I dropped off just now the first group of our baby goldfish at their new home!
After fishing out 13 babies from our backyard pond the rest of them managed to avoid the net. I will wait a couple of days and fish out the next group.
Carol, it is a very pretty place. They sell Waterlilies, Lotus all sorts of aquatic plants. That is were I bought the two Comets in the Spring. (Daddy of these babies....) . Normally the pond is actually fairly clear.
I got the green light to bring the other babies too, which is great since we have a second group of babies.....
I am carrying my Orchids inside, and today I found this lady on the ceiling in the front room to the greenhouse.
I know it is a female because this was the scene in the cage yesterday
We moved her onto a plant on the deck and I could swear she was smiling!!
I am amazed that so far I haven't carried in a single cricket! Normally I would now be cricket hunting around the house, chirp chirp chirp!!
Name: Elaine Sarasota, Fl The one constant in life is change
Oh, neat mantis shots there Ursula. Reminds me of the time I accidentally brought a mantis egg case into the house on a plant back when we lived in Salt Lake. My daughter comes upstairs and says "Uh, there are a whole lot of tiny bugs in the laundry room, Mum." Yep, it was cold outside and I had a very large family of tiny manti keeping my plants otherwise bug free for quite a while. We wondered if they would help with the ants that always came in when the weather got cold, but no such luck.
A butterfly from the school garden today - Spicebush Swallowtail. And some birdies outside my window - the brown thrasher really isn't supposed to eat from the feeders and he usually "thrashes" around on the ground for seeds and bugs but I guess he got hungry.
I'm also raising some Giant Swallowtail caterpillars in a net laundry hamper right now. They were feeding on a tiny little citrus volunteer outside my window - not 3 ft. away from all my bird feeders. With hoardes of birds around all day long, I figured they wouldn't last long. Although their protective coloring is amazing - they look exactly like bird poop and they stay very still during the day, feeding at night.
Elaine
"Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." –Winston Churchill
Seeing you bird pictures Ted and Elaine , makes me think I should find room for a feeder off my patio..so much beauty and diversity at the feeder..
Ted, were you tempted to get a screwdriver and just give that destructive guy a small push? Ursula, those mantis pictures are cool...isnt it amazing how large they get?
Great pictures! I so rarely see mantis' around here. Do you see them much in Florida?
Lindsey, everyone needs a bird feeder. I am sure they help to keep the insect population down on my plants.
Elaine, you'll have to keep us in the loop on how the swallotails do. I tried to raise some Monarch eggs this year and failed miserably. Maybe I should have waited for the larvae.
Minds are like parachutes; they work better when they are open.
Fun stuff!
I can just picture a bunch of tiny Praying Mantis in the house!! Great bug control in the greenhouse, if they would survive. Not so much fun in the rest of the house.
I came across this snake skin the other day and was glad it was empty when I found it. The darn thing is more than 5' long! We did see a black racer last week, maybe this is his/her coat. (at least I hope it was the racer's, they are the good ones to have around if you are going to have snakes.)
Minds are like parachutes; they work better when they are open.
Nice size! We do see them on occasion at our place in Pennsy. It has been said that if you have these black snakes around, you won't see Rattle Snakes. I don't know if that is true.
The darn thing is more than 5' long! We did see a black racer last week, maybe this is his/her coat. (at least I hope it was the racer's, they are the good ones to have around if you are going to have snakes.) 
