We've Been Quiet For A Week...

....in a good way. Life is full and rich and crazy. Summer burst upon the scene like a hot hypnotist. Everything rises by silent seasonal instruction, "when the temperature reaches 80F, you will send out flowers and shoots, you will produce tendrils that climb the strings, you will turn a strawberry red."
Heatwave, we're having a heatwave. Not only that but we are in the midst of dragonfly season and the season of squirrels lying flat on their bellies in the shade. One day there was a cocoon by the front-yard hose,
and then there was a Ctenucha Rubroscapa come out for its first time in the sun.

I once saw an orange-headed lizard on the road. It ducked so fast Roger missed it. Maybe I imagined it. That could happen, right? But I looked out the door on Sunday, just before I pulled down the blinds on the 95F western side of the house and saw this guy.
What? An orange-headed thing. I remember googling that the first time. It's a skink. Yes, a Gilbert's Skink. Wikipedia says they're mostly not out and about. This one ran under the frame of the door. They like to hide. Ain't that the truth. I can totally relate.

Pictures From The Pond

Now that the temperatures have finally moved into somewhat normal range, we're starting to see more insects out and about (and luckily not close to the poison-zone around the house). This makes us very happy. Most of the action takes place down by the pond. So, we moved a picnic bench down there and just sit and watch.
We're seeing a lot of dragonflies. This one skims the top of the pond for food. A rather handsome fellow, a Common Whitetail.
We're also seeing damselflies flying around or hanging about together while otherwise engaged.
The thing that caught my eye though, and made me look at bugguide for hours was this beautiful orange moth. Still no ID on this one, but what a strikingly brilliant orange moth it is. I wish it would have unfolded its wings, but it sat quite still for a long time just like this.

The field around the pond is full of tall grasses that we are letting go to seed. The variety is quite surprising and I can see that we're going to spend time learning how to ID them as well. Don't be surprised if you see photos of grasses soon. It's the kind of thing that thrills us now!

I've posted most of these photos already on Facebook, but I like having them here on the blog for the recorded history of our new home, and for our friends who are not on Facebook to take a look.

No Flippin' Way

Okay, we didn't actually flip a rock on International Rock Flippin' Day. We meant to. In fact we kept saying to each other, we should go flip a rock, we should go flip a rock. But we ended up working in the yard and never did made it out to where the interesting rocks to flip are. It was one of those Sundays that started out cool and cloudy and pretty much stayed that way until we went out to clear the late summer flowers that have already gone to seed. That's when the sun came out and baked us. Roger did have to move a rock on the border of one of our flower beds in an effort to get to the root of an invasive blackberry vine. We don't think that counts, although I did say, you flipped a rock.
There have been interesting sightings in our yard, nonetheless. We did see our very first Monarch butterfly since we moved here in 2004. It was happily nectaring on the buddleia. I had forgotten how large and beautiful Monarchs are. Much bigger than the Pine Whites, Lorquin Admirals and Red Admirals. I'm not sure why we haven't seen them here before this, and can only hope this is just the beginning of such sightings.
We also had this wonderfully marked moth on our screen door. It stayed there most of the day and let me get fairly close for this pic. These Syngrapha alias are reputed to spend their caterpillar stage defoliating Sitka and other spruces in the forests of the Pacific Northwest.

Other than that, I devoted a lot of my attention over the weekend trying to figure out how Google actually ranks the pages that show up after a search. My sister has a website for her real estate, and even though there doesn't seem to be anyone else with her name (how weird is that?), her website didn't show up after a google search. So, I started thinking about how to remedy that. I made a blog for her and named it Lynn Hook Real Estate. That brought her up after a name search right away, but after a day, she disappeared. That seemed very strange. So, I started googling her name a couple of different ways to see how and when she would show up. Roger did some research and found that the more sites that link to her, the higher in rank she goes. So, I added her to our blog. Then I added her website to her blog. Now, when we google Lynn Hook or Lynn Hook Real Estate she actually shows up ranked one and two on the first page. She would like her page to show when someone searches on Simi Valley Real Estate. That's going to be quite a bit harder to accomplish. A million results come up after that google search, and I checked fifteen pages, and she wasn't there yet. I wondered if I started to google Simi Valley Real Estate Lynn Hook, and kept at like a fanatic, if that would begin to influence search results. I am still working on it. If any of you have any insights or suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
The light is changing fast and significantly these days, as we approach the equinox. The angle of the sun in fall is my favorite of all the year. In a celebration of that light, we had one of our first pretty sunsets in ages. A beautiful end to the flippin' weekend.

Signs of the Season

This moth, Mesoleuca gratulata, was alone on our garage door.
Here are two together deeply engaged on our sidewalk.
These two moths were connected for hours and hours. I emailed Bev at Burning Silo to ask her if this was typical moth reproductive behavior. She replied:

I asked Bill Oehlke (who has a silk moths website) about that last year when I found the mating pair of One-eyed Sphinx moths (Smerinthus cerisyi).
Here's a page that he put up about them.
On it, he writes:
The female (upper moth) is carrying a load of eggs as evidenced by her enlarged abdomen. Females usually do not fly until after they have mated. Pairing takes place at night and the moths often remain in copula until the following evening.
I don't know if that is true of all species of moths, but I would think it may well be the case for quite a few. I've occasionally found paired moths and they remain very still and are often in place an hour or more later.

It is like this all around our yard. The birds and bees are busy, seriously. This black-capped chickadee is pulling apart our doormat to make her nest. Ah, spring.

Have a great weekend, friends.