columbine ~ 05/30/11 ~ at home

crimson columbine
Aquilegia formosa
Ranunculaceae

I was given this columbine from a friend who in turn had received several as a gift in memory of her mother. I believe it was grown from seeds collected from wild growing columbine at Rocky Creek down the coast. Since recovering from my illness, I have been into surrounding myself with living things. Before I only had a jade, a geranium, and a plethora of poorly cared for spider plants on our north facing balcony. Now, I have purchased my first 6-packs of easy-to-grow plants like alyssum, lobelia, and dusty miller. I'm such a novice at growing outdoor flowering plants that I hope I can keep this columbine going for its lifespan of 3-4 years (according to Paghat's Garden). I plan to collect seeds and continue this plant on my balcony garden. Can anyone give me advice on where to cut for deadheading? Plus, I'd like to transplant this to a larger pot. Maybe I should wait until it is done flowering?

ps 09/22/11 - I want to note that in the last week, this plant has started a fresh batch of blooms.

Pacific chorus frog ~ 05/30/11 ~ at home

Pacific chorus frog tadpole / Sierran tree frog tadpole
Pseudacris sierra

A friend gave me a bowl of frog eggs attached to some kind of oxygenating plant (Myriophyllum sp., aka milfoil?), duckweed, and a couple of small snails from her barrel pond on 05/21/11. Within a week 2 tadpoles hatched. They were very tiny and extremely good at hiding. I was worried the others wouldn't hatch, but when I shook the bowl, they wiggled inside their egg cluster.

The day after I took the photos above, I transferred the pond water to a 5 gallon aquarium where I had water sitting out a few days to allow the chlorine to dissipate. The agitation from the transfer released the remaining tadpoles from their sacs. There were other miniscule organisms swimming around in the water that I could only see in the sunlight. The aquarium turned green with algae fairly quickly. I siphoned off some of the water and refilled with fresh water. Turns out this may not have been necessary, because as the tadpoles get larger and the duckweed spread to cover almost the entire surface, the water has become clearer on its own.

It's been fun watching the tadpoles grow. By 06/10/11, they already started looking "pregnant" with big round bellies and could no longer cling to the side of the aquarium. Quite honestly, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with these frogs once they metamorphose. My friend collected tadpoles from a pond in Seaside last year and added them to her existing barrel pond here in Pacific Grove. By the first of April, she witnessed 3 sets of frogs mating. She made a video for the sound recording; click here to listen to how loud they are.

ps 07/11/11 - The oxygenating plant the eggs were attached to is rigid hornwort (Ceratophyllum demersum). While this greenery is good for aquaria and is found worldwide, it is not necessarily beneficial out in the wild.

tree year project 2011, #8

juvenile western scrub-jay perched on coast Douglas-fir
Aphelocoma californica perched on Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii
Pinaceae

posted 06/19/11 - Sometime around the second week of May, I first noticed my friendly scrub-jay's 3 youngsters. They were pretty awkward flying and mainly watched mom from the branches of this Douglas-fir I'm featuring in the the Tree Year Project. After getting a peanut, she would always fly back to their low nest in a nearby oak tree, I think to encourage the little ones to follow her for food. Then a late night ruckus happened, which sounded too much like a raccoon/scrub-jay fight, and I only saw the one pictured above for almost 2 weeks. Since then, two of the juveniles have been loudly following mom's every move. She chases them away from our balcony and will quickly sound an alarm call if a hawk is in the area. In the past few days they seem to get up before she does, and one quickly snatched a couple peanuts from me yesterday morning. Each one is a little different in voice and boldness of behavior, like stealing mom's stashed peanut from a pine cone. It's been a real joy to observe the mother scrub-jay teaching her young.

http://thetreeyear.wordpress.com/tree-year-posts/life-on-the-tree/birds/

silver-spotted tiger moth ~ 05/28/11 ~ at home

silver-spotted tiger moth caterpillar (or nameless arctiid moth) feeding on coast Douglas-fir
Lophocampa argentata (or L. sobrina) feeding on Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii
Pinaceae

posted 06/18/11 - I mainly want to show the color variation of these caterpillars that I'm attempting to raise - from bright white to tan side hairs. These three were munching away at young shoots of Douglas-fir. I collected a third caterpillar from the Highlands the day I took this picture on 05/28/11. Add in the two I found around home, I've had 5 total. They seem to prefer hanging out together; in fact, they'll follow each other along a plate's edge like a caterpillar conga line whenever I switch out food. Except for the Highlands Easter caterpillar, I don't know which individuals came from where.

One successfully pupated and has been tucked in its cocoon since 05/01/11, one died 05/21/11 from what appeared to be parasites, and another one died 06/10/11 from what looked to me like typical Btk poisoning - the body was deflated and limp, like a plant that hasn't been watered, with only the middle sets of prolegs keeping the body attached to the nylon top.

I moved the two remaining caterpillars to a clean container. They now occasionally feed on Monterey pine (Pinus radiata) even though I'm still providing a mix of clippings. They rest most of the time upside down from a new nylon top. Their poop has gotten inexplicably smaller. I'm starting to get concerned because they don't seem to be progressing in their development. I suspect they may need a snack of another plant in order to successfully pupate - this is totally wild speculation after reading about Queen butterflies needing to snack on non-host plants in order for their adult pheromones to be chemically complete. I'm starting to remember all too clearly why I once gave up rearing caterpillars. Click to read a past post about how and why I'm raising these caterpillars.

ps 06/25/11 - As I was changing out the tree clippings, one of the caterpillars had started making a cocoon with hairs from its body and silk. I hope I didn't disturb it too much.