Valerean

Now that it's midsummer it's time to start taking a flashlight with me when I take the dogs out for their final walk of the night. That's because you can't see these guys unless you shine a light on their webs (or walk through them.) I appreciate the orb weavers who spin their nocturnal webs after sunset, and tear them down before dawn. They eat a lot of bugs, and otherwise do no harm. Their webs can be over 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide, however, and pop up in the oddest places (like this one, right outside the front porch.) That's why I take a flashlight with me. :)

Back in April we discovered a fox den on one side of our property had at least one baby kit inside. This is the second time foxes have dug a den near our house; the best thing to do is just leave them alone and not let the dogs off their leashes. I was able to get a few shots of this one kit by using my zoom on the camera while standing on the front porch. Baby is very cute. :)

Last month I went out one morning to walk the dogs. Usually I cut across our front yard to get to the road, but fortunately this morning I was paying attention to my surroundings. Do you see what I saw? Yep. Spider web. It may seem small, but the anchoring threads stretched out for ten feet from top to bottom. I did not get close enough to get a decent shot of the spider, but from the spikes around its body I'll guess it was a crab spider . They are venomous, but their tiny bite is pretty harmless (like a bee sting.) You can see how tiny it is here in the cropped version of the previous pic. It's a little smaller than the diameter of a pencil eraser. I did not mess with it. All spiders are enormously helpful in controlling the local pest population. I am going to keep an eye out every morning when I walk the dogs, though. :)

We woke up last Tuesday to this sight in our front yard. Several tons of oak tree fell in the night, and neither we or our neighbors heard anything. It seems like the tree may be sick with a fungus, or it's sudden limb drop, which sometimes happens here as temps warm up. Anyway, we're calling the tree service to see if they can remove the limb and possibly save the oak.

While walking the pups I noticed two glowing golden things in the front yard that at first I thought were some parts my guy might have dropped -- in the sunlight they looked like round pieces of brass. Turned out to be mushrooms. Maybe this is what you find at the end of the rainbow. :)

This year we've seen more mushrooms in the yard than any time now. It's very damp and hot here, which they seem to love. A large mushroom farm operates only a couple miles from our house. The extra month of rain we've been having for the last two summers is contributing to the population as well, I think. They also like spots where trees once grew. These two clusters sprang up where one of our old camphors stood right outside our front door. I'm not a big fan of mushrooms. I have to watch for them now because I don't know which are safe or poisonous, and at this age the puppies will put anything in their mouths. But sometimes they are weirdly beautiful.