I haven’t been online much this summer – a decision to spend more time with friends and family has kept us on the road. I’m still a little behind but have a few photos from our time in June around the neighborhood. I’m still upset about the beautiful chickens we found roaming through the nearby park, at least one of which met an unhappy end so I’m dedicating this post to happy finds, like this turtle on the path to the park:
Also on the path: a spider – I love the name of the zigzag part of the web: the stabilimentum.
In spite of the heat, there were still some ducks in the lake:
And closer to home, we had loads of ladybugs in the bamboo. Here is a newly hatched ladybug, stretching and drying its wings. After about a half hour, it retracts its wings then starts changing from the pale pink to black with red spots. The entire process, from hatching to final color takes about three hours:
In one of our backyard fountains, a former tadpole, now a frog, emerges from the pond. This one doesn’t look like the more plentiful small green tree frogs that we usually have. We didn’t have as many green tree frogs this year but what we did have were at least two bigger Leopard Frogs so this may be an emerging Leopard Frog (downer: they eat the small green tree frogs.)
And last, a tiny spider in one of the sunflowers:





