Orange seedlings

Sprouted around October 10, planted October 15. (I dunno if that's 2 or 3 weeks of growth.) They're still alive, and hopefully will continue to grow. Sunlight's getting weaker and I've just got the one little CFL to supplement their growth. Plus, it's chilly in here (air temp is 60 degrees) so I put a little heat pad under them (with auto shut-off) to try to boost the soil temps.

I put up a little timelapse on my tumblr, 'cos it's easier to scroll through the pictures.

A beautiful variegated fritillary. Released today to brave the rain and snow tomorrow. Either that or to become food for some other critter.

Which really begs the question, why did I bother to nurture this thing whose chances out there in the world are slim to nil? 'Cause, I don't know. I, too, am tasked with equally impossible things. I, too, sometimes crash and burn. But I am glad to have had the chance to crash and burn, and maybe there is something redeeming that will arise out of it, and maybe I only know that I cannot know what it is. Some days, the best I can do is to give God a chance. To let him into my life. To nurture a thing to its full potential and then release it into the teeth of a snowstorm. And then, wait to see what beauty He may work of it. Patiently. Expectantly.

After The. Worst. Day. Of. Work. I came home. And I just want to sit down and cry.

But I came home and found out that SOMEONE BROKE MY CHRYSALIS!



And then I realized, nope.



I guess I'll release him tomorrow. You know, before the FREAKING SNOW STORM THAT'S GONNA RUIN THE HALLOWEEN HOOT.

I might still have that cry after all.

Anntiiiiciiiipaaaaaaaaatioooooon

October 21 versus October 26. It's roughly day 10 of the variegated fritillary's life a a pupa. Probably it'll hatch at some point when I'm too busy having a life to watch butterflies be born :(

Li'l autumn hike in White Clay

Hikin'! On the Penndel trail on the PA side of the White Clay Creek preserve.

I made a trail buddy today. I ran into a nice gent on the trail with a bandana tied scout-style around his neck, somehow we ended up talking about Sycamores and eagles and things. (I don't remember ever being this gregarious growing up, but my friend from first grade tells me that our initial contact was me saying, "hey, you wanna be friends?" So despite my memory's infidelity, there's apparently a historical precedent.)


Sycamores on the other side... (the bark peels and they look white)


Sycamore leaves get biiiiiiiig!


This is why we leave fallen trees. They become new habitat and eventually, new dirt!


I took this photo to show what a trail blaze is. See the little blue mark on the tree on the left? That's a trail blaze. It is said that certain local park systems actually prohibit the use of trail blazes because it would ruin the trail's aesthetic appeal. Personally, my thought is that getting lost on a trail with the sky going dark is the thing that ruins aesthetic appeal, but what do I know.


Splash'a red!

Why go hiking? Welp. Before I even knew God very well, I knew that nature was special. And when I finally began to know God, I was surrounded by a pristine Alaskan wilderness, and looking around, you can just tell there's something big out there, and it loves the planet very, very much; why else would it be so beautiful?

Every time I'm in nature, I revert to my purest form. I can just be. Every time I've ever been in nature, I become simultaneously satisfied and even more curious. Eyes that have been trained to see pick out the familiar and the unfamiliar. Ears discern the calls of common birds and demand attention over those less heard. There are messages in all of it, and they are all from God.

Variegated Fritillary

It's a Variegated Fritillary. I figured it out after a little more searchin'. And the plants are wild violets, which they sometimes feed on.



Right before pupa stage.



With half its caterpillar skin still on. I think people think that a chrysalis is just a caterpillar that hardens on the outside. It actually pupates on the inside, then sheds its old caterpillar skin. Last night at 0030.



Skin shed complete (the skin is that crumpled up thing on top) this morning at 0900.



So pretty! This doesn't give you any perspective on the size. It's about a half-inch long (as wide across as a dime) and as big around as a chopstick.

Excite!

Black swallowtail caterpillar successfully made it to the pupa stage. I was a little nervous because he went into his "j" pose for like 24 hours. (That's the last thing they do as a caterpillar - they start webbing themselves onto whatever surface suits best, and the next time you see them they're in a chrysalis.) Anyway, I came home from work today and found his last little skin shed on the floor of the tank, and him all brown and camouflaged-lookin'.

The spiky guy is doing something... I finally put a few sticks in his tank and he started going nuts. I've never seen a caterpillar web like this before.



(A better photo of him, now that I got my camera batts all charged)



(THE WEBINATIONNNNN)


AND, the orange seeds are sprouting. YAY!!!

Botanical anecdotes in Autumn.

Autumn!



Leaves!

