Here's another pest control agent, the praying mantis. This particular one was found hanging out on a garbage can that I use as a weed collection bin.
The final one I'll show you is the yellow jackets, building their nest under my deck rail. They got washed off back when I had the deck re-stained. That was a few years back. They have come back. One nest over the back deck light, another under the deck rail... got lots of these critters. They do pollinate the flowers, so I haven't destroyed them.
That's it for today's photo shoot around the house!
Meanwhile, in the "jungle" of the wider web outside of Spark People... some of us are still learning to use Blogger. I had a pleasant phone call from our friend up in Canada, trying to figure out how to reply to comments we leave on her blogs... that was today's lesson. Often kind advice from others on how to do something on line, confuses a body, if she's not on the same web page / tool where folks assume she is.
In such cases, I have encouraged her to call me, and I feel incredibly privileged that she trusts me to help out. I ask her what she sees on the screen, then I figure out where that is and how to get her to the starting point of the action she wants to take. It's all about context and navigation!
From today on, if you have commented on her blog, you can go back to that same blog to see if she's left you a response. I've been asked this one many times, but unfortunately, I have no idea how to "make" blog spot send you notification when the author responds to your comment. I know you can use the "Notify" checkbox, but then you don't just get when the author writes back to you, you get every other comment and comment response to that blog, from the point when you checked it onward, too. That can get VERY busy!
I stopped doing that, and just go back and check every so often. If anyone else knows how to get this kind of notification from blogger, please let me know!
Now let's get out there and live in our own little jungles... where the challenges are the foods that call our names, the news channels, our to-do lists, etc., etc., etc. Let's live the best we can to take care of ourselves and our health, this one and only Tuesday, August 24, 2021 we'll ever get! Because we're worth it, out here in the post-Spark world, just as we were when we lived in the calm waters of Spark itself.
Life is good! Let's have a little more adventure before dementia, eh? Spark on!💖🎇✨
We have a decorative gravel path that's about 2 feet wide that encircles the house. As soon as the heat wave breaks, that will be sprayed with insecticide to kill the spiders. I'm pretty tolerant, but I refuse to share our domicile with spiders, snakes, or rodents. Wasps, yellow jackets, and anything with a stinger can cause a severe allergic reaction in my son, so they go away, too.
ReplyDeleteKudos for helping Lynda. She had many followers on Spark and they seen to have found her here.
Happy Tuesday!
Well, if I had a severely allergic child, I would do the same as you! But, as it is, my buzzy things and I pretty much leave each other alone. Snakes would be a bridge too far, even for me! Rodents the resident stone-cold murderers take out.
DeleteAwwww, but Rubis (nor the Prisoner) look like hardened criminal murderers.
ReplyDeleteSo glad you were able to help Lynda. Her blogs are part of the day (like yours!)
HUGS
When they bring me a freshly dispatched baby bird or baby bunny, their innocent faces don't fool me. You cannot train instinct to kill out of a cat, no matter how pampered or well-fed. And still, I give them shelter.
DeleteMy home in the city has even more fun critters! The deer are definitely finding our garden for meals! The neighborhood cats and dogs and rabbits keep trying to find their way under the shed where the skunks are staying. We did trap one using marshmallows as bait. It was quite an adventure releasing him (or her) in the country! Now we’ll try to catch the next. We don’t know how many we have!!
ReplyDeleteI commend you on getting the FIRST skunk out! Good luck on the rest of the tribe! I didn't steal my sister's photo from FB of a raccoon ducking into the storm drain over by her house. She got an incredible shot of a Monarch butterfly (moth, to be precise), too. We do not have a "silent Spring"!
DeleteWe have rabbits every year!
ReplyDeleteWe do, too. Rabbits and Squirrels and Birdies... oh, my... a kitty smorgasbord!
DeleteBefore I started reading, I though the first photo might be of a paratrooper spotted from your yard, lol. We have a National Guard facility in the center of our City and ever so often training exercises present surprises.
ReplyDeleteWell, aren't parachutes often referred to as "silk"? And don't spider's spin silky webs? Yes, I can see that potential... especially if I take my glasses off and squint at the photo...
Delete😁
In our yard (and some of the smaller ones make it into the house): lizards, wasps which we get rid of right away, ground squirrels, many many types of birds, spiders, many varieties of ants.
ReplyDeleteIn our neighborhood park and open land areas: all the other stuff plus snakes, coyotes, rabbits, an occasional mountain lion or bear which becomes confused and must be taken back to the mountains.
Oh, dear, I hope there are specialists to deal with those confused cougars and bears! We have foxes, geese, wild turkey, and over by the lake a few coyotes... I just happened to have those insect photos because I was playing with the camera. I rarely can snap the shier of the species. But this wild turkey hen that left footprints in the snow, and strutted proudly through my neighbor's patio area... in November, yet! And the ducks that come back to where my sidewalk puddles in the rain!
DeleteThanks for expanding my wildlife theme!
Hubby says it might be your privacy settings set too high. I get notifications for my blog and other peoples blog comments too. Not sure how, there is a Blogger help pages.
