Welcome to the yard on the left. A place to contemplate, relax, and rant on the right.
9.27.2007
Green Thursday: No more plastic water bottles
9.26.2007
Bye, Bye Sunflowers
This pile will be tied up, then put out for yard waste next month.
There's quite an empty spot left by our 'happy face' plants. It won't be long until everything is out of the LipsYard garden. Kind of reminds me of how the White House is getting rid of all the happy faced 'Yes-men.'
I can't wait until it's time to plow the whole place under and start fresh.
9.25.2007
Oh What A Beautiful Morning (Glory)
The vines have been growing for most of the summer, finally we see some color from the Morning Glory (Ipomoea tricolor.) This one is called 'Heavenly Blue.'
Morning Glory was also the title of a 1933 movie starring Katharine Hepburn and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. She won the best actress oscar for her roll:
Eva Lovelace, would-be actress trying to crash the New York stage, is a wildly optimistic chatterbox full of theatrical mannerisms. Her looks, more than her talent, attract the interest of a paternal actor, a philandering producer, and an earnest playwright. Is she destined for stardom or the "casting couch"? Will she fade after the brief blooming of a "morning glory"?
Also making his annual fall appearance at the United Nations, America's Morning Glory, President George W. Bush.
9.24.2007
Life's Disappointment Turned Around
9.21.2007
Attention small bugs, come here
9.20.2007
Green Thursday: Everglades de-listed
9.19.2007
Kale, Kale, the gangs all here
9.18.2007
Sedum and weep
Even though its 80 today, Fall is still all around us, expecially in some trees starting to turn, and in the Sedum (Sedum spectabile ) in the LipsYard front beds. The border varieties of Stonecrop are a dependable choice for the late summer and fall garden, offering foliage interest earlier in the season, then a colorful display of flowers in the fall. Autumn Joy is by far the most popular of these, a familiar sight when it begins to produce green broccoli-like buds in mid-summer, which gradually open into enormous dusty-pink flower heads, finally deepening to rich bronzy-red. Even the dead flower heads have good winter effect.
The Sedum are alive with bees, too. Can you find Mr. Bumble Bee? He's uncovering lots of hidden pollen, just like Congress is uncovering lots of Bush Administration scandals. The latest involves the State Department, and their Inspector General not looking into fraud and wasteful spending in Iraq, where they've spent over $3 billion, including $600 million for our biggest foreign embassy ever.
1170 photos of different kinds of SedumThere's even a Sedum Society
9.17.2007
Annual physical day
2. A complete skeleton is worth between $5,000 and $7,500 to a medical student your skull alone would fetch only about $450.
3. Your mouth produces about one quart of saliva per day.
4. Demodex folliculorum has eight stumpy legs and a tail, is about a third of a millimeter long, and loves nothing more than to recline in the warm, oily pits of your hair follicles. Most adults have this mite, usually on the head, but especially in eyelashes. And often, they’re in nipples.
5. You have approximately 4,000 wax glands in each ear.
6. The average adult stool weighs about 4 ounces. And half of the bulk of your feces comprises the dead bodies of bacteria that live inside your intestines.
7. The average male foot exudes half a pint of sweat each day.
8. If it weren’t for the slimy mucous that clings to and lines the walls of your gut, your stomach would readily digest itself.
9. The average person will pass about 11,000 gallons of urine in a lifetime.
10. A man weighing 200 lbs. would provide enough meat to feed 100 cannibals in one sitting.
9.14.2007
Hey, look at MY BUG!
9.13.2007
Green Thursday: Bug Off
9.12.2007
The Return of Lunch with Lips
9.11.2007
9.10.2007
Web spinning
Remember our little lady spider friend from an earlier blog? READ HERE. The Black and Yellow Argiope (Argiope aurantia) is doing well in the Day Lillies (Hemerocallis) ...
...and recently layed this egg sack, now attached to the garage siding.
With the recent outbreak of mosquitos (Diptera Culicidae,) its nice to see one caught in the web.
