2018 Wings of Fancy Ends

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Yesterday was the last day of Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy butterfly exhibit. I volunteered for the last morning shift; taking in zucchini muffins to share with the other volunteers and staff. It started out slow for the butterflies and visitors; the day was cool and very cloudy. Then it warmed up a little and the sun even came out.

I looked back through pictures I’ve taken in the exhibit -ones I’ve liked but not posted for one reason or another. I think if headlines for some of them:

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A Birdwing resting – being harassed by a smaller butterfly

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Three Queens

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Sleeping late (butterflies roosting long past sunrise because it was so cloudy – mostly Longwings)

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Pining to go outdoors (Blue Morpho)

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Living jade (Malachite butterfly)

I put the rest into a slide show…to prolong the joy of the 2018 Wings of Fancy exhibit one more day. I’m already looking forward to next April when the 2019 version will open!

Paper Wasp

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In one of my forays into my front flowerbed to check Monarch butterfly chrysalises, I noticed a wasp on a poke weed flower stalk. It was moving all over the stalk, investigating each open flower. I had my camera…and took a series of pictures. The pictures were easy enough to identify it as a Common Paper Wasp Polistes exclamans using the Maryland Biodiversity Project website. I learned from their database that it is a species of the southeastern US that appears to be expanding northward. I looked around for the nest but didn’t see one. We still have some time for the larvae to develop but as the nectar plants die back, only the young queens will remain – in a protected spot to over winter.

Enjoy the paper wasp acrobatics on the poke weed flowers slide show!

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 15, 2018

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

BBC - Future - How China’s giant solar farms are transforming world energy – Giant solar farms that, when viewed from the air form Giant Pandas. All over the world…but in China particularly…there are more and more enormous solar farms. It’s good for the immediate future but there are still issues with what happens when the solar panels need to be recycled (i.e. in 30 or so years).

New research shows how children want their food served -- ScienceDaily – I didn’t find this a challenge…my daughter always enjoyed her food. It seems more likely to be challenging in places like school cafeterias or other institutional settings.

Photos Show the Icy Glacier Landscape of Northeast Greenland – Life lurking in the ice waters. It’s a difficult place to dive.

Landscape Plants Rated by Deer Resistance (Rutgers NJAES) – Maryland is not that far from New Jersey so this list works for us – although I wish they would mark the plants native to North America. I’d rather plant natives.

How This Popular Garden Plant May Spread Parasites That Harm Monarchs | Smart News | Smithsonian – Aargh!!!! We need to be sure we are not planting tropical milkweed in areas where it is not native….the orange butterfly weed – which is also a milkweed – is native across most of North America and a good plant to have in the garden for Monarch butterfly caterpillars.

New color-generation mechanism discovered in ‘rainbow’ weevil -- ScienceDaily – The researches from Yale propose that this mechanism might be useful for screen displays to enable the same true image from any angle and to reduce signal loss in optical fibers.

What Ötzi the Iceman’s Tattoos Reveal About Copper Age Medical Practices | Smart News | Smithsonian – There have been papers coming out about additional discoveries from the remains found in the Alps in 1991 over the years --- there was a lot we could learn and new technologies have come along to enable more than anyone thought about at first.

Night-time habits of captive flamingos -- ScienceDaily – The forage and roam! Evidently, they are more active at night in the wild as well. During the day they tend to rest and preen…that’s when courtship displays happen as well.

Muscle Clocks Play a Role in Regulating Metabolism | The Scientist Magazine® - Circadian rhythms are not just from the brain! There are timekeepers throughout the body. The peripheral clock in muscles was confirmed in 2007 and it turns out that it is important to glucose metabolism. There is still a lot to learn about all the body’s timekeepers!

BBC - Future - Are hot springs the future of farming? – Maybe there is not one strategy that is the ‘future of farming’ – but this is an interesting idea that we may see in places where it can be done effectively.

Monarchs of September

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Back in August it seemed like we were seeing more Monarch butterflies that at any time during the summer. They seemed to be everywhere. And they were laying eggs.

Toward the end of the month, there were large caterpillars and smaller ones too.

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Then – I only found large caterpillars

And the chrysalises. Some still looked like jade pendants and others were already beginning to become clear – the monarchy colors coming through.

