Nature | July

 I forgot to update you on our tadpoles last month. They took much longer to grow legs than I had expected. All of June they were growing. I first noticed back legs July 1st. After that they grew fast. They have all hopped out of the water and gone on their froggie way. It was a new experience for us to watch them grow from egg through all the stages to frog.

This weird little spiral of eggs (I think) was floating in the surface of the tadpole pool. You can see the dead fly for a size comparison.

I was amazed and flabbergasted by this bug that I saw one day on our house siding. I ran like I was on an emergency mission to go get my phone camera. This is a Wasp Mantidfly. I had never heard of it before or ever seen anything like it. It has arms like a Praying Mantis and a body like a wasp. But it isn't a wasp and it can't sting. 

I foraged and tried Woode Ear Mushrooms for the first time. I dried them first as recommended and then cooked them in a soup. I found the crunch and chewiness quite pleasant. I will keep an eye out for more Wood Ear Mushrooms.

This Sphinx Month gave me a nice shot. I kept my fingers in the frame for scale.

We visited a historic village and I was drawn to the period garden. I saw tobacco and cotton plants up close for the first time. The cotton really captivated my interest. At first I thought it was okra based on the structure. Once I saw the flowers I was even more convinced that I was looking at a plant closely related to okra. The flowers look like any mallow family flower.(Think Hibiscus, Rose of Sharon, Marsh Mallow, Okra,....) I had never imagined that cotton flowers would be so showy.

The funny thing about the tobacco is that I never would have guessed that it was a nightshade based on what it looks like. I saw no resemblance to the other night shades that I am familiar with; tomatoes, potatoes, black nightshade, horse nettle, ground cherries, and peppers.

This iridescent beetle crossed my path. It made me think of fancy hats in the old days that were decorated with pretty beetle shells like this. It made me wonder how they found so many of these iridescent beetles back then because I hardly ever see such beetles. Certainly there were people that studied them and figured out how to farm them for hats and stuff for profit back at the time. 

My favorite picture this month is this moth that I found on the window one morning. The lighting is good. The focus is good. The reflection on the glass adds some nice colors. And, best of all, the subject. This moth is captivating. It looks like bird poop, but weirdly in the most attractive way. And, it is holding out one of it's front legs like some kind of diva pose.

The smoke from the wild fires up in Canada and Minnesota have given us some hazy days. I liked the strangeness of the sunrises and sunsets during this time.

These next two pictures make me feel summer-in-the-midwest, especially the corn field. It leaves me with a nostalgic feeling for the fleeting youthful summers.

My son caught this lizard at a park. Unfortunately, he accidentally pulled the tail off while he was trying to catch it. Thankfully, lizards grow their tails back. It was very interesting to see the place where the tail broke. It looked like a connection joint for a lego or something similar, like it was perfectly meant to snap in that place.

I don't know what kind of flower this is, but I see it on my morning walks and I enjoy its beauty.

Do you have a favorite picture from this month? I have to say my favorite picture is the diva moth with second place being the driving by the cornfield and third place being the tadpole graduation.

I am ready for whatever August brings!

Stitches | July

I really like the way this dress fits and flows. 

You can see I am having a little fun with the pose.

I have only worn it twice since I acquired it, because I had a couple issues.

The first problem I ran into was the buttons slipping out of the button holes. That wouldn't do.

I stitched each of the 14 button holes a little smaller.

Next I restitched all the buttons on the dress because they were egregiously machine stitched and threatening to pop off at any moment.

I wore the dress for a day. The buttons stayed buttoned the whole time. 

I was feeling quite successful until I took it off. That's when I noticed a slight problem. 

The lowest button had put enough stress on the dress to rip the fabric that it was attached to. Having strengthened the button hole and the button to the point that they were stronger than the particular fabric I guess I was to blame. Not to mention my movements are what caused the stress. 

The dress went back in the mending basket.

Now, hopefully, I can keep my stride in check enough not to rip the button off again. I hate having my stride bridled, but I like this dress enough to try. 

Sewing

 My daughter spied a skirt at a thrift store that was the exact matching print to a skirt that I had bought and altered for her last fall. I mentioned it in October 2025 Stitches post HERE.

The skirt for myself was a XXL so I had to make a casing and add elastic.......just as I had to do for my daughter's skirt last October.

Now we have fun matching in our matching outfits!

Bookmark

 The library printed my bookmark design!

It's not really a competition. They print every entry unless it is super terrible. They print them and laminate them and then put them in the normal place for bookmarks on the checkout desk.

I took a few copies.

My 6 year old made this cute design. The theme was "Reading is Delicious." See how she put books on plates and gave the girls knifes and forks to devour their books. Hehe! It makes me smile!

I am using it to mark my place it the read aloud book I just started reading to the children.

John Paul Jones is the book. I wrote a review about the book back in December (click HERE.) I had only read it to myself back then. Now I am ready to read it to everyone.

One Man's Wilderness | Book Report

 

One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey

By Sam Keith from the journals and photographs of Dick Proenneke

Pages: 269

Book Read This Year: #5

When I was slogging through the end of The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire I said to myself that I would have to give myself a break from exploring/cold extremes books. I was getting fatigued with the topic. 

...... And then my mom sent me this book containing Dick Proenneke's story of his Alaskan adventure. You hear that? Alaskan. Alaska is kinda known for her cold extremes. Here I go again.......

