Notta Mucho

There isn't much to report... it is raining, a lot. Yesterday, all day today, probably tomorrow. It was probably all of 75 degrees today. That's quite unusual for a July in Texas! ONce we get a rain gage, my rain reports can be more interesting. I can tell you that when I checked the radar today, the storm stretched from Kerrville (3 hours drive to the west) to the gulf.
The ground is soggy and puddle laden. I have D & O for the weekend, so we should be able to get into all kinds of fun, with all the puddles around. I showed them the spiders and they totally want to feed them grasshoppers tomorrow. In the meantime, I might start to consider blueprints of an arc...

Spider Mentoring Program

I found three more Banana Spiders today. And a walking branch - it must have been a female. She had the pinched look to the end part of her abdomen, with some poop hanging out. She looked really fat, possibly gravid. I wonder if they lay the eggs? Dunno. I say she looked gravid because when I saw some walking sticks mating recently, the male had the female in these clamps in the back... it looked uncomfortable. The female I saw today had a crimp in that same place, like the female had that was being clamped, although now I have to admit that I don't know if they are shaped like that to begin with, or get that way in the clamping. hunh. But back to the spiders...
I went to visit the big banana spider on the eaves of the back of the house. I noticed a very tiny replica on a web about two feet away, on the wall Now the big daddy on the eaves is about the size of a pecan in the shell in the body. Overall diameter is about 5 inches. Junior, in the background, is about two inches diameter, and the body the size of a black-eyed pea. They looked like buddies, but who can tell. While I was standing back there, I turned my gaze to the over-grown acre up front, now filled with blue day lilies hanging out very close to the ground, and the green mystery plant that has taken over. I think it is a milkweed, I wonder if it will flower? It looks like milkweed now, and is about 6 or 6.5 feet tall at this point - about two meters. I was staring at it, trying to figure it out, and my eyes caught a huge web, as big as a framed 8"x10" piece of art, hung off the mesquite and the milkweed. In the center is another gigantic banana spider, resting on her fuzzy hammock. Just below her, my searching eyes found a partner, a little bit smaller, a little bit closer to the ground, on a 5"x8" in a mat. I became conviced we have high participation in the Spider Mentoring Program in our yard.

Twisted Country Fun - Big Spiders & Little Snakes

I mentioned we've been seeing turtles. Charley even stops the car to rescue them when we see them on the road. We've been seeing snakes, too, but the snakes are always smooshed flat and mangled if they are on the road. I've seen him handle his favorite snake, a harmless hognose gone limp, one we found out around the nose cone buildings last fall. Recently, I was talking on the phone and pacing around outside. I was hoping it would fill in for my usual tour of the grounds, but I found myself walking up and down the lane. On my second lap, I walked up farther, closer to the main road than the last. There, on the ground in the middle of one of the tire tracks on our lane, lay a broken and jointed looking snake. Snakes are usually smooth, with lots of curves. But this one lay with its tounge lolling out of its mouth, in angles. It had been run over to be looking like that. Except! It could be one of the tricks the hognose snake plays - opossum, being one of them. The others include hissing and flattening its head like a viper, and even sometimes shaking its tail and hissing to masquerade as a rattler. I watched it for a while, still absorbed in my conversation. It didn't look like the hognose I've seen, and besides, I've seen them go limp, but I've never seen one portray brokeness, for goodness sake. Only the roll of a big tire could have done that to the poor little thing. I was still having this conversation, but now I was really distracted. I wanted to get the dead snake and save it for my husband! He would like that. (weirdo) He could tell me what it is, and we might even skin it. That would be cool. But ew! I don't actually really want to touch it. I've seen a recently extinguished snake before - they still move in reaction to heat and touch stimuli, even without a head and skin on the meat. Ew. I didn't want to touch it because it might move, and then I would have an involuntary freakout and feel stupid. So I picked a stick. Well, I was looking for a stick, but the light was fading and I had to hurry, so I just broke off a dry weed, about 8 inches of dry weed to poke it with. Poke it? Well yes. I was pretty sure it was dead, but just in case, I was going to poke it. I'm faking attention to my conversation now. Remember? I'm still on the phone. And I'm moving in on the snake, reaching my - oh really probably too short, I realize, to keep me safe from anything, but I keep poking that stiff weed out towards it. .. poke. POKE! Scream! Kara jumps. Snake jumps. Hissssss! Slither! Scream! Pant. "Sorry for screaming in your year, Mom. " And I might have explained, but I remember at least thinking " yeah, I poked a dead snake. It wasn't dead. I guess that was a hognose. " It was kind of a weird situation to explain all the sudden. It was outta there, never to be seen again. I was left tasting the metallic tang of adrenaline that I hate to love so much. Yesterday, I spotted a Banana Spider hanging out on its web, attached to the roof and wall at the back of the house, by the laundry line and the rock pile. Banana Spiders are HUGE spiders, and weave a gossamer web with a thick, cottony zig-zag up the center, where they usually rest. I admired its race-car coloring, jags of hornet yellow and pure ebony all over the shiny carapace and smooth, jointed legs. Tonight, I spied a wild-eyed, stripey-legged large and juicy hopper - one of the damned grasshoppers that has been denuding the fig tree, and felling the mandevilla flowers within moments of bloom. I wondered aloud to Charley what would happen if we grabbed it, and tossed it into the Banana Spider web. He thought it would hop a lot, and ruin the web. We decided it was worth some action, and spiders repair webs all the time... that's the point. Just to be kind, Charley yanked the legs off the poor prickley hopper, and tossed 'er in. MAN. It wasn't 5 seconds and the big lady had her wrapped in one translucent layer of silk. Wide sheets appeared, and the spider rolled her bundle. The next pass made the packet opaque, and the spider crunched down to deliver some uh... anesthetic. We both stood there with our mouths open, and then our conversation was something like "that was fast did you see that?" "Yeah, oh my god that was fast holy cow!" That spider made quick, tidy work of that poor handicapped grasshopper. I felt a little guilty, almost, for greedily handing out an advantage. The spider didn't even have to fix her web, and she left her little package to liquify, and resumed her place on the soft pad of cottony zig zag, the throne in the middle of her impenetrable fortress.

