3:00 snapshot #1387: nature and almost nature in the yard.

[urbpan]

Settin' a spell after doing some yard work and playing with dogs and such. For the beer fans, I'm drinking a Sierra Nevada Summerfest.



Earlier that day I did some weeding in the way back of the yard. Should have been done earlier in the year but had other stuff on our minds, so it had gotten real tall, and real prickly with black raspberries. This English garden snail was hiding from the dry weather on the underside of a black raspberry leaf.


Also uncovered in the work, this handsome unidentified caterpillar. Anyone got a guess?
EDITED TO ADD, cottonmanifesto has identified it as the yellow-striped armyworm Spodoptera ornithogalli, a moth with an amazing geographic range (most of North and South America) and very broad tastes in host plants, " including alfalfa, asparagus, bean, beet, cabbage, clover, corn, cotton, cucumber, grape, grass, jimsonweed, morning glory, onion, pea, peach, peanut, pokeweed, sweet potato, tobacco, tomato, turnip, wheat, watermelon, and wild onion." (bugguide.net) Lots of toxic species on that list, as well as perfectly edible food crops. This individual was on Japanese knotweed.



And this cross orbweaver hung out nearby, supervising my work.


I'd forgotten about this mantis ootheca that was on the stockade fence--what in the world put this hole in it?


After I got tired of black raspberry thorns (didn't take long) I dug this hole. Alexis is looking at the bottom of it, which ends quite decisively with a huge rock.


She did an admiral job of digging around the rock's edges, but even with an iron bar we couldn't get it to lift or turn.




Eventually we decided it was plenty deep enough for the house's newest living thing: a little peach tree.