Every time I go outside to the garden, I seem to find something particularly interesting. Generally, I just admire those experiences, maybe snap a picture, and carry on with my day. Today, I choose to share a few of those recent ones with you all.
I saw a daring jumping spider successfully land on a butterfly the other day and watched the butterfly fly away frantically; I'm unsure as to whether or not the spider was along for the ride. However, I didn't see the spider fall to the ground, and the butterfly retreated in the strangest fashion; it was such an odd thing to have witnessed, but there's a possibility that I watched a spider fly off into the sunset on the wings of a butterfly. There was no time to pull out a camera. No time to record. Even if there was, I was entirely too fascinated by what was transpiring in front of me. No one's going to believe such an event occurred- it sounds fantastical- but it made for an interesting evening of boring barn chores. Alternatively, I guess you could say barn chores are never boring, because there's always something interesting happening in nature.
Carrying on....
As I was laying out some of the Dewitt Sunbelt sheets from the gardens of previous years, you can imagine the number of critters that fell out of it as I unraveled it from the position it laid in, in a pile, over winter and this spring. This pristine spider exoskeleton caught my eye. It was nearly untouched after it was left behind by the wolf spider. I assume it was a wolf spider, anyways. The legs were complete- I thought it was a live spider until I saw the strange pattern on its back. I've never actually seen an exoskeleton shed from a spider before; now, I share it with you just in case it's something that you might find interesting, too.
There were so many other bugs that had made this fabric home, I was surprised to see so many millipedes and centipedes. Dozens! I'm still working on accepting centipedes, but they're the one bug that makes my skin crawl. Hopefully, they'll all resituate themselves under the fabric now that it is laid down and tacked down for the growing season. It only moved a few feet away; I absolutely love knowing all of this life finds refuge in my garden. Well, except for squash bugs. And cucumber beetles. And armyworms. You get the idea.
This morning, I happened upon these absolutely massive mushrooms near my compost. The larger one had a cap that was around the size of a softball. Do I know what this fungus is? Nope. Will I mess with it? Nope. But they were so pretty, I just had to stop and stare at them for a little bit. I love to see fungal colonies breaking down all of this hay and barnyard waste into rich, nutrient dense soil for my garden and pasture.
I started to try to identify them, but I'm not finding exact matches; perhaps they're not completely mature yet.
Don't forget to notice the details today! Pause, look around, and notice your surroundings. We find extraordinary things in ordinary places.
Enjoy your day!