Praying Mantis

 For the last several months, a shrub in the front yard has been the home to the biggest Praying Mantis I have ever seen; she was almost as long as my hand, probably about five inches.  

This mantis was very well camouflaged, her gray and green coloring blending so well with the vegetation that some days I could look for several minutes before I finally spotted her.  Given her coloring, I believe she may have been either a Chinese Mantis, Tenodera sinensis, or a California Mantis, Stagomomantis california.  

I first saw her in November.  She moved slowly around the shrub, but usually not very far.  A few weeks ago, she had moved over to the lavender bush on the other side of the walk.  She stayed there for several days, but now seems to have moved elsewhere.  I miss seeing her, but she may still be around.  

So..... What Is It?

 On of the things I've discovered about gardening is that you're constantly finding new things to baffle you.  It was OK when Cindy was in charge of the garden; she had the knowledge and resources to know where to find answers to those questions.  I would wander out into the garden, find something weird, like the space-alien Keelbacked Treehoppers from a decade ago, Cindy would figure out what it was, and then I'd write a blog post about it.  

Now that I'm left in charge of things, I have to figure them out for myself.  

So what is this thing?  I've seen these whitish domes in the garden before, usually on wood or, in this case the bark mulch.  They last for a few days, then the top seems to crumble and they gradually deteriorate into a sort of granular dust.  

Dome on Thursday, Aug. 31st.

Two of them appeared in the front yard in the last week.  When holes appeared in the top of each of the domes a few days later, I thought they might be insect egg cases.  

Same Dome on Sunday, Sept. 3rd.

Seeking identification, I posted it to Bug Guide.net.  Several people suggested that it is probably something called Slime Mold, a single cell amoeba that lives on soil.  This one doesn't look like any of the photos I've seen of Slime Mold, but there are at least 900 species of this that exist, so that's the best bet so far.  

I guess I could pack it up and take it in to the County Ag. office and see what they say it is.  If it really is Slime Mold, the kids in the neighborhood will love it.  How cool is that?  

A Different Kind of Hornworm

 One of the neighbors who's using the veggie beds in my backyard showed me a large caterpillar she had found in the raised bed behind the garage where Cindy had been growing raspberries and blueberries.  Because of the large yellow horn on one end of the caterpillar, I figured it was some variety of hornworm.

We've had hornworms before, both Tomato Hornworms and Tobacco Hornworms.  They're the larva of different types of Sphinx moths.  See A Tasty Snack For the Birds and Big Green Worms.  The way I remember which is which is that the Tomato Hornworms have chevron stripes on their sides and the Tobacco Hornworms have straight stripes, again on their sides.  

This one was different, though.  The stripes on this caterpillar were long racing stripes along its back and no stripes on its sides.  

A quick search on the internet indicates that this might be another type of Sphinx moth, probably the White-lined Sphinx Moth.  Adult Sphinx Moths are pollinators, feeding on nectar of flowering plants, usually at night.  The larva feed on a variety of plants, including chickweed, purslane, evening primrose and other plants.  

I usually pull hornworms off the tomato plants and leave them under the bird feeder as a snack for the birds, but since this guy was not in any of the beds with tomato plants in them, and since the White-lined Sphinx Moth larva eat weeds, I put him back where I found him.  

He's welcome to any weeds he wants to eat.  Just as long as he stays off the tomatoes.  

The Saga of Alfred

 About two weeks ago, I found Princess Fair-weather Daintypaws hunting something in my office.  I moved some stuff aside and found a bead on the floor.  I praised her for finding the bead and put it up on my workbench, but she continued in hunting mode, so I figured there was something else under there.  I moved more stuff aside and found what I thought was a large worm flopping around on the floor, so I scooped it up, carried it outside and dumped it in one of the garden beds.  It flipped itself over and I saw the scale pattern on it and realized it wasn't a worm, but the tail of a Southern Alligator Lizard.  

Since those lizards shed their tails as a defense mechanism, that meant the lizard itself was still in my office.... with Princess.  So I hustled back inside, tossed her out of the office, shut the door and started hunting for the lizard.  I found him, but he scurried away before I could catch him.  I moved more stuff, but he got away again.  Since then I've kept the door to my office shut in the hopes that the lizard would take the opportunity to escape into the furnace room so Princess wouldn't kill him.  

These lizards are valuable bug hunters.  At the Art Glass Guild studio in Spanish Village in September, I watched another Alligator Lizard hunting a swarm of termites.  As each flying termite fluttered to the floor, that lizard, whom I named Albert, would pop out of hiding, gobble up the termite, and dash back into hiding until the next termite landed.  So I was hoping Alfred would do the same thing under my house.  

