See, this was going to be my test for distinguishing humans from bug aliens in human suits. Need to rethink if loving cheese isn’t actually an earth mammal universal trait.

Luckily all our annual seedlings are still indoors under lights.

“Move the Vireyas Outdoors Day” has been followed by “Haul the Vireyas Back Inside Evening” due to a late-season chance of frost that was just beyond the limit of the long-term forecast on “Move the Vireyas Outdoors Day.”

Yay. Aren’t tropical plants fun?

Closeup of a couple of flowers showing their fuzzy stamens.

A Clematis vine covered with dinner-plate-sized lavender purple flowers.

Clematis ‘Ramona’ 🌱

A winged insect that looks a little like a giant mosquito. It has long dark legs and light wings with dark veins and blotches.

Nice crane fly beside the driveway this morning. I guess Tipula abdominalis. It’s larger, with more intricate wing pattern, than the species that is/are common around porch lights in summer.

My neighbor (a great guy) texted because he was concerned something was dead in our yard. A vulture was circling low over the house and one had landed on our deer fence.

My Amorphophallus konjac are flowering.

Long trumpet flowers that are bicolored: red at the base and orange at the tips.

Unusually colored coral honeysuckle in my backyard. I think this might be a chance cross between a wild (and wild-type) red plant and the yellow-flowered cultivar ‘John Clayton’ that I grew for many years. 🌱

Mine is ‘America’. It has coarser foliage than your beauty, but it has good heat tolerance.

A large peony with nine huge red flowers with golden centers. The flowers are lit by the sun, while the background is mostly in shade.

Peony time! 🌱

A blooming plant with tubular flowers in shades of blue and purple. The flowers, stems, and leaves are covered with short hairs.

Penstemon ovatus. Pacific northwest native. Has survived one typically hot, humid North Carolina summer and one unusually cold winter so far. 🌱

I’ve been in an interesting discussion in a facebook group where someone wants to spray herbicide on suckers on their property to hopefully kill several mature trees on neighbor’s property. It’s an invasive species, but I have nevertheless suggested caution. . . which was not well received.

Biology prof: “So you see, leucistic and albino snakes are rare, because they are more visible to predators.”

Sphinx moth caterpillar: Imma imitate a leucistic snek! With blue eyes!!!!

Good question. If it does, it’s not strong. I’ll need to get close to it tonight to test if there is any faint fragrance.

Definitely not a good one for a puppy to chew.

This is one they might actually avoid. Very toxic.

Closeup of the beautifully intricate flowers. The stamens are curved, with the anthers pressed tightly against the petals. . . which suggests some weirdly baroque pollination mechanism is probably involved. The dark purple anthers look like a ring of spots surrounding the central pink and green pistol. If you don’t like the parasol analogy, then consider that it looks something like a pink satellite dish.

The flowers look just like little pink parasols. Even have ribs (stamens) and a central handle (pistil).

Pink flowers with fused petals that look like little plates or parasols are clustered at the top of a stem with long, narrow leaves.

My Kalmia carolina (southern sheep laurel a.k.a. southern sheepkill a.k.a. Carolina laurel) is blooming its heart out. So many more flowers than last year.

Luckily, there are no sheep around here. 🌱

Yup. There is some irony in the identity of the probable culprit.

Grrr. Delivery driver backed into our driveway gate (part of the garden’s anti-deer security). Gate knocked off hinges and 8 foot metal post bent. The truck left behind a broken reflector, but the driver didn’t even have the decency to leave us a note.

The last thing a cassowary’s victim sees.

Did we though?

My family’s patron saint. We’re not Catholic, but still…

Trizol and PFA!!! 😳

It is a truth rarely acknowledged that biologists work in an environment rich in substances suitable for a murder in a detective novel. And some people are just batshit crazy.

The sun setting over the Severn Estuary as seen from the top of Uley Bury hill fort. I took this photo in September, 2021, on the most perfect windless evening, feeling euphoric having finished the edits on my debut novel, Villager. The whole walk felt like I'd temporarily stepped inside a Kit Williams painting, which was apt since for the last several decades he has lived not far from here, and the landscape was a prime inspiration for his masterpiece Masquerade. I still associate this scene with Villager, which, although it's inspired by a more rugged landscape a couple of hours south west of here, it has some very Villager elements. If you are new to my writing and would like to read an excerpt from the book (one of the sillier, easier-to-read parts of it) you'll find one in the link. I promise it's not shit.

Almost certainly the best photo I will ever take from an Iron Age hillfort of the sun setting over an estuary as summer segues majestically into autumn.
www.tom-cox.com/the-village-...

Just discovered that when seen in your peripheral vision, a carpenter bee dogfight looks exactly like a hummingbird dogfight. All the same movements on a (slightly) smaller scale.

I moved a sleeping cat off a chair I wanted to sit on, because I am the Devil who shall never be forgiven. But the cat is now purring on my lap, because she is a forgetful old lady and I give good skritches.

A yellow pitcher plant with red streaks

Latest blog post: a description of Nepenthes alata and why most cultivated specimens are mislabeled. 🌴🌱

sweetgumandpines.wordpress.com/2026/04/13/n...

Eeeee! I have (native) Campsis all in my loblolly pines, and it’s beautiful but definitely a “grow only if you can dedicate 50+ square feet of ground and several large trees to it”

“Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.”

Let me tell you about the time I, a twelve-year old developing an interest in plants but with little money to buy them, “liberated” an Opuntia pad from a neighborhood garden. It had no obvious spines, so I shoved it in my pocket. And thus I learned about glochids.