My wife found this swamp milkweed leaf beetle (Labidomera clivicollis) while weeding in the garden (which, at the moment, is basically just weeds). True to form, it was perched on a milkweed leaf. We planted the milkweeds a couple of years ago to attract monarchs. No monarchs yet, but we have found all sorts of other creatures on them. Milkweed plants, we have found, also have a penchant for spreading willy-nilly in a garden.
On my walk home today along Hutcheson Ferry Road, I noticed this banded flower longhorn beetle (Typocerus velutinus) resting on an English daisy flower head. The larvae of this beetle feed on decaying hardwood trees, while the adults, not surprisingly, dine on nectar and pollen.
After so many photographs of light on leaves (and so many more to come, no doubt), today I photographed this sassafras tree trunk along the edge of Piney Woods Church Road.
On my way back toward Rico Road, my attention was caught by a couple of blades of grass in a recently planted future horse pasture along Piney Woods Church Road. One blade was curved above another, shorter one. I was entranced by their flowing forms in the golden light of one half-hour before sunset.
On a warm and humid mid-afternoon, I roamed Piney Woods Church Road, in search of new discoveries and possible images. Near Rico Road, I found an circular web with this jewel of a spider waiting patiently for her prey. She is a female orchard orbweaver (Leucage venusta), a relatively common orb spider of the Eastern forest, notable for a prominent orange-red horseshoe on the underside of her abdomen.
On my way home down Rico Rd., I found this pair of Japanese honeysuckle blossoms along the roadside.
On a Sunday morning in May, I encountered a spider’s web bejeweled with water droplets along the edge of a cattle pasture along Piney Woods Church Road. The experience inspired a series of half a dozen images of all the suspended drops of water along the spider’s silken threads: field rosaries.
I ventured out this morning into lingering fog after rain yesterday and overnight. I found endless delight in all the water droplets, like finely polished gems, that had collected on the surfaces of leaves and at their tips. My photograph today is the largest droplet I saw on my walk, suspended at the curled tip of a Chinese privet leaf.
Today I spotted the first daisy fleabane (Erigeron annuus) in bloom along Piney Woods Church Road. Summer is approaching.
One drop of water, poised on a curled plantain leaf, waiting for the next gust of wind.
