A busy weekend

A weekend of glorious weather, just perfect for a big effort out in the garden. The grass has been growing well, I had Bokashi to bury and the pile of firewood to cut up is only getting bigger as I drag more branches home.

Saturday was a slow start after a lovely sleep-in and a Skype session with my Mum; then it was outside with loppers and secateurs to attack the woodpile outside the woodshed. As with most jobs, I can't do one thing before I finish another and I need to move this pile of dry wood so that I can have a stab at the tyre retaining wall that's going in its place. Three hours of woodwork, by which time the grass had dried so I swapped the secateurs for the scrub-bar and managed to get 3 fuel-loads of cutting done before it got too dark.

Today I was off to an early start; another stunning morning at a cool 4°C which soon soared as the sun got up. I collected my tools with the intention of cutting more wood when I realised that it was silly to add more if the forecast rain arrived toward evening.

8am appointment at the woodshed

Now, to put the new wood under cover, I need to move the old wood first so I have dry wood to burn this winter. Hmm...

I've moved the big stuff that needs chopping round the corner, rigged up
a front on the middle bay so now need to move the kindling from
the left hand bay into the middle

All cleared by lunchtime - each bay is about 4 cubic metres and I jump on
the kindling to pack in as much as I can

A couple of hours later and I've picked up all the piles of kindling and rigged up a tarpaulin on the end of the woodshed. I was going to put a front on the left hand bay but put my brain into gear and have stacked the fresh wood that will need splitting there instead. It can weather over winter and hold the kindling in at the same time. Of course I forgot to take a photo after I finished - will fix that up this week :).

Another view of my Outpost kitset woodshed - sturdy and the only thing
better would be to have two of them!

I upset a few spiders by moving the old wood - they were grumpy but stood nice and still so I could take a few snaps.

Two large spiders - one living and one not

Close-up of dead spider

Huge abdomen with a beautiful pattern on this one

A yellow X on this one's abdomen

I think this is the same species as the top spider - can you see the wee
spider in the foreground?

I had planned on finishing the grass-cutting but didn't have enough petrol for a second load. Will take my scrub-bar down to the garage for a service and sharpen this week. I didn't get around to burying the Bokashi and my muscles feel like they've run a marathon; reckon it's early to bed so I wake up refreshed and energetic for a week of work!

Deer be gone!

I posted my last blog hoping that the whitetail deer didn't get sick from nibbling the potato leaves. The next morning I woke to find that they had returned during the night and had feasted on what was left - I'm now wondering how I can free up space in the freezer for 4 young ones!

I have rigged up a fence and hope that there's enough stem to keep the spuds growing in the bags - fingers crossed.

It was raining early yesterday morning so a good excuse to grab my camera and look around for things to photograph. First up were these two spiders by the ranchslider - is it a male and female or is it one spider capturing another? I think it's one for NatureWatch.

Not sure what the 'bubble' is on the smaller spider

Next up was the woodshed. I've been watching a ?puffball fungi over the last week. Here it is on 22 February...

White ?puffball on the right, orange slime mould on the left



A lumpy white thing!

Close-up of the edge - nothing particularly distinctive

Close-up of the orange slime mould

 A week later...

Full of a brown powdery substance - ?spores

The orange mould has dried up but here's some other slime moulds on the stump

The Chiloglottis cornuta orchid has finished flowering and its stem has suddenly shot up - I presume this is to spread its seed over a wider area.

 

The flower stems are usually down near the ground but shoot up as
the ovary matures

Close-up of the flower head and swollen ovary



Quite interesting #1

One of the best things about the festive season is that Prime TV occasionally shows QI - the comedy quiz game that always has something of interest for me. The show is hosted by Stephen Fry; Alan Davies is a permanent guest and they are joined by two others and, in the ensuing 30 minutes, anything can happen!

Last week I learned that you can tell the air temperature by counting the chirps of crickets as they chirp faster as the temperature increases. I went looking on the internet and found this formula to work out what the temperature in both °F and °C is:

It got me wondering whether crickets and cicadas were the same thing so went looking on a few websites. The guide to NZ invertebrates website states that crickets are part of the Orthoptera order and there are 5 New Zealand species plus several introduced species. Weta and grasshoppers are also Orthoptera, and they all have powerful chewing jaws.

Cicadas are part of the Homoptera order with about 40 species native to NZ. Homoptera have tube-shaped sucking mouth parts and live on plant sap and include aphids, mealybugs and scale insects. Te Ara Encyclopaedia has this to say about cicadas.

I've just received a BBC Earth DVD called 'Hidden Kingdoms - Small Worlds, Giant Stories' that is narrated by Stephen Fry. With two days off work I'm looking forward to watching at least a couple of episodes and will let you know what it's like.

I've been watching a few small worlds of my own too. Here's a couple of spider nurseries, the first on a tyre and the second one is on the outside of my kitchen window.

They are fascinating to watch - sometimes the little ones move around a lot, at other times they are so still that I think they've died! Mrs Spider was watching over the nest on the tyre and it would have been great to get her in the photo. By the time I'd got my camera she had scarpered - must be as camera shy as me!!

