A smiling dragonfly
In July we made several trips out of town with family and friends, so we didn’t have a lot of time to wander around the yard or to make many walks through Earl Johnson Park (a.k.a., St. Augustine Road Fish Management Area.) Not that I would have been inclined to do it much – this seems to be the hottest July ever.
I couldn’t identify this fungus. There is a fallen log that we use to cross one of the streams. It stays pretty wet, which this fungus seems to like:
Here’s another kind, in a drier part of the woods:
Back at home, in the bamboo, there were hundreds of ladybug larvae. This stand of bamboo grew from a single cutting we bought about 18 years ago. It was called Asian Punting Pole bamboo. Although quite healthy, it is infested with scale and I’m assuming that is what the larvae are eating.
The ladybug hatching seemed to reach its peak in July. While I have still only managed to catch a couple of them right at the moment they emerge, I could go out at any time of the day and see a half dozen in this newly-hatched phase. It takes them a couple of hours to develop their spots.
My favorites – trash bugs! I’ve shared photos of them before. These are lacewing larvae that cover themselves with detritus and in a rather macabre turn, with the bodies of their victims. They are a mid-summer inhabitant of the bamboo:
Here’s one that I lifted off the bamboo with a piece of paper so I could get a better look:
One more picture: At the end of July we headed off to the middle of the Atlantic, where we spent 10 days on the island of Faial in the Azores. What a beautiful, friendly place! One of my favorite adventures was tidepooling with friends and family:
