Lydia B ❌👑 #FreeDC
@siardica
🌿 📚 🔬 🐾 🎶 Dumb blonde physicist
*sighs, resets the "Number of Days Since Sticking Paintbrush in Drink" counter* #WIP #artsky #painting #watercolors #birds
Behold, the dun skipper on giant hyssop. #nativeplants #nativebugs #inverts #bugsky
This jay has developed a faintly smug expression and I don't know how to feel about that... #WIP #watercolors #painting
It's a good thing this isn't my primary profession because I sure am slow at it... 😑 #WIP #watercolor #painting
Oh fine I GUESS if you gift me cute watercolor paper I SUPPOSE I should paint something... *mutter mutter* #WIP #watercolors #artsky
Fantastic response to someone in a local rural community group complaining about black bears:
This is not inevitable, it is a choice. Wildfires are a policy problem. (1/4)
Bumble bee friend (Common Eastern I think) in our very not-native hell strip pollinator patch. No purists here, plants > no plants!
To quote my mother, "passion flower looks like a blossom designed by a committee who were smoking weed at the time". Very happy to have another #nativeplants bloom in our toasty garden though! Grow region #zone6b #zone7a .
Another smol #invertebrate friend or two, but if you can ID which sweat, furrow or small carpenter #bee you're looking at, you're a better man than I. It likes St. John's Wort, for what that's worth! #Virginia #nativeplants
Two gorgeous golden sweat bees on a #nativeplants prairie coreopsis in the garden. They're such cool little #invertebrates.
I appreciate folks trying to talk up #nativeplants by boasting about their resilience to drought, but honestly mine are suffering. Our climate is changing far faster than nature can adapt and we MUST take strong governmental action if we want to survive.
TIL Virginia has several different native dandelion species, sending me off on a wild goose chase to acquire said. Rather excitingly, my hummingbird mint has also attracted hummers. These aren't either one, but rather a tiger lily cultivar my great grand dad developed and katydid nymph friend.
I took a million photos in Australia back in April, and I'm still editing painfully slowly, but I can't resist sharing this one. Oecophylla smaragdina, super cool weaver ants that smell like citrus and are used in Aboriginal culture. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oecophy... #Bugsky #invertebrates #nature
Bonus garden shots of scandalous #invertebrates sex for #Bugsky, even more scandalous non native plants, and our one year old #nativeplants superstar, the high bush blueberry that is fruiting like mad.
Native black raspberry doing pretty well this season in spite of all weather challenges. #nativeplants #zone6b #zone7a
Zone 6b/7a: woodland stonecrop, sedum ternatum. Beautiful, no maintenance, evergreen in this climate, easy to propagate, produces pretty flowers.
Did you know snake plants will flower? Intellectually I realized they must, but I've never seen one actually do it! Oddly enough this was apparently triggered by a fresh upsized repotting and new dirt from Rosy Soil. #plantsky
One of the small carpenter bee species amongst the potted cosmos. Pollinators doin' their thing!
Virginia grow zone 6b/7a #bloomscroll time. Some #nativeplants, some native-ish, and some "it's the 1970s owner's fault but they're pretty so they can stay" 😛 IDs in the alt text.
Speaking of friends, here is one of the many Eastern box turtles that inhabit our 34 acres. Unfortunately they sometimes have run-ins with the bushhogs necessary to care for rural land, as has clearly occurred here, but the local rehabber says it's healed up and doing ok! Good job little buddy ❤️
These guys really turn into a puddle in the rain. Buncha cat lumps.