A workless day

It was a perfectly lovely day.....
Butterflies were everywhere......
Work could wait a while longer....
Soon these days will be over.....
Gotta take advantage while I can....

Yup, easy to talk myself out of the project I had planned for today. For as long as I've lived in this house (since 1979) everything I've planted in this planter has been beaten to death by wind. Yesterday, as I watched the wind beat on my new little Mexican Elder, I resolved to make a windbreak for it. Right away. So as the wind whipped madly, I put up a temporary windbreak, trying to spare the bush. Today my resolve was to remove the temporary, and replace it with sotol. Not hard work. Just work. The reason the wind is so bad in that spot is because it's positioned in front of the only entrance into the courtyard. The entrance becomes a wind tunnel and rages only in that spot.

I managed to put up 3 sotol stalks before it warmed up enough that butterflies were roaming around.

As I mentioned yesterday, my focus today was to photograph the Tailed Orange. Which I did, although I kissed a lot of frogs in the process. Translation: I photographed a lot of orange-ish butterflies.

I actually saw two Tailed Oranges, though these photos may or may not be of the same individual. Either way, mission accomplished.

This is the first time I've seen Fatal Metalmarks mating.

In England they have a black and white striped candy, similar to our peppermint sticks, that they call  "humbugs." Until someone tells me differently, I'm going to call the insect below this Gulf Fritillary a humbug.

peppermint humbug candy

When I saw the Red-naped Sapsuckers working on the locust tree again this year, I covered the trunk, again, but obviously I didn't cover it high enough.

Saw another Mountain-dwelling Short-winged Katydid (Dichopetala oreoeca) like the one I posted September 27th. Pretty cool with their long antennae!