Sadness :(

This morning I woke up to find my caterpillar/butterfly habitat torn up by what I believe was mice.  They chewed multiple large holes in the screen and ate all the chrysalis that were in it.  I had about 30 just waiting to become butterflies and now they are all gone.  Of course to make matters worse, once the mice opened the habitat, the wasps took full advantage and killed all the caterpillars I was feeding.  Sob!!  Now that the mice know how to get to the chrysalis I can't continue saving the caterpillars until I figure out another way to keep the mice from ruining the habitat.  The screening I used was good for keeping out wasps and lizards but is no match for mice.  Back to the drawing board I guess.   :(

A nice cool front to get the fall garden going

The last couple days we've had some major thunderstorms which have brought a bit of a cool front in (if you can call 80 degrees cool).  Its helping me get in the mood to start my fall garden.  I had planned to start a little earlier but the heat was too unbearable to spend any time outside other than sitting in the pool.
Yesterday I found a huge wasp nest under the eaves of the house where some screening had been torn.  I went after it with 3 cans of wasp spray.  I was trying to use the Spectracide wasp spray which said on the can that it would go up to 27 feet.  I stood not more than 6 feet from the nest.  The first can didn't have much in it and ran out but got a lot of the nest although it definitely could not spray very far, the second can spray nozzle leaked all over my hands while I was trying to use it and the third can barely sprayed out at most 3 feet when the wind caught it and blew the spray back into my face.  Arrrrgh!  There is no way this stuff could go 27 feet!  Oh well....decided to pass the task on to my husband and informed him that he should consider buying some other brand so that it hopefully will spray further.  He went after it this past weekend and there's been a noticeable difference in the amount of wasps attacking the caterpillars now.  I guess we got the offending nest. Yay!

Beaver on the Bayou

One thing I never expected to see is a beaver on the bayou that backs up to our property.  For those familiar with Houston we back up to Buffalo Bayou. This guy is just the cutest thing.  We haven't seen his dam but believe its a little ways up the bayou in a stream next to our neighbors house. I'm not sure if its got a mate.  Seems to be an unlikely place to be looking for one.  I just can't figure out how it ended up here but I'm glad it did.  

Beaver cleaning his food

Beaver swimming with cut branch