The elementary school that I delivered chrysalises and caterpillars too had their first butterfly emerge last Tuesday – 11 to 12 days after the chrysalis was made. When they released it, the butterfly flew away to the south! Hopefully it is not waylaid along its journey by Hurricane Florence.

Just this week I have had two butterflies emerge and fly way. They were both on the same window frame – opposite corners. On Wednesday morning – the first one emerged and stayed near the empty chrysalis until it flew away.

The second one emerged on Thursday morning. It crawled up onto face of the lintel. It took several hours for it to fly away – perhaps because it was a cloudy day and the humidity was about 90%. It is clearly a male based on the dark nodes on the lower part of the wings.

With all the diseases monarchs have these days – there have been disappointments too…at both the caterpillar stage and the butterfly. I’ve observed deformed butterflies probably caused by the parisite  Ophryocystis Elektroscirrha (OE) – and lethargic, shriveled caterpillars probably from Pseudomonas bacteria (aptly named ‘Black Death’)…so having an apparently healthy butterfly emerge is something I need to keep trying to help the Monarch butterflies! It’s a lot harder to raise healthy Monarchs now than it was back in the 1990s.

Cicada Identification

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I photographed two cicadas in August. When I found the second one at home I had more time and took more pictures. I realized that I probably had enough different views that I should try to identify it. I knew it wasn’t a periodical cicada (one of the 13 or 17 year life cycle species) because it didn’t have red eyes.

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I looked more closely at the markings and did some research using the Maryland Biodiversity Project website…and found it: Swamp Cicada – Neotibicen tibicen. The description they give fits perfectly: “Field marks include bright green in the wings, the white ventral area, greenish legs, and green patches on the head.”

I decided to return to the few pictures I took of the first one I photographed. There were fewer pictures because I was in the field with summer campers. Still – it is clearly Linne’s Cicada – Neotibicen linnei.

With this little success – I am motivated to try more often to identify what I manage to photograph…the challenge being to get quality photos from as many perspectives as possible!

Monarch Buddy

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I started preparing for being a Monarch Buddy the week before school started (post about the prep here). By the time I delivered the larvae and leaves to the school at the end of the second day of school, I’d had further adventures.

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The monarch egg that I’d gotten from the school garden on August 31st, hatched on September 3rd! I was checking it so frequently that I managed to take a picture before it ate its egg case! Compare the size of the caterpillar and its egg case just above to the straight pin used to hold the original leaf to a fresh leaf.

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Twenty-four hours later the tiny caterpillar had eaten some holes on the fresh milkweed leaf and had visible stripes. It was still very tiny when it went to the school.

Wednesday morning, I had 2 of the 4 caterpillars making chrysalises. I was panicked because I wanted the school to have at least three caterpillars and I had only 2 (and 3 chrysalises).

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I went outside and found no caterpillars – just lots of chrysalises. Then – in the tender top leaves of a milkweed – I found a tiny caterpillar about the size of the one that had hatched on the 3rd. I was thrilled and quickly set up to take it to the school later in the day. I ended up with two very small caterpillars, one medium to large caterpillar, and 3 chrysalises….and a gallon Ziploc of milkweed leaves that – hopefully – will feed the caterpillars of a few days at the school.

Longwood Gardens – Part IV

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Of course – there is a lot more of Longwood Gardens outside that in the conservatory. We walked out of the conservatory a few minutes before the 11:15 presentation of ‘Fountains Then and Now’ – and found seats in the front row on the terrace in front of the conservatory. Last time we had visited the gardens, the fountains were being renovated so we savored that a lot of what we remembered is still there plus there are high jets of water from air canons and nozzles that move to make arcs of water than move with the music. Afterwards we walked down to see the fountains closer and looked back toward the conservatory from the terrace of the big fountain. Under that terrace they now have some history of the fountain machinery….a little bit about how they got the water pressure needed originally and today. Part of the gardens (the Tower and Eye of Water) was closed off in preparation for the fireworks that were schedule for the evening (sold out long before we decided to visit) so the only perspective I got of the tower was from afar.

Then it was time for lunch. The air temperature was much hotter when we emerged from the café. We enjoyed the dahlias – and bees.

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The garlic chives in the demonstration garden were popular with the bees as well.

There was a funnel spider with a web full of water droplets.

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We walked past the fountains again to the formal garden rooms. I noticed some stone walls and realized that they probably told the geology story of the place.