Speaking of caught in the web, here's a shot of General David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, testifying in the first of three hearings this week on the future course of the unpopular 4-year-old Iraq war.
A recent New York Times/CBS News Poll found that Americans trust military commanders far more than the Bush administration or Congress to bring the war in Iraq to a successful end. Five percent of Americans said they most trust the Bush administration to resolve the war, the poll found; 21 percent said they would most trust Congress; and 68 percent expressed the most trust in military commanders.
A separate poll shows that an overwhelming numbers of Iraqis say the U.S. troop buildup has worsened security and the prospects for economic and political progress in their country. Forty-seven percent of those surveyed in a poll conducted by ABC News, Britain's BBC, and Japan's public broadcaster NHK said they want American forces and their coalition allies to leave the country immediately. This was 12 percent more people than harbored those views in a March poll, just as the troop increase was beginning.
9.07.2007
Mukwonago Muppets in print
Lips LaBelle is not your typical fantasy football player.
For Labelle, it’s a confounding mystery that made him question why he needed another quarterback when he already had Jake Delhomme.
“It’s a lot like how I do my lottery tickets, a quick pick,” LaBelle said.
9.06.2007
Green Thursday: Paving the way
9.05.2007
The Molt is on
The empty shells kind of remind me all the folks who've bailed on the Bush White House lately.
Click HERE to see a cicada emerging from one of these.
There's even more movies and sounds of cicadas HERE.
This female, after a little bug bliss, is depositing eggs in the stem. When they hatch, they'll drop to the ground, and stay there for another 13 or 17 years.
9.04.2007
Crawling towards Fall
With a wingspan of 5 to 6 inches, the cecropia moth is the largest North American moth. Although common enough, you don't often see them because they fly only at night. (I hope they don't run into our homeless bats!)
This crawly guy's life started last May or June, when one of over 100 eggs layed by the female moth on the underside of a leaf, hatched.
The newly hatched caterpillars, or larvae, are black and the size of a mosquito. Cecropia larva have many enemies. A newly hatched caterpillar can be the victim of even a tiny spider. Unlike some other moths, cecropias have so many enemies they never become a pest.
Before the caterpillar is ready to spin a cocoon, it will molt several times. The stages of a caterpillar's life between molts are referred to as instars. The cecropia caterpillar's colors change from its original black coloration to a green-orange color as we saw today. Those yellow and orange balls on the black spines are called tubercles.
The cecropia caterpillars feed mainly on cherry, plum, apple, elderberry, box elder, maple, birch and willow, but will also feed on linden, elm, sassafras and lilac.
Very soon he'll spend several days spinning a tough, brown, weather-resistant home. Inside the cocoon the caterpillar will pupate and prepare itself for winter and the miraculous metamorphosis in the coming spring. In their cocoons, they can survive temperatures less than thirty degrees below zero Fahrenheit! It remains protected, waiting for a beautiful spring day.
The cecropia moths emerge in late May or early June. Late at night, the female emits a scent called a pheromone that will attract a male moth. The male senses the pheromone with his sensitive antennae. He is so attracted to the scent, he can find a female from a distance of a mile away! (The attraction is very similar to a member of Congress and the scent of lobbyist's money.) The mated pair will remain together throughout the following day.
Cecropia moths do not live long (about two weeks) because the adult cecropia cannot eat. In fact, they don't even have a mouth! The only purpose of the adult stage is to mate and lay eggs.
Blog Archive
-
▼
2007
(194)
-
▼
September
(18)
- Green Thursday: No more plastic water bottles
- Bye, Bye Sunflowers
- Oh What A Beautiful Morning (Glory)
- Life's Disappointment Turned Around
- Attention small bugs, come here
- Green Thursday: Everglades de-listed
- Kale, Kale, the gangs all here
- Sedum and weep
- Annual physical day
- Hey, look at MY BUG!
- Green Thursday: Bug Off
- The Return of Lunch with Lips
- Six Years Later
- Web spinning
- Mukwonago Muppets in print
- Green Thursday: Paving the way
- The Molt is on
- Crawling towards Fall
-
▼
September
(18)