Red maple and red oak. We’re seeing a lot of red, but I saw some poplars the other day that were starting to show off their yellow. The reds are my favorite, though, especially when you see that one tree that seems almost neon red, popping decisively from the autumn wash of landscape.

Anyway, I’m trying a thing.

In the history of seeds I’ve sprouted, there was once an orange. I think it lasted a week before I finally fried it out in the sun. That was 2009. I’ve learned a thing or two since. Primarily things about patience with tiny delicate organisms.

I am constantly on the lookout for seeds. If I eat a thing that has seeds, I will try to save the seeds and sprout them. I’ve sprouted probably hundreds of apple seeds. And now, hopefully, a batch of orange seeds from a really seedy orange I knew once...

I’m not good at plant care. Like, at all. There’s a friend of mine who’s awesome at it, and she had the incredible misfortune of hiring me to mind her house while she vacationed with family this summer. She didn’t leave long enough for me to do permanent damage, but there were all kinds of things in her instructions that I was pretty sure I would have figured out eventually.

I enjoy caring for plants, though, because I always find little messages from God.

Mint, for example, a tenacious little plant, can be encouraged to root if you mash a sprig of it into the dirt. And cutting it off at the top, the main bent of its growth, forces it to branch out. So, if you find yourself facedown in the dirt, or if you are suddenly stopped - look for the other ways you can grow.

My strawberry plant returned this year with a vengeance. It had rooted its runners into every other pot before I even noticed. Not every runner found a spot to root, but most did. Lesson learned: rabid enthusiasm breeds success.

I cared for my own first tomato plant this summer. (Yes, I somehow got to be this old without ever having my own tomato plant.) I found out that tomatoes need a TON OF WATER. In fact, I kept having little hard green tomatoes that refused to ripen until I began dousing the thing with water. Just another notion of fairness not being equalness, but being “everyone gets what he or she needs.”

And, despite having just the tomato and the pepper plant - I lost some veggies just because I didn’t pick them when they were ripe. If a thing is ripe, PICK the darn thing. Don’t sit around waiting for bugs to eat it. Cause they will.

Anyway, enough of these botanical anecdotes. With any luck, I’ll have the patience to properly care for some orange seedlings, once they (hopefully) start to sprout...

Caterpillar update.

Well, I did quite a lot of caterpillar care this summer. We had a batch of black swallowtail butterflies hatch from the little guys I found on my parsley. But there were two that didn’t hatch. They ate, and pooped, and ate, and pooped, and they went to chrysalis, but they never hatched.

The question was posed: are they dead?

Well... from what I can tell (aka, Google search!), a dead chrysalis turns brown/black. (And I actually had the misfortune of encountering a dead monarch chrysalis out in the park, and the stench was incredible.) These guys, though, they haven’t done that. They’re just... sleeping. Apparently, with black swallowtails - if it’s late in the season, they just stay in there all winter and come back out... later. June?

That was a relief, but now I’m stuck with two chrysalises that are sleeping in, in a huge way. Pfff.

My friend Beth recently found that she had a black swallowtail cat on her parsley. Which really had me doing a triple-take. It’s October, f’goshsakes. Anyway, I stuck it in there with the two chrysalises to overwinter. It kind of reminded me of the Dawn Treader, not the crappy movie version, but the awesome and authentic story by C. S. Lewis. I’m going from memory, so I could be wrong, but... near the end, they found the last two lords asleep at a stone table. They had collected one lord from the island of darkness, or fear, or whatever, and he was so shaken up from being trapped there for so long that he wasn’t in a state to adventure forth anymore. They left him at the table with the other two and he fell asleep, to be woken later.


(Here he is with a sleeping chrysalis to his right. He may be getting ready to do the same since he's crawling on the ceiling and not interested in food anymore.)

Maybe a little dramatic to describe my little caterpillar situation, but I kinda like it.

There was also this red and black caterpillar with spikes:



I didn’t know what it was, but Beth had plenty of its host plant since it was some unknown weed that she was pulling out of the garden. I opted to take this one home, too, though it’s a bit of a mystery bug. The closest thing I can find to it is a Gulf Fritillary larva. The problem is that Gulf Fritillaries ONLY feed on passion flowers or passion vines. And I have no freaking clue what this plant is, but why would it be growing like a weed in Beth’s garden if it was a passion flower?

(Then again, what business does a black swallowtail cat have, being born in October?)

What a weird world it is. Anyway, I’m kinda excited to see what happens with my mystery cat. It’s still eating and pooping (actually it has gravity-defying turds that stick on the side of the container...), so I’m pretty optimistic that I’ll find out within the next few weeks.