Rose Cat's Rambles

Yesterday's monarch count: 44 eggs, 6 caterpillars. Four cats were 4mm; two, 11mm. The larger ones were both in the more sheltered bed area, on the plant right next to the wall, on leaves as low and close to the wall as they could get. I don't think that's a coincidence.

While I was counting, paper wasps kept showing up and trying to hunt. I had my Safer's insectidal soap and sprayed them. I used the narrow nozzle instead of the wide spray, hoping I'd be less likely to hit a caterpillar. (Safer's is like using very soapy water; it has to get on the insect to kill it, and is ineffective once it dries.) Twice the wasp got away -- hopefully I got enough on it to doom it -- but I managed to knock two to the ground and stomp on them. I wiped the leaves I'd sprayed as well as I could to help protect the cats. Considering the damage the wasps can do, I thought it was worth the risk.

Here are some photos of a wasp I took in summer last year.

( two images, and the rest of the post )

Monarch count today: 28 eggs, 60 caterpillars. 59 of the cats ranged from about 3-4mm; one was about 31mm. That's 22 fewer eggs than three days ago, but only 5 more cats. The 31mm cat has got to be one of the ones that were 25mm on Monday, but the other two are gone. Aside from that, how many eggs hatched into caterpillars, how many died, and how many cats died is anybody's guess.

I wish I knew a good way to mark the caterpillars. Even if there was something that was harmless and could be applied to a soft-bodied creature as small as 1mm, it would just be molted off with the old skin. A microchip would be good, since I could just wave a scanner over the plants. A very small microchip... Dream on, I guess.

It was after 10 PM when I finished the count. By then I had a desk lamp out there, but because the cord is so short and the electrical outlets so few and so oddly placed (who the hell designed that?), the sliding door had to be open quite a bit. This being the time of year for June bugs (which are actually not bugs, but a type of scarab beetle), several showed up and thunked off the lamp. Of course some of them ended up flying into the bedroom.

When B gives Missy her nightly treats, he throws them up and down the hall, in various rooms, etc. Tonight one toss ricocheted off a door frame and disappeared. Missy hunted all over until she spied a spot on the rug. It wasn't the treat; it was a confused June bug. Missy sniffed at it and then turned to stare at me expectantly. Sorry, Missy. Mom will do almost anything for you, but even she can't turn beetles into treats.

More stats on the monarchs.

Wednesday, June 12: 138 eggs, 14 caterpillars.

Friday, June 14: 116 eggs, 17 caterpillars. Six had just hatched (about 1mm long); one was so new it was still eating its empty egg case. (Here's a photo.) Two were 44.5mm (1-3/4"), and the rest ranged from 9.5mm (3/8") to 22.2mm (7/8").

I saw a paper wasp today. GET THE HELL OUT OF MY YARD.

In other news, there's a house wren living in or near the back yard. Whenever I take Missy out, it hops into view and scolds. I'm trying to get some photos, but it pops in and out of the foliage, as wrens do. The crows are raising another brood way the heck up in a palm tree, and the babies are starting to get noisy. The adults are on edge and chasing everything in the neighborhood that looks like a threat, including a kestrel that's no bigger than a city pigeon. Silly birds!

There's a green lynx spider in the geraniums out front. Including legs, it's about half an inch long. I'm watching out for it when I deadhead the flowers.

(and I'm staying away from the bathroom scale)

A couple of days ago, I noticed a tiny swallowtail caterpillar on one of the newly-leafed-out wild fennel plants. Today the plant was all adroop. The stem had broken off somehow. I couldn't find the caterpillar :( but I did find a swallowtail egg :D I've never seen an actual egg! I tucked the dying plant in amongst the foliage of the others, so the hatching caterpillar will be able to find a good feeding ground.

The milkweed plants are well-leafed too, which is good, because I counted eight monarch caterpillars in the big pot, ranging from .5 to 1.5 cm (1/5 to 3/5 of an inch) in length, vigorously chomping away. No paper wasps in sight yet. Fingers crossed, fingers crossed...

My concerns were unfounded; both camera and macrolens appear to be A-OK. YAY! Here be photos.( Nine pics. WARNING: spiders )

I woke up at 1 PM (PST) this morning to see B looking through his T-shirts. Having washed his dress shirts the night before, my first thought was “oh shit, he just found them and they’re not dry yet.” (Uhh, casual Friday, dear?) Or maybe he was going for a walk first?

“Going for a walk, honey?”

“Um, no, my car’s still up the hill...”

(our street was resurfaced yesterday)

“…and it’s 102 outside.” (Fahrenheit, of course)

“A hundred and WHAT?! Are you kidding?”

I really thought he was kidding -- I was still under a light blanket and didn’t feel the least bit hot – but, no, he was not.

“It’s already eighty in here.”

The Santa Ana winds had arrived.

