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.