This insect was uncovered whilst I was filling my planter bags from the compost pile - I need to get it identified on NatureWatch unless I get lucky with finding it on the internet first.

Are they immature wings that haven't fully developed yet?

What big jaws I have!!

This is another critter with extra-large jaws (?pedipalps) - I'm still undecided about what it is so will call on NatureWatch for this one too. I found it on the spider orchids just down the road and he/she was very obliging and kept perfectly still whilst I took photos at all different angles.

8 legs, short body and extra-large jaws

More QI in the next blog...

Meet some locals

It might be cool outside but there's still plenty of critters around. I have a couple of items of wooden furniture that are borer-ridden so I should be letting a couple of borer bombs off. Instead, I've opted to remove the adult beetles as they hatch out and put them outside! I think they are two-toothed borer, Ambeodontis tristis (Fabricus) - will have to put a photo up on NatureWatch for a positive identification.

I spotted this chappie (I think it's a crab spider) on the rhubarb but it wasn't until I downloaded the photos that I noticed that there were two critters in the photo...

Spider with lots of eyes - look closely to see his friend to the left

Another spider crawled along the table as I did my Christmas mail...

...it had such a large abdomen that it struggled to lift it at times; what pretty patterning though.

My last critter is a Shield Bug (Family Pentatomidae) sitting on a twig. The first photos are of his/her rear end but I was amused to see a 'face' appear when I downloaded the photos.

I think I've just about caught up with the backlog so my next blog will be about my new job :)

I spy with my camera's eye...

Aren't weekends wonderful? And don't they go much too fast! On the pretext of searching for barberry, I spent a number of hours just 'walking and looking' and reckon I'll be an expert in the art by the time retirement rolls round. Yesterday's wander took me down near the swamp to see if the native clematis, Clematis paniculata, that flowered last year was still there. It sure is and the buds are just starting to open...

Native clematis buds beginning to open

Coils of native clematis vine winding around the trees by the swamp

Native clematis in full flower on Back Road - it can look like water
cascading down the bush canopy in places

I think these are the male flowers of stinkwood (Coprosma foetidissima); the wind will blow the pollen from the anthers onto the female stigmas (according to the book!) - I'll go out during the week to get some photos of the female flowers. Coprosmas are dioecious which means that male and female flowers are on separate plants.

Today's excursion started off right by the deck. I washed the exterior of the house yesterday which hosed most of the cobwebs away. A large orb web spider had captured a moth and was in the process of wrapping the body in silk. Fascinating to watch and being easy to access I grabbed my camera and loupe with these results...

Wrapped-up moth on left with orb web spider, Eriophora pustulosa, at right

Close-up of orb web spider's underside

Close-up of the silk-making abdomen with the spider's legs wrapping
up the moth

 I checked out the native ants' nest again by lifting the branch over one of the entrances. This time I was ready with the camera to take a few snaps before they disappeared down their holes.

One of the winged varieties

Not sure if this was a guard but he was one of the few to come out of the
nest and look around. The ants are about 8-10mm, not sure if they bite

I took more photos of other spiders but they've all gone in the recycle bin; they move too fast for the dull light conditions under the canopy. I did manage to snap this native cockroach though...

 So, it's now 9.30pm on a Sunday evening and I have a long list of jobs that I didn't get done at the weekend. I wonder why!!!!

Farewell to September

It seems an age since I was in New Plymouth but then realised that I was there for 1 September - maybe my brain put the clocks forward a month instead of just an hour for daylight saving time! It's a tad hard getting up in the dark again but compensated by having time in the evening to work outside. Today has been a scorcher with my thermometer registering a low of 6°C and a high of 31°C. No wonder the plants get confused with a frost one day and midsummer temperatures the next!

Yesterday I filled up the ice-cream cabinet with soil, burying the dead possum in the process, and planted a new rhubarb plant on top. Today was the potatoes' turn and I now have 6 bags of sprouting spuds in the shade house. I'll take some photos when they poke some shoots through the soil.

Clearing out the shade house - I pulled out all the plastic
flooring and hosed it down. Old carpet would be better!

Underneath the plastic were 'knots' of long skinny worms - some over
30cm long - I thought they were threads to begin with

The fine weather is a good excuse to walk slowly round my traps each day to look for Darwin's barberry plants. It's easy to spot the adult plants as they are smothered in yellow/orange flowers but the seedlings are expert at hiding.

You're looking for a leaf like this...

...with yellow roots and stems if you cut through the brown outer layer...

...and this type of growth

It's great that I haven't found any flowering barberry on my section this year - when I first arrived there were plants all over the place.

Flowering Darwin's barberry - September 2011

When you're walking slowly then you see all sorts of things - how about this scurrying (and out-of-focus) barberry-flower lookalike...

 

Or this fly that let me get a photo before buzzing off...

 

It wasn't until I downloaded the photos to my computer this evening that I saw all the small white critters on the underside - can you spot any?

 

 

This beautiful orb spider is two steps away from the ranchslider so easy to keep an eye on it; the first photo shows the intricate detail on its abdomen and the second, taken after the sun went down, shows it keeping tabs on its web by resting one leg on a strand.