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I always like the stairs with water in the Italian Garden…but it was so hot – with no breeze - by the time we were there that the shade and water did not restore draining energy.

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We walked along a boardwalk in the meadow full of joe pye weed and goldenrod on the way back to the visitor center. We cooled off walking around the gift store before starting the drive home.

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Longwood Gardens – Part III

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The water lilies are in a courtyard surrounded by the Longwood Gardens Conservatory. There are several shallow ponds and then beds around the edges with water loving plants. The courtyard is closed in the winter – everything there requires warmer temperatures that the Pennsylvania winter.

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Even the lily pads and leaves of water plants are different than the native water lilies we see elsewhere.

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The day was cloudy which makes for excellent waterlily photography because the water often looks black. I was surprised it was bright enough to create any reflections. The variety of blooms - colors, structure, stage of development…always something a little different to photograph.

And then there are the bees. This time I observed some bees that entered through the side of the flower center and then exited through the opening at the top!

Tomorrow – the gardens away from the conservatory. They were profuse and colorful.

Longwood Gardens – Part II

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My favorite plants to photograph in the Longwood Gardens Conservatory are orchids, fiddleheads, and hibiscus.

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The only time I used my clip-on macro lens for my phone was to attempt to capture some very tiny orchids. This was good practice for photographing native orchids which are very small in our part of North America.

Then I noticed the different kinds of slipper orchids. They are probably my favorites. There was a couple in the room with us that had been growing orchids for years and they told me that the slippers are often the easiest ones to grow…good to know if I ever get the yen to grow orchids. They warned me that the hobby can be addictive.

Another bit of orchid-lore from them: some orchids have a butterfly mark in their center!

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Fiddleheads are always fascinating to look at closely. They are always spirals – sometimes spirals within spirals - that will eventually unfurl into the fronds of ferns. Often there is a fuzz covering the spirals that will be green – maybe shiny – when they are totally unfurled. The fuzz in white

Or brown (tree ferns). I am always surprised at how large the primitive plants can be – realized that earlier in earth’s history, ferns were the ‘big trees.’

There were some that were unfurled enough that the ‘fidddle’ was more of a ball of green.

I managed to see and photography several that were the spirals within spirals. Maybe these are ideas for a Zentangle tile!

Finally – hibiscus. I like their huge petals, the blends of color, the gentle curves, and the complex centers.

Tomorrow – I’ll post about the Longwood water lilies.

Longwood Gardens – Part I

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Last weekend we made the day trip up to Longwood Gardens. We got there shortly after they opened at 9 and headed for the Conservatory since they only allow tripods before noon and we’re always interested in photography in the gardens.

I had my new camera on a monopod and was experimenting to get the perfect height to use the viewfinder…and not hunch over the camera. There were plenty of flowers to practice with the monopod and the additional zoom capability of the new camera.

The Childrens’ Garden is another reason to get to the Conservatory early….to walk through the confined place before the children arrive. Years ago when my daughter was small there were fountains that she loved to hold her hands under but nothing as fancy as the mosaic bottomed fountain there today.

The area is quite a bit larger than it was 20 years go but full of nooks and cranes for children to enjoy: a metal spider web sculpture near the floor, shells on the low arches of an entrance (adults need to duck!) and several bird/animal sculptures that are water features – at a good height for little hands.

There was a collection of cycads in a tropical forest room with a walkway at canopy level. I was fascinate by one of the ripening cones.

My daughter was intrigued by the leaves of the Swiss Cheese plant.

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We were all remined of Hawaii by the Torch Ginger.

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The ‘new to me’ plant was a Cocoon Plan in the desert. Somehow, I had not noticed it before. It is a succulent.

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 1, 2018

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Poor sleep triggers viral loneliness and social rejection: Lack of sleep generates social anxiety that infects those around us -- ScienceDaily – Yet another reason that getting enough sleep is important to us as individuals and society at large.

The Armchair Photography Guide to Canyonlands National Park – Island in The Sky | National Parks Traveler – So many of the pictures had snow! It would be good to go when it was not terrifically hot….so any time but summer and even better close to the beginning or end of winter (a little now…not enough to be hazardous).

Stunning Underwater Photos of Microscopic Plankton by Ryo Minemizu – Beautiful, small life.