ReplyDeleteHey it took me ages to know to press the B and get to blogger.
We are all learning
On my own blog I get notification of comments. All comments. But on the blogs of others, when I leave a comment, unless I click the "Notify me" I don't get notification of responses to the comment I left. If I *do* click that notify check box, I get responses to my own comment and to the blog in general. This works fine if the blog I commented on doesn't get a lot of traffic.
DeleteYep, learning!
When our neighborhood was new we had LOTS of wildlife. Then they created a new highway which disrupted their habitat. One summer we got traps from the animal shelter because the released in the Wild. We got 7 skunks, 2 opossum and a very unhappy neighbor cat. The skunks loved kipper snacks. They’d wait one day so they were aromatic and then give in to their cravings.
ReplyDeleteAh-hah! Those skunks are a little like us dieters? Resist for a while, then cave in?
DeleteOur foxes became very visible one year when the park flooded them out of their normal space.
I live in the tropics and in the rural area with a big yard surrounding us. Plenty of animals around including snakes. I love it. Thank you for the wonderful pics.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's one reason I'm not thinking of moving South... snakes. I'm a real reactive person when it comes to snakes. And this from a gal whose grandfather used to go rattle snake hunting. Grandma made the meat into a salad, like chicken salad only with rattle snake meat!
DeleteThat's amazing! Oh, noooo!
DeleteI am admiring your tech skills this morning - over on MFP, which is how I got here. What a lovely blog to start the day - thank you!
ReplyDelete🙏❤️
Glad to be part of your morning today! See you later, in the steamy heat!
DeleteAh, bugs!
ReplyDeleteYou know I'm a fan of the insect world. It's so diverse and weird.
As to tech tools, I agree with your assistance style. I've been helping some "relatives" navigate some of the websites and found that although it can be time consuming, if I detail step by step and click by click, they get better results.
This includes my own husband who constantly asks me "what do I do to get..."
Sigh.
After years of helping folks at work, it's clear that we don't all start from the same place with tech. Oh, heck, I had that learning curve back in the 1980's, when I was supporting mainframes with attached PC's!
DeleteKind of like teaching someone to drive. You have forgotten 75% of what you learned, because it became automatic for you, so you have trouble identifying what the person doesn't know yet! Big example... I always ask, "Do you know how to copy and paste?" Not everyone does!
When I migrated to the smart phone, being an old DOS programmer, I was looking for a green screen/keyboard kind of settings / configuration. Drag and drop was NOT intuitive to me!
See? All about context and navigation! ✨💖 Spark on, my friend!
Your blog today reminded me how many ways nature has of alerting us to the coming change in season - extra busy spiders etc. Amazing!
ReplyDeleteAgreed. We learned it in our youth, to watch the signs of nature. It allows us to do the right thing to prepare for the upcoming change.
DeleteYes, wildlife! We have rabbits and we used to have birds but we haven't been feeding them this Aug. not sure why. I went out this afternoon and filled the feeders and the bird bath. There was a huge Hawk in one of our Maples this morning. I wasn't fast enough to get a picture. There has been construction going on just north of us and it has disrupted some of the wild life around here. We get more foxes because of it. And now our rabbits are disappearing. Go figure. The cycle of life!
ReplyDeleteYep, Mutual of Omaha may not be broadcasting "Wild Kingdom" any more, but the wild life still lives it!
DeleteWE HAVE THIS CUTE LITTLE FOX THAT HAS BEEN DISPLACED. HE IS PRETTY BRAVE. GOES THROUGH OUR YARD INTO THE NEXT AND CROSSES OVER TO THE NEXT STREET AND INTO THE CORNFIELD. HE MUST HANG OUT THERE DURING THE DAY BUT RETURNS LATE IN THE AFTERNOON TO GO BACK TO HIS EVENING HOME WHEREVER THAT IS. THERE IS A LOT OF CONTRUCTION GOING ON JUST OUTSIDE OF TOWN AND I'M AFRAID SOME OF THE WILDLIFE ARE LOSING THEIR HOMES.
ReplyDeleteIt is an endless process of adapting to what's going on around us, both for humans and animals. There are quite a few foxes that have adapted to life in the suburbs. But they are still wild creatures, not pets, that's for sure.
Deleteof course down here in Florida we have an unending parade of birds, squirrels, bunnies and sometimes panthers, bears and coyotes. Forget about the alligators, bugs, spiders, ants and snakes. We have variety! There is literally no hour of the day or night when one can fail to appreciate the way that life bursts out of the grass, trees and lakes in my neighborhood. Endless entertainment.
ReplyDeleteFlorida will never be tamed, eh?
DeleteHello, I can type again!
ReplyDeleteWildlife - oh yes - all kinds of critters here at the lake.
The rabbits and chipmunks don't even run away from us anymore. I put out a buffet of old veggies and they gobble them right up. They really like my wilted spinach and limp carrots (unused because of my hand injury).
Hello! And welcome back. I knew you'd have lots of critters, out in your "wild" back yard! And sounds like you found a good "charity" for what you could not use.
Delete