Carpenters

In addition to leaf-cutter ants, the woods have carpenter ants. We’ve seen some in weakened trees, but I had never seen how much sawdust they produced. If ants are higher in the tree, sawdust will likely blow away before it reached the ground. So I found this pile impressive, and was reminded why I’m glad not to live in a wooden house.

Ants and acacia

Ants are, of course, amazing. What’s unusual about this trail is that we could actually find the end of it; usually the trails disappear in the undergrowth, often after a far greater distance than this.

Regardless, the question remains: why weren’t they harvesting the closer acacia bush?

Acacias in bloom

As with the previous cold dwelling, it may look warm but anything but—temperature never got out of the 40s°F (<10°C), and a biting wind. But sun!

Double-faced fruit trees

Sometime after planting fruit trees, someone with much more experience pointed out that the nasty spiked branches would never produce fruit, because they weren’t part of the fruit-bearing portion of the plant.

Instead, they were suckers growing from the root stock. You can sort of see where the two join, and there’s the sucker below.

The junction is much clearer on our lemon tree.

Lesson is: they are nasty things, obviously well worth removing!

Just some tree

Fog, and more fog

A trace of fog. And just a few blocks later….

Normally I avoid power cables in photos, but in this case they add a sort of grittiness that appeals to me..

Bye bye bat hotel

Back in 2012, I installed a “bat hotel” to try to entice the noisy bats nesting in the roof into a custom location.

Time to paint the wall, and today I asked the painters to remove it.

Disassembling it, it appears that not a single bat in twelve and a half years even bothered to check it out. Oh well.

More kindling, as wood stove season arrives.

Snake!

Couple feet long, not huge, but exciting to us because we haven’t seen a snake in probably two years. Alas, it didn’t feel like performing and I didn’t feel like hassling it.

For the bees.

For some reason, the yucca plants are falling apart this year. The first—a few weeks ago—appeared to have been caused by heavy wind. This one, not sure, but even though it was hanging over the driveway, I knew at first glance I had to leave it for a while: the bees were having a field day.

That was almost two weeks ago.

So what’s my excuse now? (Rhetorical question.)

Category: Nature