Well, it certainly seems like the last part of the summer has flown by (thank goodness). The incessant brilliant blue skies, low humidity and most liveable temperatures do get old after a while.
Seriously, you just can't beat a New England summer.
The tomatos have been an interesting adventure this year. For the first time ever we had tomato (tobacco) hornworms on the plants. To say they are butt ugly would be an insult to any self respecting butt.
This summer we have seen a lot of butterflies around. More so than any other summer.
Linda has a herb planter on the back deck. Among other things, one of the herbs is curly parsley which turns out to be the host plant for Black Swallowtail caterpillars.
Just by chance, we found six caterpillars among the leaves.
Shortly after we found the caterpillars hurricane Irene was forecast to hit New England and more specifically, hit the Bath area.
Of course we made hurricane preparations. Anything that couldn't be tied down was laid down or moved to the garage...including the herb planter with its six Black Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars for safety (I did hear Linda as she was coming in from the garage after a caterpillar check say "Don't you pupate on me").
They listened to her for the most part...although one made a break for it while in the garage and got run over. The other five made it back out side and four of those took off for parts unknown to begin pupating.
We have one large caterpillar left and one little one that isn't even a half inch long. The little guy is black at both ends with a little white band in the middle. Essentially, to birds it looks like a little pile of bird poop.
BTW, did you know that caterpillar poop is called frass??
Irene did pay us a visit on Sunday and delivered 3.75 inches of rain and negligible wind.
While the rain doesn't seem like all that much, that was just our area here in Bath. There were significant amounts of rain dropped in areas around us.
As I am sure many of you have seen on TV, Vermont is having major flooding problems. New Hampshire isn't having as big of a problem, but we did received major road damage from flooding rivers.
In keeping with Murphy's law our road damage is mostly on the Kankamaugus highway which is the major roadway used by tourists during leaf peeper season.
We are being told it will take two to three weeks to get thing open for traffic which may be too late for the small businesses that rely on the tourists during the fall season.
Tomato hornworm caterpillar (slightly larger than life size)
Tomato hornworm lifesize
Female Braconid wasp
Parasitized hornworm caterpillar (slightly larger than lifesize). You can see how the body has shrunk up.
This hornworm has been dead quite a while
This hornworm has been dead quite a while
Black Swallowtail butterfly caterpillar on curly parsley.
Dainty little feet
Black Swallowtail butterfly
Post Irene pictures
This was taken on Rt 112 about 1/2 mi from our house as the crow flies from our house...the river is running under/through this jumbled mess of trees
This was taken on Rt 112 about 1/2 mi from our house as the crow flies from our house...the river is running under/through this jumbled mess of trees
...all deposited here by the Wild Ammonussuc river
The blue item is a container from a pull behind trailer that was washed down the river and destroyed.
About a third of the way down on the left hand side is a refrigerator door from the camper mention in the above pivture.
Undermined road edge
WARNING -- uneven shoulder
Funny, I don't remember the guardrail being out there...
Our Monarch butterfly chrysalis, day two
we're pupating, we're pupating...
That's all for now.
I will definately post when the leaf peeper season comes around, and who know, maybe sooner.
Take care,
Karen
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