The Daily Bucket is a place where we post and exchange our observations about what is happening in the natural world in our neighborhood. Bugs, buds, birds - each note is a record that we can refer to in the future as we try to understand the patterns that are unwinding around us.
April 7, 2012. Seattle.
Worked today in the garden, which has somehow grown in size by log 10 since I first began building it some 30-plus years ago. How does that happen? And how is it that you can ratchet out every #$% buttercup in the yard one spring and have to fill multiple garbage cans with their offspring again a year later? There are way too many more...
Numerous honeybees and a few bumblebees buzzed me as I worked, as did some fat black houseflies. There were no hornets or ants.
Down on the ground the half-inch long black spiders that sun themselves on the rocks and the low leaves were scrambling about for the first time this year. I do not know what kind they are, and they have foiled every attempt to get a picture. They are squat, very fast and have pale obvious palps.
No sowbugs/potato bugs/rolypolys were about today, but they will definitely appear just about the time that the first carrots germinate. One small slug was feeding on on the base of a buttercup. Red-wriggler worms and night-crawlers came up to the surface as I loosened the soil, along with a few fat 3/4" long greenish-grey grubs that I've found every year when turning the garden for the first time. This year I put one into a big ventilated container along with the soil it came up with, then tucked the container back into the earth. I need to know what it will become.
April 7, 2012. Unidentified ground spiders, a slug, earthworms, honeybees, bumblebees, houseflies and unidentified grubs were present in the garden.
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Home all day today, but will be in and out. Your turn. What and where?