Back on June 29th (Day 210), I photographed the nymphal form of the Leaf-footed Bug (Acanthocephala terminalis). Today, I am delighted to announce, I encountered the same insect, only this time in its adult form, perched motionless on a leaf of American Dogwood (Cornus florida). Despite its imposing size and form, the Leaf-footed bug is a placid herbivore, content to sip vegetable juices.
It is muscadine season along Piney Woods Church Road, but the grapes are fairly few and mostly out of reach. I suspect that most of them get snatched up by the white-tailed deer, like the pears on my tree usually do — but that is another story.
This time of year, there are precious few flowers coming into bloom along Piney Woods Church Road. I was elated to encounter diminutive pea-like blossoms in a small gully beside a neighbor’s driveway during my walk earlier this afternoon. I am fairly confident that the quarter-inch blooms belong to Creeping Lespedeza, also known as Smooth Creeping Bush Clover (Lespedeza repens). Like all members of the Pea Family (Fabaceae), this perennial, common to open woods and roadsides throughout the Eastern United States, enhances soil quality by fixing nitrogen. Plus, it adds lovely tiny splashes of pinkish-purple to the roadside that I can enjoy on my daily walks during the hot and humid days of early September in Georgia.
On my way to Atlanta on an errand, almost as an afterthought I stopped at Piney Woods Church Road this morning to take a few photographs. The dew was still heavy on the grass everywhere, and it had rained heavily overnight, too. As is so often the case, I found myself gravitating toward droplets of water. Along the way, I also photographed a pair of reddish-brown leaves (probably pin cherry) at the end of a naked branch. The result is these four photographs, and I simply couldn’t choose one picture among them to single out above the rest. I find delight in the watery marble on a grass blade in the first image; the reflected sunlight in the drop of water on the tip of a sassafras leaf in the second (is that actually a heart I see?); the brilliantly backlit red-brown of the pair of dead leaves against the forest background in the third; and the elegance of the grapevine tendril necklace and with its watery pendant in the fourth. I was blessed four times today, with such moments of stillness and delight.
(As an addendum, I did, in a sense, pay later for my morning. Arriving home from Atlanta with ankles burning, I removed my shoes and socks to find chiggers everywhere! They may have been lodging in my shoes (which I have since run through the washing machine) or they were waiting in the short grass just beside the road this morning to dive onto my feet. Either way, I am beginning to get a bit terrified of the local chigger population this year.)
I photographed this muscadine (Vitis rotundifolia) grape hanging from a vine alongside Piney Woods Church Road earlier this afternoon. And then I ate it.
A fallen leaf, identity unknown but quite possibly sassafras, reposes on the bed of Piney Woods Church Road after a rainfall.
Yellowstriped Oakworms (Anisota peigleri) feast on an oak leaf along Piney Woods Church Road, leaving behind only a bare skeleton.
From my evening walk along Piney Woods Church Road, I offer these three leaves, in the order I noticed them: the first and third are white oak, and the middle one is greenbrier.
The golden light of approaching sunset transforms even an everyday weed into a living being of beauty and grace. Or maybe the light just helps us to see it for what it already is.
On my morning walk down Piney Woods Church Road today, I encountered this wasp with the most slender waist that I have ever seen, apparently gathering nectar from a Hoary Mountainmint. I mistook it for a Thin-Waisted Wasp at first, but an expert at BugGuide on Facebook set me to rights. It is actually a species of mason wasp, Zethus spinipes. Researching this species further, I was astonished to find that relatively little is known about it. Supposedly it nests in abandoned burrows of other insects, but this has not been confirmed. One source, a web page from the Extension Service of the University of Florida, even cited a source on the genus dating back to 1894, though noting that it was likely in error. If anyone is looking for a biology research project at the MS or PhD level, Zethus spinipes is certainly available.
