I have so many pics of this flower (my first pitcher plant flower, from a purple pitcher plant) that I thought I knew what my favorite pic was. I'm not even sure I've seen this pic before, just found it looking for art reference photos. I just had to stop and show it off.

#gardening #nature #carnivorousPlants

My first Sarracenia flower, on a purple pitcher plant, has finally opened enough for me to see the cool trick I've heard about. Photos I've run across didn't show enough for my curiosity to be satisfied. To prevent self-pollination, insects must pass over a modified stigma before it reaches the pollen from the flower itself, pollinating the flower from an outside source, before it reaches the flower's pollen. Then it escapes under the petals, not passing the stigma again.

#gardening #nature

A post about my recovery garden and how it is like Persephone, the goddess of spring and wife of Death, inspired by the Page of Pentacles. Also, some haunted moss and a good look into my frog’s golden eyes.

https://tippitiwichet.com/2023/09/23/my-recovery-garden-is-persephones-garden/

@fernfren (more frog pics on the blog, not sure if you've seen them all)

#haunted #nature #tarot #haunted #spooky #gardening #frog #terrarium #herp

Made myself feel better by sorting through my oyster mushroom videos to find the very prettiest part.
#nature #fungi

Once again, a jumping spider has straight up moved into one of my pitcher plants. They like to use their little bungee cords as a safety line when diving in to steal prey. I've been trying to get a good pic of her for about a week, but she's shy. She's only a few mm long, just a baby. I hope she hangs out for a while.
#nature #gardening #CarnivorousPlants #spiders

Want to see my shame? I am 47 years old, I started looking at the ground everywhere I walked trying to identify the weeds I saw when I was a pre-teen. Always staring down. Always too afraid of touching mushrooms to knock them over for a good look. This many years, and until I got a book to help me learn to identify them, I had no idea that not all mushrooms have gills. Not a single clue in all those years.
#mushrooms #nature #fungi

The last of the caterpillars we were sheltering has emerged from their chrysalis. Check out the retrotastic colorway on this buckeye spp. I guess it's time to go on a caterpillar hunt.
#pollinators #nature

My pink oyster mushrooms. These are the same jar, but a few days apart, the pink fades as it ages. Also the same one that was releasing spores in my video. A single jar has so many changing landscapes to explore. Landscapes that kind of feel like they were designed by Georgia O'Keeffe.

#fungi #mushrooms #nature #flowers (okay, "fruiting bodies")

Got it :). Pink oyster mushroom releasing spores. These are growing in a jar full of sterilized cardboard, helping me recycle all my stored up Amazon boxes.
#nature #fungi #gardening

Morty loves her redecorated habitat, and has taken to not only climbing the top of her lichen covered cave, but even climbs onto the edges of her pond, which she usually ignores, just to sit on the new fun stuff.
#pets #lichens #nature #frogs

So, pink oyster mushrooms under a UV flashlight are aggressively pink.
#nature #fungi #mushrooms

Found a swallowtail toes up under my bee balm, took the chance to grab the microscope. It's so easy to see how they keep inspiring beautiful dresses.
#nature #butterflies #pollinators

I was so worried about my garden while I was a climate change refugee being pampered by my MIL, but I came back and almost everything was in bloom, including the bee balm that finally decided to bloom this year. Now I have bees, glorious bees, itty-bitty bees, bigger bees, fuzzy butt bees, shiny gem bees, native bees.
#gardening #pollinators #bees #nature

I went looking through my photos for something else and found the grackle photo by Nancy Wagner, nature photographer. She is gone. I don't know the details, a relative on Twitter simply said she passed. But I will never look at a grackle the same way again. Look what she caught.
#nature #birds

Grumpy just looks startled in brighter light. I had to get a pic of him tonight, before the rain starts. If it is some kind of jelly fungus, it should be swollen from the rain tomorrow, right? I think? Either that or it will decide I keep coming back, so maybe it will smile and invite me in to meet the missus.
#nature #mushrooms

Hello, you looked like a puffball, and you have gills, pretty sure you are poison. But you look rather charming and pleasing today.
#mushrooms #nature

Found on this evening's walk, and apparently twilight was the exact right time to snap the shot. It looks grumpy that it was disturbed.
#nature

I know you've been dying to know, so sphagnum moss is florescent, bladderwort is not. There. Now you can rest easy. (One of these days I'll get over the neon/velvet artwork influences surrounding me in my early childhood, today is not that day.)
#CarnivorousPlants #nature #gardening

For a while there, I was going to identify every species of bug in my yard, then I realized some of the pretty ones were pests and I was happier not knowing, because they weren't causing a lot of damage, and I know that rung of the food chain needs any help it can get. So now I just blissfully say, "boodle".
#bug #gardening #nature

Him: I just wanted to thank you for your organic gardening policies! Thank you especially for the little lemon tree!
Me: No worries, little buddy. The nesting birds in the tree above you have thanked me for my policies as well. Snack away.
Him: ...
#gardening #nature #insects