Dancing Butterflies

I've noticed the last couple of days that we have a cloud of little yellow butterflies on a small sand plain where the dumpster used to be.

You can barely see them in the picture below.



I believe they're sulphur butterflies. We have these little clusters of them in several other spots in the yard.



I read that they're sometimes called 'mud puddle butterflies' because they cluster at small mud puddles to sip from them. They're supposed to be getting minerals that way. The ones in this picture all look similar but we have several different kinds of these butterflies, some larger and some more orange than these.



I love how they cluster, and then rise and dance in the air when we pass by. What's also interesting to me is that we have other damp areas of ground in the yard where they don't cluster. I think that if I just knew more about it, I could conclude something about the composition of soil in those areas.

At our previous house, which backed to a pond, I always wondered why we didn't see more butterflies, since there were abundant mud flats there. I suspect it was because all the houses that backed to the pond had lawns, and many of them used herbicides/pesticides.

It always amazes me how little I really know about the world around me.

More Orb Spider

My husband got some more detailed photos of the orb spider, so I thought I'd post one. It's an amazing looking spider.



I zoomed in on it.



I hope I don't dream about that picture.

Emma Gets a Treat

The pasture grass is getting overgrazed, so we decided to give Emma, the more docile of the two goats, a treat by putting her on a leash and taking her to a weed patch in the front lawn.

She wasn't easy to get on the leash, and she wasn't easy to lead on the leash. And yes, we felt a little silly.



But it was Arlene who really objected. Why should Emma get the treat?



Isn't she a good goat too?



Emma really enjoyed it and gorged herself on tasty weeds. We had to use cracked corn to entice her back into the pasture.



We're going to try staking her out next time, so we can sit on the porch and watch from the shade. We're hoping this will buy us a little time to keep them longer in the upper pasture, since it apparently takes three weeks for the barber pole worm to die out in the other one.

Plus, it's kind of fun to walk a goat...

The Orb Spider

My husband decided to mow a path along the pond this evening, both so we can walk around it more easily and to see if the animals will eat the exposed pasture grass, since they seem to avoid the taller stands of grass.

It was the first time we'd walked along there in a while, and we discovered large numbers of beautiful orb spiders bobbing gently in the breeze in their ornate webs.

I particularly like this picture, with the female orb spider in the middle, a passion fruit growing on the passionflower vine, and the bright orange caterpillar of the Gulf Fritillary butterfly, which feeds exclusively on the passionflower vine.



We've been hoping for some time to see those caterpillars. Here's another shot of the female spider, with the characteristic zig-zag portion of the web. They're supposed to be common spiders, but I'd never seen one before we moved out here, and I've never seen anything like this web. Isn't it amazing?



According to my Internet research, the black-and-yellow argiope, which is this version of the orb spider, eats its web at the end of each day and re-spins it at night. In climates like ours, the female can live up to a couple of years, but the male probably dies after mating. To attract a female, the male plucks gently at the edge of her web. They eat flies, mosquitos, and ants and are considered beneficial to humans.



We would have liked to get closer pictures, but to get these we had to hang precariously out over the pond, and much as I like any spider that eats flies, I don't particularly want to meet them up close and personal....

Interpret This

I think someone wants in?



What a face...

What the Rain Produces

We had a long wet spring, but recently haven't had much rain until this last week, when we had a torrential downpour that left our grassless-construction-zone red clay soggy and slippery.

It also produced hundreds of little mushrooms, and then a little patch of these large mushrooms. They look like giant golf balls on large tees.

Choices

I was playing with my husband's camera again, and took a picture of the lantana, which got me thinking about plant issues. The land we bought was wooded, and the builder, who had planned to live here, cleared most of it for pasture. We want to replant as much as we can with native plants. We want to see bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and all kinds of insects.

However, there are some foundation plantings that are already here and thriving, including several lantana plants. From what I read, common lantana is an invasive plant, and a real problem in parts of the American south.

It's a beautiful plant...



....and is obviously thriving here. These two lantanas can't be more than 2-3 years old. They are constantly covered in bees and butterflies so are obviously nurturing wildlife.



I've even bought and planted a couple of new lantana plants. I had been thinking to myself that as long as I keep them from being invasive on my property, it was all right. Then I read a comment on someone's blog that really struck me. The person commented that of course we can't control where birds deposit seeds through their droppings.

Nothing's ever simple, is it? I still haven't decided what to do, if anything...

On a lighter note, it's a beautiful cool, misty day here for the beginning of August, and Halley the new cat is in a playful mood. I'm not sure exactly what she's pretending to be in this picture.




A race car driver?