NEW RESIDENTS IN THE GARDEN

This may not be exciting to most but we finally have someone living in the bee house. It happened almost overnight. One minute I was thinking that the house must be placed wrongly and then yesterday I realized some of the holes had been sealed. The question is, who is in there? I'll probably never know. I just hope it isn't another case of the wrong people moving in as in the owl house.

Furthermore, the old mud dauber nest, on the wall by the kitchen door, is also being reused. Several of the openings have been sealed again. I really did mean to take it down. It's beginning to look as though it part of the house!

SNAKES ALIVE!

This morning I was talking to my neighbor about a coral snake that had been seen in another neighbors garden. As I walked through the gate there was this Eastern Black-Neck Garter snake. They are fairly common around here but this is by far the largest I have seen. A few minutes later I came across another snake, this time in the garage. It was much smaller and possibly a juvenile garter snake. I wonder if it had anything to do with a little frog I saw hopping in the garage the other night. It is one of their favorite foods. Yes, it's that time. Warm enough for snakes and tarantulas and scorpions. I need to make sure I don't leave the door open. Not that closed doors stops the scorpions. I killed one in the living room the other night.

The first flowers opened on the ice plant I started from seed. It is Delosperma floribunda 'stardust' The color isn't quite as vibrant as I had hoped for but it should do well planted in one of the spaces in the sunken garden. The pelleted seeds arrived in a tiny capsule and I had little hope that they would germinate. They did and I have six plants.

I almost missed this group of lace cactus. I was busy removing bluebonnet seeds in the front granite area. It was hiding underneath bluebonnets and zexmania.

The flowers at the top of the now 7' stalk on the Manfreda sileri, finally started to open. Not very interesting I'm afraid.

Now here's a horn worm with a difference. Anyone have an id on him. He's busy eating the Missouri primrose leaves and looks as though he is about to burst. Caterpillars in general seem to be quite drawn to the leaves of the primrose including the pink evening primrose. The furry caterpillars have stripped all the leaves from those plants leaving only the seeds! Smart move on nature's part. I did finally break down and spray the tomatoes with bt. There were just too many hornworms this year.

Finally we watched a young mud dauber emerge from the adobe nest by the kitchen door. He ran up and down the wall drying out his wings and finally made his first attempt at flight. Just a short one, but long enough to know he needed to dry out some more. I think we can finally remove it from the wall.

THE CONTINUING SAGA OF THE MUD DAUBER

If I thought that the project was complete I was wrong.

October 14th 2009, 8:00am

This morning when I went out I saw there was a small hole drilled neatly in one of the upper cells. During the building stages I had noticed a small wasp hovering around the area. I thought at the time it might be a parasitic wasp. Then on several occasions I would go out and find that one of the cells was open. I just assumed that the cap had fallen out. Next thing it was closed again. Now I know what happened. I may be wrong about this but I think it was a parasitic wasp and it was opening the cell to lay its own egg on one of the paralyzed spiders or on the egg in the nest. The cap of the cell came off easily when the mud was fresh but this one was pretty hard so it had to drill in. In fact it behaves like a cuckoo! Mud dauber does all the work.

October 14th 10:30 am

Then when I came in later the hole was covered and the mud dauber was busy checking the whole of the structure. Isn't nature fascinating? Right on my doorstep!