Sunday, August 15, 2010

Toads, Frogs, Flowers and Such

When we first moved to Americus, almost 8 years ago, the pond was always full of algae. We were told that "when the toad-frogs come" they would eat the algae and we should be happy that we had a "fertile" pond. Well, if you look carefully, we have quite a few koi/goldfish babies swimming around.Can you see the tadpoles? I guess we do have a "fertile" pond. Remember to click on the photos to enlarge them.
One of our cats brought us a present, this lovely toad. Did you know that toads are frogs but not all frogs are toads? If you click on the photo, you can see that the toad has cat fur in its mouth. If you have been following my blog, you know that our garden is full of things that make a toad or frog go "YUM".This beautiful yellow butterfly posed for the following two photos on the butterfly bush.

As I wandered the garden path, I found another toad in amongst the black-eyed susans.
I just had to take more than one photo...
The first time I threw a lubber grasshopper into one of the spider webs, the spider shook the web until the lubber fell out. It must have been too big. This one, however, must have been just the right size.
Magnolias have beautiful flowers with an incredible aroma. Our D D Blanchard magnolias have these beautiful leaves, shiny green on top and the lovely rust color underneath.
Everyone has been commenting on the red rocket crepe myrtles. You usually see the pink and white varieties. The red is really outstanding.
The vitex trees have just begun to bloom again.
When I saw this spider on the side of the little house, I just had to get the camera. It is actually very small. Its abdomen is shiny gold and its head is shiny copper. I've never seen anything quite like it. It's mandibles were rather large for its size...
We have 2 different varieties of fig trees and both are loaded with fruit. I noticed that on one of the trees there were quite a few of these beetles mating.
Looking more carefully, I found these other beetles (they look like "June bugs")

devouring the few figs that appeared to be almost ripe.
I looked online to identify these critters and it appears that they just might be "figeater beetles". That was almost too easy.
I checked the fig tree today and there are no beetles to be seen. I guess we'll see them again when the rest of the figs ripen.

Thanks for visiting the Americus Garden Inn Bed and Breakfast. Hope you are staying cool and comfortable through this crazy hot summer weather.

2 comments:

blkfrhwk said...

sorry i haven't been around lately. school started.

green beetles are certainly in the scarab family. reddish guys are not beetles, but some kind of hemipteran, possibly in the seed bug family. the little spider is a male of what ever species- those are pedipalps- not mandibles. male spiders have enlarged pedipalps for mating.

Americus Garden Inn Bed and Breakfast said...

Thanks for the info. The orange "bugs" were in the same area as the green beetles. Haven't seen any of them since they cleared out the fig tree. As for the spider, I couldn't believe how incredibly beautiful it was. It looked as if it was made of gold and copper.