  You wouldn't know the nostalgic draw this book had on me unless you grew up in my family. My dad loved the PBS Special about Dick Proenneke. My mom made a donation to one of PBS fund drive at a time when they were giving away DVDs of the Dick Proenneke Special as a thank you gift. She did that for my dad. She hated the idea of shunning society and living the life of a hermit in the wilderness. My dad relished the thought. He could never personally go on such an Odyssey. Even if he had possessed all the skills, he had my mom who would never go, and a large number of children to provide for. So, he lived vicariously through Dick Proenneke while watching his DVD.

  Okay, enough about my parents. You want to know how the book was to read.

 It was relaxing. The way Proenneke describes the wildlife, the beautiful scenery, and his satisfying labor is idyllic. His use of word pictures is very creative. Reading his journal entries really made me want to up my journaling game. The way he describes what he is feeling is well thought out, too. I imagine living solo in the wilderness would help you get very closely acquainted with your feelings. 

  Dick Proenneke hailed from Iowa, worked as a carpenter in the U.S. Navy during WWII, and worked several jobs during his career including heavy equipment operator, ranch hand, and diesel mechanic. Shortly after he turned 50 he embarked on a unique adventure to live solo in the Alaskan wilderness and document his adventure. He brought a 8mm. film camcorder and a still picture camera. He would set up a the camcorder and record himself working. There was no audio. In the PBS Special the footage was overlayed with a voice reading his journals as he described what he was working on. He'd also video wildlife and write in his journal about what he had seen. So it comes off like narration. I think he was ahead of his time. He was doing vlogging long before anyone else. This was 1968.

 He wasn't doing homesteading. He never tried living off the land. He was living in the wilderness to observe and, also, for self discovery, I think. He built his cabin by hand without help for the satisfaction it brought him to know that he could accomplish such a feat. He was a little bit of a scientist, too. He was always taking measurements and recording them; air temperature, water temperature, ice depth, populations of mountain goats, etc.......

 One thing I loved about this book was the number of pictures.  About a 1/3 of the pages are full color photographs that Proenneke captured. Not only are they beautiful but they meant I had less pages to read, for which I am grateful!

 I have two passages that I want to share as examples of Dick Proenneke's way of describing things. I will close with these excerpts:

From page 131 regarding salmon:

"A little later I looked up from applying a coat of Varathane on my furniture to see a scarlet fish with a green head slice through a wave. It is the end of a long journey for them. They will spawn and die. Their escape from the can is a very brief reprieve."

From page 180 a little humor:

"The heat wave continues. Plus thirty degrees.

  An old visitor in his winter overcoat came to call today, his slender body doubling and stretching as he bounced over the snow. Out of respect for his new robe, I will call him an ermine instead of a weasel."

 

Wolf Or Fishing Spider????

 In my last nature post I included a picture of an interesting spider. I thought it was a Wolf Spider.

Travis McEnery dropped a video about Dark Fishing Spiders on Friday. His videos are so fascinating and data heavy. I learn so much with each of his videos.  After learning about Dark Fishing Spiders I am wondering if the spider I took a picture of was a Dark Fishing Spider and not a Wolf Spider.

What do you think? I still was using my old phone when I took the pictures. Therefore, the details are not crisp. 

Mr. McEnery talks about how to tell the difference between a Wolf Spider and a Fishing Spider starting at minute mark 11:37. I think my spider matches the eye pattern of a Wolf Spider, but I am not too sure because the picture isn't close up enough. 

Nature | June 2026

 My nature experiences this June have included some underwhelming events. We found and watched a Common Buckeye caterpillar grow and change into a chrysalis. I was looking forward to watching the butterfly emerge, but we happen to be out of town when the butterfly hatched. One of the children found the butterfly in the house and released it outside. At that point I was so concerned with getting it to the wild that I didn't even try to get a picture. 

The neighborhood cat, Romulus, is quite regal and I do like aspects about him, but he is a terror to the local wildlife. He has killed countless shrews, which makes me sad, because shrews are not a nuisance creature. Shrews can hunt mice, which makes me like them very much. If Romulus would stick to hunting mice, I would be very happy with him. The other day I found a red breasted gross beak that he, no doubt, had killed. Life is full of conundrums. How can you love both cats and song birds? Can you? Or must you pick one or the other? 

We had a family trip to Wisconsin for a few days. I was able to take a memorable walk one morning. It was before 7 o'clock, but well after sunrise. I found some black raspberries. If there is anything that tastes like summer, it is black raspberries! The milkweed and elder bushes are in bloom this time of year, too.

I found an ant fortress yesterday and a very unique jumping spider. I have never seen anything like it before.

A toad and a green tree frog were seen. 

One of the evening skies while we were in Wisconsin was the most pastel and dreamy scenes I have witnessed in a long time.

After a storm earlier in June we saw this phenomenon in the clouds. Very unreal!

And some miscellaneous pics ...

Paw prints,

Rock stacks,

Cloudy sunrise,

Well marked wolf spider,

Playful otters at the zoo.

My favorite picture this month is one of the raspberry pictures. Honorable mentions are the toad and the pastel lake scene. Do you have a favorite?

Oh, and I don't know if you could tell, but I got a new phone and the new camera has been an improvement for my nature pictures.