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| June Precipitation |
Monarch Butterflies
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| archive photo |
From 10 acres of winter habitat in Mexico, monarchs have now expanded across 1 billion acres of breeding habitat. Reaching Massachusetts this past week, they are moving slowly. They have to reproduce along their journey northward. They were 3 weeks late arriving in the central breeding area. You can track them on this Citizen Observer migration map. I haven't seen once since late July, 2014. They simply didn't make it far enough north.
We have a ton of milkweed plants growing, lots in the garden (lower left!).
Mission Monarch is looking for public input about milkweed locations and monarch sightings.
Walkies
Hubby took Annabelle walkies when the other two were sleeping. I followed them downto the dock, on the vernal frog pond, which is drying up rather quickly. The water is down about a foot. The smaller frogs have morphed into frogs, while the bullfrog tadpoles are still working on their two-year process! They'll have to hurry as the pond might dry up, again, as it did in the drought of 2012, when we lost our Monarchs.
We have a ton of milkweed growing.
I took Daisy for a walk Sunday. Annie and Dorah stayed at home. Everyone is loving the broken tree trunk. First, Dorah took me on a walk.
Fallen tree
JB took Annie down Tuesday, I took Daisy down the day before! They know not to go with Daisy, as she is jealous and bullies them. I love the light and shadows in the deep forest. We have clouds, just no rain.
Cats
Dorah needed to come in. NOW! Poor Dorah. Her face looks awful with tick bites.TICK COUNT 2016 = 68, with Daisy accounting for 44 ticks removed, Dorah = 23! They are all larvae, which means a massive tick population by the fall. I will hope for a deep, cold winter to kill them off!
On Saturday, June 12, we had 4 mm rain (not nearly enough), everyone was in the living room having a catnap. There was much grooming, as well!
Mouse Patrol
We've been having hot, sunny days, as well as hot cloudy. Still no rain. Dorah was after a big, fat, juicy field mouse in my garden! She's been a good mouser, bringing home a mouse or mole every night, meowing loudly to let us know her joy and then depositing it in the hallway in the wee hours of the morning.
9 comments:
Hello, I always enjoy seeing your cute kitties. The frogs are great, I hope you do not have a drought. I tried planting milkweed, it did not grow. :(
Happy Saturday, enjoy your weekend!
Commiserations on the ticks. They are a pest. Ours always receive a Naval burial - ie: they're flushed down the loo. Hopefully they don't survive sewage . . .
We are praying for rain up here in Renfrew Co. Our farmer friends are "saying" they aren't worried "yet", but the expression on their faces says otherwise. We live in the bush where there is lots of tinder dry rubble from the logging. WE are very worried!
The cats are a delight!
Dorah with some poppy flowers, lovely, and who is sitting on your jetty?
Looks like the frogs will do well this year, and what a neat place to play on the tree. Hope you get some rain soon, we have had showers almost every day for a while, enough to make the grass too wet to mow.
I certainly hope the monarch population has some luck this year.
Aw, those awful ticks! I frisk through Ellie Mae's thick coat each day with tweezers at the ready. I've got lots of milkweed but each year the Monarchs get more scarce. So sad to know their winter patch is in trouble.
Barbara Kingsolver wrote a novel about the Monarchs: Flight Behavior.
I also loved another ecological novel of hers: Prodigal Summer.
Your cats remind me of the famous musical by this name, and Barbara Sreisand, of course, singing the Memory song. Associations...
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