving - to various appointments. Does it sound like I'm making excuses? Maybe I am, but it feels more like I'm...trying.

How are your gardens coming along? Has unusual weather this year had an impact on your gardening plans or your plants?

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wordless thursday

 

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may becomes june

stitchwort, Stellaria media

The month of May zipped by in a stream of delightfully cool mornings and sunny days, with just enough intermittent rain and gloom to provide a perfect counterpoint. There is always so much to do at this time of year, and nearly every day of May presented at least one extra task of the "this must be done before that can be done" variety.

Here are things I know happened in the last week of May:

A load of 2022 hay was delivered. Hopefully there will be 2023 first cut hay available before this last load runs out, but it depends entirely on weather. As always. 

The mosquitoes arrived to keep the black flies company.

Driving home from an appointment which turned out not to exist due to a glitch at the office, I stopped to escort the first turtle of the turtle-escorting season safely across a busy road. Thus making the trip to a non-appointment both excellently timed and entirely worthwhile.

I misplaced two pairs of eyeglasses in one week. This is a record. Increasingly intense searching commenced, and soon reached the point where one looks in places where the missing item could not possibly be.

Friends visited with their lovely grandkids, 8 and 11, and brought a load of freshly-cut conifer branches to feed the goats. Possibly my favorite "hostess gift" ever.

After two days of searching in every likely and unlikely place, I found one pair of missing eyeglasses. They were in their own case, on the same table where I always keep them. In other words, the first place I had looked.

marsh marigold, Caltha palustris

It's often been nice enough to sketch outdoors, at least in the brief lull before biting bugs overcome their reluctance to fly through a miasma of herbal repellent. I've done many line drawings recently: one pen, one sketchbook, quick getaway.

Amsonia

One day while I was picking goutweed for the goats, I saw my micron pen fall from my shirt pocket. My hands were full and goats were waiting, so I shared out the goutweed before going back to pick up the pen. I could not find the pen. I looked and looked. I now expect it will suddenly turn up in the bean can where I keep my micron pens. On the table. Next to my glasses.

highbush blueberry, Vaccinium corymbosum

The last lilies of the valley of 2023:

Convallaria majalis

I treasure these tiny gems and have coaxed the few that were rescued from a goat paddock project several years ago into a slowly growing group inside the little wildlife area. A few weeks ago an unknown nighttime visitor crushed a section of the lightweight fence surrounding the wildlife area, leaving the lilies of the valley flattened beneath just as the flower buds were beginning to appear.

Well, heck, I said.

Darn it, I said.

I lifted the fence off right away, and hoped for the best.

Most of the plants survived, and enough flowers bloomed that I could bring in a couple of stems now and then. Lilies of the valley are my favorite for springtime fragrance.

Did you have a good month of May?

Do you have something special planned for June?

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