Beneficial Friends

It is a great help to have friends in the garden, even if I am the only one working here.

One such friend I rediscovered during the worst of the fungus gnat invasion was spiders. I've always known their webs catch all sorts of flies and other unwanted insects that get onto my enclosed porch, but many of the gnats were also caught. Unfortunately, I did have to eventually spray and I hope I didn't kill the spiders at the same time. 

But there will be more spiders as long as there are bugs, so I know they will be back.

More recently I found another friend - an American toad.

Usually I find one of these on the patio, hiding behind the cover of the charcoal grill or behind the large composter. That is how I found this recent one, when I moved the grill to make room for the large container I bought to protect the bird seed that didn't get invested by gnats.

American toad (Margo D. Beller)

The toad didn't seem to be in a hurry to leave. After being scared away from the grill it sat behind the composter for a long time, probably making sure I wasn't going to bother it. Then It came out, which is when I photographed it. It was facing the netted garden and I wondered if it was heading back there. I thought I knew why.

Every so often I'd see shiny lines on the paving stones. Then one day, after I'd run the sprinkler overnight, I found what seemed like a parade of slugs - think snails without shells -  slowly making their way from the lawn to the netted garden. Some of them were very large. Slugs will do a lot of damage to leafy plants such as hostas, two of which I keep in the back of this area so the deer can't see them.

In two days I must've caught nine of them, scraping them off the paving stones with a plastic container and then dumping them down the sewer. Then we had the lawn mowed and I didn't see them again - until last week when I saw more trails. And suddenly here is a toad - which eats, among other things, slugs.

Enjoy the feast, friend.

Garter snake (Margo D. Beller)

I'm still waiting for another old friend, Mr. Slither the garter snake, to come by and keep the chipmunks away. At this time of year chipmunks and the squirrels are looking for places to store nuts. Chipmunks can easily get behind the deer netting and the big pots of plants I have there are particularly inviting. They dig and the plants get uprooted. (Chipmunks will also dig up my plants in the spring, looking for the nuts they stored.)

Like the toad, snakes aren't the prettiest creatures and we humans are taught to fear or abhor them. Yes, they also eat bird eggs and can be a menace to the creatures I like. But if they eat the pests in my garden they are more than welcome to hang around a while.

Heat, Humidity and House Wrens

When it is so hot and humid outside I must stay indoors with the air conditioner on for most of the day, I try to imagine what it is like for the house wrens in my yard.

This past week the western half of the United States has been baking under brutal heat, with wildfires sparked. Meanwhile, in my half of the United States, we just got through more than five days where the temperatures were in the 90s and the humidity made the air feel like 105 degrees F.

House wren (Public domain photo)

Weather like that is dangerous. Weather like that keeps people like me inside and extremely uncomfortable unless I have the air conditioner on.

In weather like that I can't even keep a water dish outside because when the sun hits it late in the day the water becomes undrinkable. I can only go out to walk in the very early morning when the air, while still humid, is 20 degrees cooler than what it is forecast to hit for the high. If it is raining in the early morning, as it has for a couple of mornings, I am stuck inside and start to feel caged and anxious, not the best company for my husband.

In weather like that I feel sorry for the First Responders and others who must be outside to do their jobs. I used to travel to work but I would leave in the early morning, sit on a (usually) air conditioned train and then walk into an air conditioned office. The heat would not become an issue until my walk home from the train. But I was younger then and didn't think twice about being in an inferno. Now, I do.

This most recent heat wave wasn't the first this summer. There was a heat wave in June. And there will be a new one starting July 14. And August is weeks away. You can blame El Nino, La Nina, climate change, global warming - whatever you want to call it, it's hot. The Earth won't cool anytime soon without drastic actions.

So I look at the house wrens with amazement and admiration.

I could tell when Mother Wren was sitting on eggs because she would zip into the box and disappear for long periods of time. If it was especially hot, she would sit at the edge of the box and stick her head out of the opening. Then, she'd fly out to get herself a meal while her mate called from nearby, watching the nest.

She sat inside the box because that is what she has to do to protect her young. She keeps cool by panting, sitting by the box opening but also by flying into the shade to hunt for her food. Unlike people, she doesn't have any choice in the matter of how she spends her days. 

Two days ago I could tell the eggs had hatched because she started making more trips into and out of the box. Even Father Wren came to the opening and leaned in, feeding young. More recently he has gone in and out of the box, tho' not as quickly and surely as his mate. They are regurgitating food into the young birds' mouths and taking poop out to keep the nest clean.

Just as I saw with this year's first brood, soon the young will get big enough to move around the inside of the nest and will start jostling each other to get the food when the adults bring it.

Meanwhile, on the other side of my enclosed porch, I've seen only one hummingbird, a male, back in June. It came to the pink coral bell flowers, ignored the feeder I had out and flew off. I've seen none since. Usually I see females in July, when they are also seeking food for their young. Unlike the house wrens, male hummers don't hang around once mating is accomplished.

Where are the hummingbirds?

Toad, 2024 (Margo D. Beller)

So far this month I've seen nothing, and the pink flowers that had been blooming have faded and are mostly done thanks to an unusually hot summer that prompted many of my flowers to bloom at the same time instead of one after the other. The apple tree that provided me with enough fruit to make eight cups of sauce had its last apple plucked by a squirrel on July 5, about a week earlier than usual. Over the years the last apple day has been getting earlier and earlier as the weather has gotten hotter and hotter.

Luckily, the hot weather has also brought out another important source of food for young birds - insects, as well as insect eaters such as dragonflies. And toads.

Last week, a day after several weeks' worth of grass growth was finally cut, I went on the patio and pushed at the cover on my charcoal grill to tuck it in. Something jumped. It was an American toad, common in the east. It was dark and blended into the black cover's folds in the shade where I had put the grill. When I moved the grill it jumped out to the paving stones. 

I am guessing the combination of losing the long grass and the high heat and humidity forced it to find shelter where it could. It hung around for long enough to determine I wasn't going to bother it (I was watching from inside) and then it was gone.

This is not the first time we've had a toad visit our patio in July. 

(RE Berg-Anderson)

In fact, this American toad showed up on the fourth of July 10 years ago, tho not in the folds of the grill cover. It had somehow gotten into the bottom section of the composter I keep on the patio. When I moved the composter to sweep out leaves that had gotten behind it, out jumped the toad.

I can't imagine how this 2014 toad, bigger than the one I discovered last week, managed to get inside the composter. But out in the wild, I guess any port in a storm will do. I expect Mr. Slither to show up any day now, basking in the heat of the paving stones.