I absolutely can't help myself. When I see swaths of pink in the morning skies I am simply pulled outside to dawdle and gawk a while. As my gaze was directed upwards today I was similarly struck by a starkly lit moon. Without intervening atmosphere or trees, the morning sun can be harsh indeed.
Of course once I was outside, I realized there was a bit of early morning detective work to do, and potentially some clean up as well.
I knew "snails" as an abstraction were putting holes in the leaves of coneflower plants I'd recently brought home from the nursery, but whenever I checked the leaves during the day, they were persistently unpopulated. Not so this morning.
I gathered up and tossed at least half a dozen snails in specificity, rudely interrupting the morning meet up at the coneflower bar. Including one especially cheeky snail who apparently thought it could get away with nibbling on that nursery trip's impulse buy, a deep pink coneflower. Sorry Mr. Snail, the bar is closed. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.
On that same trip to the nursery, I made a planned purchase in the form of a handful of tropical milkweed plants. I have eventual hopes of luring migrating monarchs into our spaces. I say eventual, because the plants haven't bloomed quite yet, and there isn't anything currently for the butterflies to feed on. That hasn't stopped a small colony of yellow aphids or the ladybug I saw drawn to them yesterday. They were all busy feeding in turn.
This morning the ladybug had moved on, so I took my garden paintbrush and carefully brushed as many of the rest of the aphids off into a soap bath as I could reach. The milkweed cafe is temporarily closed, hopefully to reopen under new floral management. With any luck there will be monarchs nectaring at this neighborhood eatery very soon.
