Morning Sky Through My Windshield

R.I.P Louis the Crab

My mother's hermit land crab Louis died last week. Our friend Hank decorated his grave and made this beautiful shell marker for it. We buried him with an extra shell and a little bit of apple.

Tiny Spiders in the Outdoor Shower

I'll never know what little drama was played out in this interaction between these two very tiny spiders. One day there was just one of them. A few days later, there were two. A few days after that, back to one, and now they are both gone. The one on the left/at top is behind the web, which is why it is obscured in most of the photos.






Here the second one has breached the web! Not that I know which one of them was the first one there, really.

Webbyland Sparkler

Thursday Evening Dog

There was still thunder in the distance

Thursday Evening Sunset

There was thunder in the distance

Another Giant Spider

Or, Orbweaver II


Driving home tonight, I saw a long strand of this spider's web running from high in a tree down to tall grass by the side of the road and glinting in the sunset. The spider itself was large enough for me to take in as I passed by and then make me turn around.


It is an Argiope aurantia Lucas, or a yellow garden spider, or—as I know them—a zipper spider, because of the way the way they weave their webs.


These iPhone photos are not too shabby! I was only a couple of miles from home but I knew the light would be gone if I took the time to dash for the fancy camera.






The iPhone had a harder time with capturing the web (or it could have been me having a harder time, or the fact that a little wind blew threw).

Driving Home from the Tractor Supply: Part VII

While photographing the flag & roadrunner, I turned around, and there they were, watching me. I love them. I wanted to take them home with me. But I didn't.






















Very adorably scratching its little itchy head on the fence

Driving Home from the Tractor Supply: Part VI

Here in Texas, the beer grows on trees! Shown here is a hybrid variety; it's got both brown and white in bloom.

Driving Home from the Tractor Supply: Part V

Scorpions 2010: #6

In my many years alive on this planet, this I have learned: when a cat very studiously looks at something that you perhaps don't see right that second, TAKE HEED. Most often it is something of which you, too, wish to be aware.

Tonight it was the scorpion on my PILLOW just behind my HEAD. Loretta was lying on my stomach & chest. I was reading (a bad book, from the library, one that it missing 4 pages, but that's another story). I was ready to not read any more, ready to put the book down, ready to turn out the light and go to sleep. But suddenly, Loretta was looking hard at something behind my head, so I sat up and took a look myself.

And !!! There it was! I moved rather quickly. Pillow off bed, shaken over floor, then quick! Cat food bowl upside down onto scorpion! Then I ran for containment container!

Hugh barely woke up at all this, but he did, and asked what it was. Scorpion, I said. On my pillow. Ah, he said, and resumed sleep. So here am I now, all hopped up on scorpies and goofballs and with a giant scorpion in front of me on the desk in this 16-oz. food container originally from Whole Foods, and there he (Hugh, not scorpion) is, calmly asleep. So be it. So say I.

Thank you, Loretta, so brave and so gray, for spotting the scorpion by my head!

Driving Home from the Tractor Supply: Part IV

Driving Home from the Tractor Supply: Part III

Entrance 1


Entrance 2

Driving Home from the Tractor Supply: Part II