Continuing with June 3, 2019, we found these yellow flowers just a little way down the trail from the Dog Violets I posted last week.
We were walking through the woods behind our house on June 3, 2019 when we found these tiny little wild violets. There is a power transmission line running through the woods, and these were growing in the treeless area under the power lines.
Sam and Rosie found this fairly large rove beetle crawling up the side of our house on June 7, 2019. It was about half an inch long.
It was also extremely fast, and unhappy about being exposed. My camera flash spooked it pretty badly. It scurried along rapidly, frequently waving its abdomen tip in the air in a threatening fashion, and then trying very hard to hide in whatever it percieved as being a crevice or shelter of any kind.
Even though our road was badly washed out in the Father’s Day Flood of 2018, not all of the plant life was utterly destroyed. For example, on June 5, 2019, I spotted this little flower on a little peninsula of road margin that had not been washed completely away.
Rosie caught this small red-and-black dragonfly for me with an insect net on June 18, 2019. We had it in a cage at first until it calmed down, but then it was willing to sit on my fingertips for quite a long time while I took pictures. Comparing it with my fingers, it looks to be about an inch and a half long.
Lilacs are very popular in Michigan, to the point where I personally think they would have been a better choice for the state flower than the one we actually have[1]. They thrive in our moist, cold climate, have very few insect pests or diseases, and will grow with minimal care without becoming full-up invasive plants. They bloom here for most of the month of June, so I went out photographing them on June 14, 2019. We have several of our own bushes, some with the standard light purple blossoms, some with white blossoms, and some with deeper purple blossoms:
On June 22, 2019, Sandy was visiting our neighbors across the road, and they told her that they had some kind of caterpillar infestation on their azaleas. They have two azalea bushes, a large one with yellow and white blossoms;
I actually found this one back on January 23, 2019, crawling over the edge of our windowsill. She was pretty fast, so I only got the one picture. This one was uploaded full size, so you can click on it to see it bigger.
Sandy and Sam presented me with these fine morel specimens on May 26, 2019. They found them under some of the feral apple trees north of the house.
According to the pamphlet “May is Morel Month in Michigan” (MSU Cooperative Extension Service)[1], these appear to be the dark variety of Morchella angusticeps, which is the most common variety of morel here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. As you can see by comparing one with the size of my hand, these are around 3-4 inches long, definitely big enough to be worth picking.
This spider caught a fly near our kitchen sink (behind some potted plants) on December 27, 2018.
Neither of these is a new species for this site (the spider is a Cellar Spider, Pholcus phalangioides, and the fly looks like a Cluster fly, genus Pollenia). But, I haven’t shown one being eaten by the other before.