In Eastern US, adult trees adapt and acclimate to local climate: Tree cores reveal flexibility, more work needed to understand mechanisms -- ScienceDaily – 14 species of trees were analyzed using tree cores from 1940-1980….shouldn’t we look at more recent tree cores too?

Bed Bugs: When Biodiversity Bites – Cool Green Science – Informative….maybe I should check for bedbugs more consistently when I travel. I shouldn’t keep relying on ‘luck’ to avoid a very bad experience.

A Record Year for Measles Cases in Europe | The Scientist Magazine® - When I was a child, the measles vaccines didn’t exist yet. It was awful. Everyone got sick with them and, for some, there were lasting consequences. I was fortunate and survived without lasting damage except for missing enough school that I never quite understood certain volumetric measurements because I completely missed when it was taught.

Which country has the most expensive education? - Are the comparisons really apples and apples…or are there some pears and oranges thrown in? It is about educations but there are a lot of variables beside cost. All countries and parents and teachers struggle with how to make education relevant to students for now and into the future.

Air Pollution Linked to Decline in Cognitive Performance – The study was done in China but I wondered if it was true in other areas of the world with high levels of air pollution (like India). The US could be vulnerable if we relax our clean air standards.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx begins asteroid operations campaign – We were in Florida in September 2016 for the launch…so I always notice the updates about its progress.

50% of Industrial Climate Change Emissions Tied to Fossil Fuel Companies – An interview with the two authors of a recently released report: Decarbonization Pathways for Mines.

Brookside Hummingbirds

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My husband and I made the effort to get to Brookside Gardens early enough last Saturday and Sunday for some hummingbird photography; I’d seen photographers at ‘the place’ before my shift at the butterfly exhibit. The hummingbirds come to the bed of cardinal flowers and salvias in the fragrance garden that is in bright sunlight in the morning. It was a good opportunity for me to experiment with my new camera. I set the camera for continuous shooting (as fast as it can go when the button is held down) and savored how much easier the viewfinder is when trying to follow fast moving birds. I was pleased with several sequences from Saturday.

On Sunday there were not as many birds, but I had learned to zoom a bit more…make the bird bigger in the frame

I was also luck enough to track a flying bird to the magnolia tree and get a still portrait!

My husband was taking pictures at the same time with a big lens and much more expensive camera. His camera does a better job of ‘freezing’ the wing motion than my point-and-shoot strategy. He caught the hummingbird in the magnolia with is beak open!

3 Free eBooks – August 2018

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So many great books available all the time…and free. Reading used to be a much more expensive activity!

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Brongniart, Adolphe. Histoire des végétaux fossiles, ou, Recherches botaniques et géologiques sur les végétaux renfermés dans les diverses couches du globe. A Paris et a Amsterdam: Chez G. Dufour et Ed. d’Ocagne. 1828. Available from Internet Archive here. This book includes many illustrations of plant fossils – imprints on rocks. It’s written in French – but the illustrations are the reason it’s worth a look. It was probably one of the first paleobotany books ever written. The author produced the book in his late 20s…must have had access to a sizable collection.

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Karageorghis, Vassos. Ancient Art from Cyprus - The Cesnola Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 2000. Available from Internet Archive here. This is a more recent book (I am glad that many copyright holders that have out-of-print books are making them available this way). The color illustrations are wonderful. I particularly like utilitarian objects.

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Aruz, Joan and Wallenfels, Ronald (editors). Art of the first cities: the third millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 2003. Available from Internet Archive here. Another relatively recent book. Would you have guessed the necklace was from the 3rd millennium BC?

Ten Little Celebrations – August 2018

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I thought August might be a slow month with the summer camps ending and nothing new starting….but the month developed….not hard at all to pick 10 little celebrations to highlight.

Solitary hike – Usually I hike with other people – most recently with summer campers. Hike my myself at Mt. Pleasant was a change-of-pace and something to celebrate. Getting a artsy picture of two butterflies on Joe Pye Weed with a clear blue sky background was the image to remember of the morning.

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Surviving a long hike – Then there was the much longer hike with camper up and down…across a stream and along muddy paths. I celebrated when that hike was done!

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Blue Jay feather – A special feather is always a celebration for me…and from several perspectives: finding one on the ground, photographing it, remembering my daughter’s feather collection when she was very young, and realizing that know what kind of bird it came from!

