Becoming a proper hostess

Ladybug, aka Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle

Years ago, when I began gardening in earnest, I found it endlessly fascinating (and impressive) when gardeners could walk around and identify every plant in their spaces (or anybody else's).   Honestly, I could bring home eight 4 inch pots from the nursery and if they weren't labeled I'd be just as likely to forget what two of them were by the time I got around to putting them into the ground.

Reakirt's Blue (Echinargus isola)

Which, come to think of it, probably explains a lot of my early (and a few of my ongoing) failures.

Red Admiral with folded wings (Vanessa atalanta) 

I became obsessed with figuring out what things are.  Courtesy of the internet, I no longer have to remember what every plant is called.  If I forget what something is called, I simply look it up.  I might not be a walking font of recalled plant knowledge but give me time on my computer and I eventually figure things out.  I consider the flora situation handled.

Question Mark Butterfly (Polygonia interrogationis)

Checkered White (Pontia protodice)

Unfortunately, as I've written here before, when it comes to the fauna, the birds and butterflies and bees and moths?  They don't so much hang around to pose for my close inspection or occasional portraits.  Peering at only the underwing, or the blurry feathered thing in the treetop looking away from the camera?  It's not always easy to figure out what it is flitting through our spaces day to day.

Red Admiral Butterfly (Vanessa atalanta)

Common Buckeye (Junonia coenia)

That doesn't mean I won't try. This year I've been going out as often as possible with my camera and capturing as many photos as I can of winged and footed visitors to our garden spaces.  After I've gotten the images I do my durnedest to properly identify every one.  Eventually I hope to have a library of images established to help me understand who my regular visitors are.

Sleepy Orange Sulphur (Abaeis nicippe) - I think!

Gray Hairstreak (Strymon melinus)

I feel it is only hospitable, to be able to greet them all by name.

Fly Overs and Hangers On

Continuing my efforts to record not just what is in bloom here, but who my visitors are.  In no particular order...

Orange Sulphur - perhaps a Sleepy Orange Sulphur (Eurema nicippe) Update:  Now believe this to be an Orange-barred Sulphur (Phoebis philea).

Snout butterfly (Libythean bachmanii) Their closed wings afford them camouflage as "dead leaves".

Teeny-tine crab spider (aka Flower Spider) Thomisidae, possibly misumessus?

Syrphid Fly (Palpada vinetorum) on Pyracantha blooms

Crab spider - Thomisidae

Tumbling Flower Beetle - named for it's behavior when netted.  It is black - the "color spots" are bits of clinging pollen from the Primrose blossoms.  

So very noisy overhead - four small planes flying in formation one way....

...then heading right back the other direction.

First Red Admiral Butterfly for the season (Vanessa atalanta)

Paper wasps - these had to go - they were building too close to the front door.

I originally thought this was Palpita kimballi but they don't occur in Texas.  Turns out this ghostly visitor resting on the coral yucca stalk is Stemorrahges costata.

Sleepy Orange  Orange-barred Sulphur and Crab Spider time-share.  Bees reportedly won't land on a flower that has anything obviously unflowerlike inside.  Some of these spiders can change color to "hide" while hunting, and will hold their long front legs out to mimic stamen filaments.