Return with the Sun

If you hadn't noticed, it has been raining in Texas. A lot of rain. Daily. For the last three weeks. The other night, we got 6 inches of rain in 3 hours. Luckily, we haven't had to deal with flooding here at the Casa, but it is pretty soggy. As I like to say, we live in a swamp.Much has happened since I last chronicled life... the bee balm and the gentian and the firewheel are toast. The Brown-eyed Susans are hanging in there, but most are just black fuzzy balls atop withered, hairy stems. I did find a blooming vine of morning-glory like flowers, and the False Nightshade is blooming. The kudzu and the Mystery green plant that took over are about the only thing going right now, but some wildlife has perked up. We've seen lots of turtles and frogs and toads, and way too many mosquitoes. There is a whole village of walking sticks living right around our house. We've seen at least two different females (that we call walking branches because of their size!) and at least two different males, several itty bitty baby walking sticks, and even a couple in the throws of making more itty bitty baby walking sticks. There have been lots of spiders, and the gekos are really happy with the screened in kitchen, which was finished last month, because they can perch up higher and eat better bugs. We've planted a rosemary bush, a fig tree, and a mandevilla vine. Charley and I have each eaten one fig from the tree already - we bought it at the farmer's market already fruiting. We're accidental gardeners, too. Our compost heap is growing a huge patch of those weird, flat, wiggly-edged squashes that look like UFOs and also has a newly discovered and already flowering pumpkin vine emerging from it. The accidental garden makes me really happy. We're going to have a boatload of squash in a few weeks. The usual butterfly suspects are still flitting around - painted ladies, commas, and questionmarks.I've been to NYC and back, was a mermaid for a day. I got to see my friends Timothy and Erica and Alex and Susie and meet new friends - Alex's wife, Christine, and Ian. We ran all over New York, having ourselves a blast. HIghlights included the Carosel in Central Park and gorging ourselves on gormet chocolates all over Manhattan. We also went to the Natural HIstory Museum, which was pretty cool, but dissapointingly poorly lit. I got to touch a 23 ton chunk of ferrous rock that flew through space. The mermaid parade was crowded, chaotic, and beautiful. It was fun to see freaks in a different part of the country, and take park in the merrymaking. And hanging out with my friend Erica always feels so right.Charley and I are building a bed frame for our mattress and box spring. It's pretty cool, with 6 foot posts. It's pine, and we're going to finish it with a headboard and fancy finials on the posts when he returns from Greece in August. I've never built furniture before. We've completely furnished our once empty home. After staying up late, hot and tired, trying to arrange it all, we even decided that maybe we had recently aquired too much furniture. But with a good nights sleep and fresh perspective, we realized it all fit just perfectly. Our house is beautiful and comfortable, and everything I've ever dreamed that MY house would be. My favorite furniture purchase is an antique twin sleigh bed that we've decided to use as a window seat. I found a funky jeweltoned quilt and piled it with soft throw pillows, and it is a favorite spot to recline for everyone.Make sure to check the links at the left and look at my pictures on Flickr, too. The sun has finally come out, and the clouds that have hung over us for weeks have broken. Maybe we'll get a little more rain until tuesday, but then it is supposed to clear up and be the regular old hot stiffling Texas summer we're used to. Charley's headed out for a spell, so I should be able to be more regular here at the blogging. I am continuing to enjoy my yoga class, when I can get away from work for all the meetings and extra effort we've all been giving it lately. I've several successful dinners out of my crock pot, now, so I can cross that off the list! I just picked up two books for some summer reading - The Mermaid Chair, by Sue Monk Kidd and She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb. My goal for this summer is just to enjoy my happy groove. I'll keep up with notes on the Palace, and let you know when the standing water finally all sinks in, and what other critters we find. You'll have to stay tuned for the Tiger swollowtail chrysalis report - she hasn't hatched yet. Happy summer!