Weekend in State College – Deciding to take a weekend trip – spurt of the moment. And dodging the rain to enjoy every minute! Celebrating family.

Butterflies – August seems to be my peak month for butterflies roosting on me in the butterfly exhibit. It’s special every single time.

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Hummingbirds – Last weekend my husband and I attempted to photograph hummingbirds at Brookside gardens for two mornings. We were reasonably successful (a post about our experience is coming) but we’ll both improve with more practice. The birds are fast movers. Both of us are celebrating the photographs we got with the birds in focus!

Blooming bananas – Seeing something familiar but in a little different stage of development….I’m celebrating being in the conservatory at the right time.

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Rulers for 25 cents – I celebrated that several stores in our area had wooden rulers for 26 cents. That’s inexpensive enough I can have my own supply for field trips with children just learning to measure sizes of what we find on our hikes.

Dragonflies – I haven’t found dragonflies in the wheel formation (mating) but I did find two at our neighborhood storm water management pond that were half way there! I celebrated the photographic opportunity and an still looking for the wheel.

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Sweet potato leaves – Yummy sweet potato leaves. Our Community Supported Agriculture must have harvested part of the sweet potato crop in August so we got leaves in one of our shares this month. I hope there are still some left for later since we normally get them in late September. They are probably my favorite salad green….and I get them a couple of weeks a year….so worthy of celebration when they are available.

Blooming Bananas

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I haven’t spent much time recently in the north conservatory at Brookside Gardens since I am generally coming to volunteer at the Wings of Fancy exhibit. Yesterday I took the short cut from the ticket taker area through the green house and a corner of the north conservatory on the way to the staff/volunteer room and noticed some petals on the floor. I looked up. The banana tree had blooms! Somehow in all the years I’ve been visiting Brookside and noting the banana trees in that corner, I’d never caught it in this stage of development. Wow! My first impression was that the flowers reminded me of orchids, but bananas are more closely related to the gingers evidently.

Seeing the banana flowers was the best bit of serendipity of the day!

Butterflies at Brookside Gardens

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August was a good month for butterflies at Brookside Gardens – both in the conservatory and outdoors in the gardens. Volunteering allows me to visit the Wings of Fancy exhibit and bring guests when I’m not ‘on shift;’ I get there just as the conservatory opens to indulge in some butterfly photography.

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I challenge myself to capture eyes, proboscis, palpi, and antennae for as many butterflies as possible.

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The blue morpho is one I photography a lot so I am always looking for a new and different perspective.

The blue morpho is one I photography a lot so I am always looking for a new and different perspective.

The same is true for true for the malachite. I think I like the underside of the wings more than the upper.

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The Julia longwing is the one I photographyed a few months ago moving its palpi across the parts of its eyes.

The stars for August were the big moths. There were male and female Atlas moths – kept separately so they couldn’t mate and lay eggs everywhere in the conservatory creating a containment problem. The males are much smaller than the females and the shape of the scale-less (clear) portions of the wing are different. In the pictures the male’s antennae are forward from the head…both females have antennae positioned back over their heads.

The other big moth was the Africa Moon Moth which looks very similar to our North American Luna Moth.

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The Wings of Fancy exhibit runs until September 16….so a few more weeks to enjoy the butterflies in the conservatory.

Brookside Wings of Fancy Caterpillars – August 2018

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The caterpillars at Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy exhibit are maturing….getting ready for cooler temperatures. On the walk up the ticket taker table, the last of the milkweed tussock moth caterpillars are finishing their leaves and pupating. A large number had to be moved to milkweed plants further from the caterpillar house so that the Monarch caterpillars would be on view to the visitors waiting to enter the caterpillar house of the exhibit.

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The caterpillar house in August featured a white case (for the saddleback caterpillars) and then places for 3 pots (starring cecropia moth and monarch butterfly caterpillars).

The saddleback caterpillars grew bigger in August. I talked to at least two people that has been stung by them in their gardens!

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The cecropia moth caterpillars made cocoons one my one over the course of the month. Yesterday there was only one caterpillar left on the black cherry – and it had been the runt of the caterpillars from the beginning; it’s catching up now.

There is a spicebush tree in a pot next to the black cherry where the caterpillars have moved to make their cocoons.

The monarch caterpillars have been the most fun to watch. I was in the caterpillar house once just after a caterpillar shed its skin.

