Something's Bugging Me

The King found this praying mantis as he was trimming the weeds. They're regal and do good things for the ecosystem, but I have to say... they creep me out.

Is it 'praying' or 'preying'? I can see why both would be true. 'Preying' would seem to be more appropriate. But Google says 'praying', so I acquiesce to the search results.

Then I ran across one of these as I was raking up the yard debris. I couldn't determine if it was a spider, an ant or a wasp. Turns out it is a Red Velvet Ant. Talking about it makes me hungry for red velvet cupcakes.

She was gorgeous but uncooperative. By the time I ran inside to grab my camera she was making a concerted effort to burrow into the grass to get away from me. So I used a photograph from this blog post.

She really isn't an ant at all, but a wingless wasp that eats ground wasps and bees. And she's clearly not aggressive, which I appreciate. Apparently the males get the wings, and they don't sting but the females will if you provoke them (maybe they're mad because they don't have wings... wonder if they've heard of Red Bull? *snort*).

You can't see them, but they're there... dozens of wasps flying just above the grass, circling around...

... looking for... what?

I don't know.

But they are definitely focused on finding it.

Luckily they aren't red wasps, they are black wasps that don't seem to care that I want to get to the front door and the only way is through their choreography. If you know me, you know it took courage to wade through a cluster of wasps.

I'll wait while you praise my courage.

To build the hugelkultur mounds you need tree stumps, branches big and small, dirt and yard debris.

As you can see, we are accumulating quite a pile of limbs, and we still have most of the tree to cut up and drag to the front. But I was worried that we wouldn't have enough yard debris.

I was worried for nothing...

We are building up a nice pile.

The yard debris pile is almost as big as the limb pile. And there is more to be raked!

The King solved the mystery of what happened to the tree... not a lightning strike as I'd assumed, but little miniature loggers eating away at the insides of the tree. Nasty little things. I assume they serve their purpose in the ecosystem, but I wish they'd stick to trees that were already down... and not ones that are still standing in the woods.

This would make a nice rustic side table with a place to put pistachio nut shells.

Why pistachio shells? Because I said so, and the Queen is almost always right.