Saw a truly enormous beetle in the garden earlier, sitting casually on the bee-balm. Turns out it’s an eyed click-beetle! (Seriously, the scale in this is totally as big as you think it is–they’re thumb sized critters.) Their larvae are called "wireworms" and fortunately, in this species they live in dead wood and eat destructive […]
Monthly Archives: May 2009
More adventures in publishing! First interesting fact: If you get a starred Kirkus review, they send the sales staff back out to the booksellers, waving copies of the review and saying things like "Are you sure we can’t interest you in another hundred copies?" I did not know this. Apparently the Dread Name Kirkus carries a LOT […]
I am getting bloody tired of all this fearmongering about Guantanamo Bay detainees winding up in the US. "Oh no, they want to put suspected terrorists in US prisons! Oh no, if they’re innocent, they might even want to release them! Run away!" Since when are we such cowards? Jesus christ on a pogo stick, having a […]
Finally finished the thing that disturbed Kevin! He allows as how it’s less outright creepy with the textured white background on, somehow–I think he might be right, although don’t ask me why–but it still kinda weirds him out. I am proud. Unsaint ETA: The nearly even split in the comments between "This is creepy and disturbing" […]
Went out into the garden. Discovered squirrels fighting. Realized after a minute that they weren’t fighting, per se. Decided to leave them to it. Allllrighty, then….
Working on a new painting…I have great hopes, but I’m not sure if it’s going to actually work in practice. The underpainting is done, but we’ll see if my ultimate vision is achievable. I’m hoping to have pushed my basic tendency toward cute things to a point where it just gets freaky. Meanwhile Kevin saw […]
There are flower buds on my butterfly bush! And the swamp milkweed is just starting to flower–one bud has popped (it’s a compound flower head.) The male cardinal and the technicolor goldfinches are providing a riot of color ID’d one of the weeds in the Bed of Evil as Daisy Fleabane. Not too worried about it. […]
Red-eyed vireo in the backyard! Not that uncommon, but very nearly impossible to spot in this case–I got lucky with a glimpse through the branches of one of the live-oaks in the backyard. My brain sent two conflicting signals back–"hummingbird" and "warbler." The warbler for general size and shape, the hummingbird because it had a big […]
A good day today. Went to lunch with friends, right next to the local fish place, so I ducked in and discovered that they had a green mushroom coral, one polyp (they’re big polyps) for $5. I was unable to resist, since my one blue mushroom is more purple and refuses to DO anything. All those horror […]
Man, with live rock, you just never know… Haven’t added anything to the tank in a month (and that was quite a small rock) came in this morning, saw something odd in the water in the corner of the tank, turkey bastered it into viewing position, and discovered…an asterina star! Asterinas get a bad rap, […]