u/Federal-Boat3732

I see the button is working. Inspection complete

They're supposed to bloom pink, but the white is fine with me, I guess. (I wonder if the vioently-acid soil I've been trying to neutralize is doing that???) They are spreading so fast that my hopes are high that I won't need to waste mulch on this flowerbed. The creeping phlox are spreading much more slowly, but they are finally starting to take hold. Groundcovers ahoy!!!

...and I can't say I'm unhappy about it. Intriguingly, the leaves on the half of the tree that fell are pitch black now. Some of them have yellowy-brown edges, and from here it all looks brown, but mostly it's very, very black when you're up close. I've never seen that on a Bradford pear before no matter what shape the tree was in. Maybe it was weakened by disease?

Note the bright-orange roots...

That's a confrontational gaze if I ever saw one

Hard to know if this is intended as a plural, a possessive, or whut

The males carry the eggs and hatch them out internally before releasing them, so they are (in a way) livebearing fish. These tiny fish are your friends, specializing in eating mosquito larvae.

This is a new one on me, although it's supposedly native to the state where I've lived all my life. Shown sitting bold as brass on a peony leaf

Eastern gray skwerl making off with one of the 768,513 black walnuts dropped on the lawn during a wild storm a couple of nights ago. It sounded as if every one of the nuts, still in their husks at this time of year, was slammed into the Dumpster at least once that night at what seemed like about 55 mph. It was hard to even walk the next day without wiping out, because green beisbols were under your feet every couple of steps. This guy and his friends -- pine skwerls, red skwerls, an army of chipmunks -- were marching out there in formation collecting them all. There are hardly any left today. I found a set of conjoined-twin walnuts today and set them on the stoop while I got my camera. It was already gone when I got back.

This looks more like the species named in the post heading than anything else I could find. Common name is Basket Cocoon Wasp. Tiny quarter-inch pupa dangling from a silk thread a couple of inches long. If I'm correct this is a parasitoid wasp. The larvae eat caterpillars and the adults sip honeydew...

Maybe a month after I set in some butterfly weed out front, this is what I found! I thought it was too late in the year to even hope for monarchs. They were all busily chewing the leaves off the plants after a wild storm that should have blown them miles away from home. This is so cool!

Sheesh