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They alternate between resting and eating….mostly eating.

When they are big enough to pupate, they try to leave the host plant. One started the walk-about when I was volunteering in the caterpillar house (round and round the pot looking for a way off) and we moved it to a portable mesh cube where it made its J and then chrysalis.

Outside there were many Monarch chrysalises on the plants and the structure of the caterpillar house. They always look like jade pendants to me.

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Outdoors at Brookside Gardens

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I try to take a few minutes before each shift volunteering at Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy to walk around outside in the gardens. There is a lot going on in August. I am featuring some of my favorite things I noticed and photographed in this post.

Button bush and cone flowers and sunflowers – with and without bees.

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Joe Pye Weed in bloom…very popular with the tiger swallowtails. One morning I photographed a dark morph female with several of the yellow and black versions.

Monarchs are more prevalent in the garden than they were earlier.

I can never resist checking the gingko tree near the conservatory. I like the way the leaves look outlined in gold of the morning sunshine.

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The sumac is a plant I am tracking this year. I recognize the seed heads but want to capture how the seeds develop. This will take me further into the fall since they don’t look like they’ve changed too much during this month.

There are always a lot of funnel spider webs in the low pines around the conservatory….and sometimes the spider is visible.

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There are several kinds of datura in the garden.

I had never nptoced what the seed pod looked like before.

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Some of the trumpets hang downward and I appreciated that the screen on my new camera can pivot so I can see what the camera is seeing when it is point straight up! I’ve always wanted to photography the unfurling flower.

The bald cypress has the scale insects like it did last summer but seems healthy enough to survive. The cones are beginning to form.

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The cannas are beautiful this time of year. Some are producing seed pods.

This is the view from the ticket taker table for Wings of Fancy. I ended up doing the job when no one had signed up for it….a  last minute change of plans.

There are milkweed plants close to the entrance to the caterpillar house and there are often insects on the plants other than caterpillars. When there are no visitors in the area…I roam around and take pictures; more on the caterpillars tomorrow.

Weekend in State College - Sunday

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On Sunday morning we headed to the Arboretum at Penn State.We spent the most time in the Children’s Gate Childrens Garden just like the last time we visited in October 2016 (posts about that visit are here and here). The entrance includes a water feature with a slightly stylized Great Blue Heron sculpture.

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There are areas growing food plants and models of fossils…a water feature to wade into, rocks positioned enable close examination, and a man-made cave (the included bat models hanging from the ceiling)… snake sculptures and real chipmunks that seemed to be everywhere. I kept thinking about how wonderful the garden would be for field trips!

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One of my favorite features is a bowl with kaleidoscopes positioned around it. Last time it had colorful gourds and squash. This time it had succulents.  I took pictures through the scopes!

In the rest of the garden there were many late summer blooms…and spiders too.

There was a lily pond. They had quite a variety of water lilies.

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The one lotus plant they had was spectacular. It must be a hybrid with all the extra very curly petals. I was glad I took a closer look at it.

After lunch we headed home. It was a short but spectacular jaunt into Central Pennsylvania.

Weekend in State College - Saturday

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We made a last-minute decision to trek to State College PA to visit my daughter weekend before last. I had gotten a new camera the day before, so I experimented with it during the trip. The new camera is a Canon PowerShot SX60 HS and is billed as a ‘bridge’ camera in that it has a lot of features of my previous point-and-shot cameras but some added features too: optics that can accept added filters, some dials that make it easier to do some functions manually, and viewfinder + screen rather than just the screen. The optics zoom to 65x rather than 40x of my older point and shot. Enough the same that I knew I could use it immediately and give myself time to get comfortable with the new features.

We got to State College just before lunch time…decided to go out to Mexican food for lunch then walked around the campus. I started taking some architectural pictures.

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When we were in my daughter’s office I took close-up pictures of the plants in the window (I think she must have selected them to remind her of Arizona).

There was a graduation ceremony that had just ended, and we saw students in robes and their parents walking around campus. I took pictures of Old Main from several angles.

Next I utilized the 65x zoom for some botanical photography.

There is a Carnegie Building at Penn State that was one of the many libraries Andrew Carnegie funded.

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We had walked around long enough to stop at the Creamery for out afternoon treat.  I got bittersweet mint ice cream in a cup. Yum (and not as messy as a cone on a hot afternoon)!