A few minutes later, B left, his work clothes in a bag. I leapt out of bed and raced outside -- almost burning my hand on the outer doorknob -- looking for a way to shade the tiny monarch caterpillars in the big milkweed pot from the blasting sun. (The last batch was lost to heat and wasps, and damned if I was going to lose another.) Reassured that I wasn’t too late by a couple of caterpillars vigorously chomping away, I put something together with patio chairs, an old tomato cage, and a towel.

Then I noticed that -- even though I’d watered them yesterday and they were in partial shade -- the milkweed plants in the ground were desperately limp. I turned on the hose and suddenly it was raining. Hard. HUH? But – the sun’s still shining, and this isn’t Seattle, and – OH. I’d been wondering when that crack in the hose was going to give way. And it felt pretty good, anyway.

It was a little awkward, though, watering with a loop of hose.

I was worried about the three large swallowtail caterpillars, but when I poured a bucket of water around the fennel plants, one of them charged out of a tuft of grass. (I hope that’s where the others were hiding.) As it climbed up the wooden fence, I worried that it was going to get too hot before it could get into the shade, so I gave it a gentle boost. It stopped dead and bobbed its head at me like a stubborn donkey or something. So I just leaned over it to keep the sun off. Eventually it got going again and got itself into the shade.

Let’s see: high temperatures, low humidity, hillsides covered with brush as dry as a bone, Santa Ana winds. All we need now is a spark.

It’s supposed to be hot tomorrow, too, but by Sunday it should be starting to cool down.

There have been two successful generations of monarch butterflies in my back garden already this year, and another is starting. In the ten years I’ve lived here I don’t think I’ve seen more than two a year. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

( Full report here. )

When is the first day of spring in the US? It depends on who you ask -- or what Google results you look at. If you're talking about the Vernal Equinox, when the sun is directly above the equator, it's on March 21 this year. If you think of spring as March, April and May, as meteorologists define it, then it's today, the first of March. If you define it by what the weather is like,  then it's different in various parts of the country.

Here, in coastal Southern California, the weather is becoming spring-like, with sunnier days and warmer nights . In our year-round, relatively mild climate, though, it's also a state of mind.  Here's what spring means to me:

Hope.  Little birds--sparrows and brown towhees -- are bouncing around on the lawn, searching eagerly among the blades of grass. House finches and tiny goldfinches are singing and twittering in the alder tree, which is starting to leaf out. A lone mockingbird sings off and on all day at the top of a tree or the peak of a roof. It imitates a sparrowhawk, a house finch, an oriole, and sometimes a car alarm. Two red-shafted flickers, large woodpeckers, hop their way up the branches of the camphor tree, braced on their stiff tails. They call to each other with a sound like a referee's whistle and gorge themselves on berries. A scrub jay flies off the back fence and examines the neighbor's gigantic bushes. Maybe the jays will raise more chicks in them this year.

Renewal. The first roses have appeared. In the front yard, one of the hybrid teas has a huge white blossom about to open. In the back, a pale-pink-and-magenta-striped miniature rose is the first to bloom among the fifteen or so pots on the table. Every rose plant is covered in tender new buds. The apple tree is full of lacy pink blossoms. The butterfly bushes, trimmed almost to the ground in winter, are shooting green leafy branches skyward, and the tropical milkweed plants, some in pots and some in the ground, are leafing out as well. Milkweed is the host for monarch butterfly caterpillars. Maybe this year we'll have butterflies breeding in the spring as well as in the fall.

There's plenty to do in the garden. Last year's heirloom tomato is struggling to produce one last fruit before it dies. In another few weeks I can get new tomato plants for this year. Weeds, or "volunteers," as I like to call them, are popping up in the lawn and flower beds. They're all coming out -- well, except for the scarlet pimpernel and apple-scented geraniums. I like them, so they're staying.

The compost needs mixing, the lawn needs mowing, the weeds need pulling, and the walk needs sweeping. The fuschia needs the ends of its new growth pinched regularly for another month so that it will be dripping with red-and-white flowers when it finally blooms. The Mexican bay tree is over five feet tall (taller than I am!) and strangling in its tiny pot. The roses and other flowering plants want to be fed, and they want it now. I could putter in the garden all day.

Time for spring cleaning inside, darn it. Dusty shelves, unsorted clutter, and the carpet needs cleaning. Maybe I'll finally sort through all those boxes in the back bedroom. Then I'll start in the garage. I could fill up some boxes and bags and take them to Goodwill. Or should I have a yard sale? Or two, or three ... maybe this year I'll do less planning and, well, more doing?

And, when I get tired of that(which happens really fast!), I'll go putter in the garden some more. Then I'll dust off the camera and go looking for wildflowers and other cool stuff.

Is it spring where you are?  What does spring mean to you? Is it about the weather, your state of mind, or a little of both?