Some people find taking hallucinogens fun, but I’m not one of them. However, I did enjoy a trip down memory lane, back to that day when we ditched high school and went down to the river to skinny dip, and there was lots of datura growing on the sandy banks …
For a long time I thought we only had one thrasher in our yard, but now it’s clear we have a pair. They are busy all day long bringing food to their nest in the bougainvillea. Fingers crossed for a successful fledge!
Even big Californian spiders are small by Australian standards, so it’s hard to get excited about them. But this one’s pretty cool, with its shiny mother-of-pearl cephalothorax.
I recently read this article about the quirky US roadside phenomena generically known as Muffler Men, though any individual giant might advertise something other than car parts. Apparently they are now very rare, but we have one in our town. Malibu’s version, erected in the late 1960s atop Frostie Freeze, originally held a massive burger. He was re-styled in 1988 to be La Salsa Man; you can read more about the conversion here. Now he’s missing his serape and tire sandals, and the store below remains empty because of septic tank issues. I wonder what his next iteration might be? Plumbing Man?
This week in the PerpJo: Epilobium canum, also known as California fuchsia, hummingbird trumpet and firechalice, is a species of willowherb in the evening primrose family (Onagraceae). It’s a low-growing, spreading, perennial sub-shrub with grey-green leaves that are velvety to the touch. and a profusion of bright scarlet flowers in late summer and autumn. It is native to dry slopes and chaparral of western North America, especially California. It’s doing well at our place, and I’m happy to see that it‘s now flowering.
I ventured back to the beach today, expecting a huge amount of storm-delivered trash, but the sand was actually pretty clean.
We have two (different) armless statues in our garden. I’m guessing they represent Hindu deities, but they could have just been invented by some 20th century artist. Anyway, I like how the shadows look when the sun is bright.
I had fun watching a couple of flame skimmer dragonflies cavorting over the pool while I ate my lunch.
Mutillidae is a family of more than 7,000 species of wasps whose wingless females resemble large, hairy ants. Velvet ants can be found worldwide. Over 400 species occur in the North American Southwest, where this male specimen was collected.
Males fly in search of females; after mating, the female enters a host insect nest, typically a ground-nesting bee or wasp burrow, and deposits one egg near each larva or pupa. The mutillid larvae then develop as idiobiont ectoparasitoids, eventually killing their immobile larval/pupal hosts within a week or two.
The exoskeleton of the velvet ant is remarkably strong. It requires 11 times more force to crush than that of the honeybee.
Ten classic album covers. Three minutes each. How many do you recognise?
hashiworks 