First, this funny sign I saw in a local coffee shop yesterday.
I’d mentioned it had been raining like crazy in Las Cruces this year; some 25″ -30″ as compared to our usual 6″-7″. Accordingly, trouble is popping up all over. All over town, doors and windows are swollen shut and won’t be opened till things dry out. I can’t open the front door to the shop and have begged the postman to put my mail over the side fence -I have a nice little side yard. Speaking of the side yard and trouble, here’s trouble in the making:
Elm trees have sprouted within the walls of this old place. Now that I’ve taken this picture, I guess I can go pull them out. Oh, I have a lovely resident in my side yard, she’s just a little shy and skittish. Anyone know her name?
Below are some cotton photos I meant to put up last week. The first is a cotton flower before it’s bloomed. The cotton plant will have 3 stages of fruiting on it’s branches. Bulbs, flowers and cotton.
The very bottom of the plant will have a few cotton buds:
Here’s a prettier picture of the cotton in bloom, the flower is purple in this one.
Below is a photo of the whole plant, I took it from below so it looks as though the cotton is towering but I’m just cowering whilst being eaten alive by skeeters as I take this picture.
How’s your weekend? It’s been quite lovely here.
It’s nice to see someone else appreciate a spider. :-) I bet you like lizards too. The cotton plants are so pretty – I’ve never seen them up close before. And the coffee shop sign is priceless! The owner obviously has a very good sense of humor and knows how to use it.
I’ve been seeing Las Cruces, NM in the news a lot today on CNN, some guy wrote a note to the city and is asking for money and if he doesn’t get it he’s going to start shooting people at random. Have you heard this and are you more cautious?
I read about it in the paper. I worry because I think a good place to shoot people (to conceal a shooter) would be on the Triviz trail or at La Llorona and I run at both places. On the bike I feel like a target too. I don’t know whether I should ride to work on the ditches or by the street because the ditches may provide better cover for this guy -but then, he may pick the streets. I hope they catch this guy. I don’t want to end up dead and it’d be just my luck. Las Cruces is a small friendly place. Why would somebody pick a place like Las Cruces to do this? It’s weird. He must not be from around here.
Kathleen, after the flowering of the cotton plant, the “boll” is formed. That is the green pod that expands as the cotton grows. Eventually, it turns a dark color as it dries and splits open, revealing the lovely cotton inside. Many years ago farmers fought off the “boll weevil” because it could ruin the crops. There was even a song about the boll weevil. This from a person who grew up in cotton country in Texas..many, many, many years ago!
I think what you have there is a black and yellow garden spider “Argiope aurantia”. They eat bugs, that is why I like spiders!
There is a similar sign about children on the door of our local HFS. :)
I think what you have there is a black and yellow garden spider “Argiope aurantia”.
Yes, that’s it! With a name, I find she’s known as the writing spider because they put a bunch of “x”s in the centers of their webs. I went out to look at this one this morning. No x’s. I guess she’s illiterate.
They eat bugs, that is why I like spiders!
There is a similar sign about children on the door of our local HFS. :)
Do you mean, there is a sign like the one in the photo, or a sign that says, “They eat bugs, that is why I like children”?
hehehe, i would laugh so hard if i saw a sign that read “they eat bugs, thats why i like children”
Perhaps she has writer’s block at the moment. Or perhaps she’s writing the X’s using cuniform or some other alphabet. :-)
We’re seeing lots of spiders right now in this part of the world (Seattle). I’ve always liked spiders — mostly because I hate flying bugs, but also because the webs are just so amazing to me. I always hate it when I have to disturb one.
Re: cotton. Last year I had the chance to drive thru southern Virginia & part of North Carolina on a visit to family. The cotton fields were just ready to be harvested. Bits of cotton were everywhere. On some roads the whiteness gathered along the ditches and low spots as if there had been a light fall of snow. Twas amazing.
We have those spiders around here, too…Tennessee…only ours wear white gloves. :) Instead of X’s, they make a series of zigzags…like a bunch of Z’s. But if you look at those Z’s sideways, they could be N’s. When they were kids, my mother told her younger sister, Nancy, that if a writing spider writes your name, you will die. Well, since it was writing N’s, Nancy was terrified! She is still terrified of spiders to this day…she is in her 70’s. I like seeing these in the garden, much moreso than those nasty August spiders that build their webs at night across walkways and from trees…where you are prone to run into them! yuk.
Good luck with getting rid of the Elm tree in the wall…it kinda looks like Trumpet Vine! I would spray it with Roundup, to kill the whole sprout, rather than break it off and risk its return. But then, you didn’t ask me, did you? :)
I saw a few of those spiders in my yard at the last place I lived. They spun cocoon-like things around their prey. It was fascinating.
If that’s adobe — actual adobe, not the ‘stucco over frame/block’, it would probably be a good idea to put something on the elm to kill it. Roundup does not do a very good job on elms. You might call your local garden society or agricultural extension office for advice (NMSU probably has one). Just trimming the elm, it will come back over and over – and the roots in your wall would get bigger and bigger each time. You won’t like what this eventually does to your house. I’m off to go cut those elms growing a foot from my adobe wall now…