Albert About to Nab a Termite

I hadn't seen anything of this lizard since then, but this afternoon I found Princess in hunting mode again, this time under the bookshelves in the family room, so I picked her up, put her in my office and shut the door.  I couldn't find the lizard, so I reopened the door, and found Princess sitting there with the lizard curled up on the floor in front of her.  I shoved her into the bathroom, shut the door and looked for a container to put the lizard's body in, but when I turned around, he was gone.  Hoping he hadn't run under the bathroom door, I opened it, and sure enough, she was hunting again in the corner of the bathroom.  

I got her out and finally managed to trap the lizard in the container.

Alfred in the Container

He didn't appear to be wounded, so I carried him waaaayyyy out behind the fence and released him into the shrubbery.

Alfred Among the Shrubs

Run free, Alfred, and DON'T COME BACK INTO THE HOUSE!

Snake Season

Neighbors on NextDoor are reporting finding snakes in their yards, including a rattlesnake and a San Diego Ring-necked Snake, Diadophis punctatis similis.   The Ring-necked snake is not poisonous, but rattlesnakes are definitely a danger to humans and pets.  When a neighbor found one in her front yard a few years ago, I wrote a post on how to tell a Rattlesnake from a harmless Gopher Snake.

 Recently I've been seeing a California Striped Racer, Coluber lateralis lateralis, also known as a Whipsnake, in my yard and the neighbors' veggie bed. These snakes move very fast and apparently can climb trees. I found this one sunning itself in my front yard the other day and again on my garden steps this morning. I thought at first it was part of the irrigation system, but then it quickly scooted into one of the succulents to avoid a dog passing by.

California Striped Racer

And then I also found a Western Skink, Plestiodon skiltonianus,  in the back yard this morning. This lizard with a very long tail lives up to its racing stripes and moves very fast but hung around just long enough for me to get a photo of it.  

Skink

The large gopher snake may still be around in the canyon somewhere, too, to the peril of the California Ground Squirrels that hang out under the bird feeder.   It pays to watch where you're walking these days.  

Some Kind Of Bug

 As the neighbors have tended their plants in the veggie garden, they've found various forms of insect life crawling on the plants or in the soil.  

The kids are fascinated by earwigs that they call pinch bugs.  Earwigs are scary looking but harmless to humans; they may actually be beneficial to gardens by eating decaying vegetation.  

Earwig

Other forms of insect life are various caterpillars or grubs.  They found this grub in the soil last week; bugguide.net has let me down and not identified it, but I think it might be the larva of some type of beetle, possibly Figeater Beetle larva.  These grubs also eat decaying vegetation, and apparently crawl on their backs, which explains the lack of visible legs.  I've always liked seeing the adult Figeater Beetles; I love their iridescent green color, although they're not the most graceful of fliers as they bumble around the garden seemly at random.  Various critters, including the neighbors chickens, consider the grubs to be a succulent treat.  

Grub

They also found this, possibly a chrysalis.  Still no idea what it is, but it, too, got fed to the chickens.  

Chrysalis?

Today they found this green caterpillar.  I thought at first it was a Cabbage Looper, but it doesn't have the yellow strip on the side and doesn't loop as it crawls.  Instead, it looks like it might be the larva of the Cabbage White Butterfly.  That caterpillar has a fuzzier body than the Cabbage Looper, but they look pretty similar.  

Cabbage White Butterfly Larva.  Maybe.

The garden is literally crawling with life all the time.  

 

"The Love Of Gardening Is A Seed Once Sown That Never Dies"--Gertrude Jekyll

 About a year ago I let a neighbor grow some kale and eggplant in Cindy's raised beds.  See The Gardener Is Gone....  He got busy with other things and didn't have much time to attend to the veggies he had planted, but they continued to grow.  

That left several of the raised veggie beds vacant, so when the family next door found that their own vegetable bed was being raided by voracious raccoons, I invited them to plant their veggies in Cindy's beds.  The drip irrigation was all in place, the soil she had filled them with was waiting, and her security system of anti-varmint panels was ready for action.  

So they came over with their kids, Maggie and Jude, and planted veggies, sowing seeds of carrots, beets and corn, and waited for them to germinate.  Then they added some broccoli and cauliflower plants that were a little further along, and those have been thriving ever since.  

And now another neighborhood family has joined us and has planted their veggies, too, so on Saturday we all had a Ladybug Release Party, turning hundreds of Ladybugs free to feast on the aphids and other pests that were eating the plants. 

Neighbors Tending The Garden

Kids Are Learning Gardening

Release More Ladybugs

Ladybug Ready for Release

It's been fun for me to look out into the garden and see it being productive and full of life, both vegetable and human, again.  And I know Cindy would approve that her garden space is helping educate and encourage a new generation of gardeners.