Jeff Ward

Honey locust seen from a drone next to a driveway in the front yard of a modern house.

20. Gleditsia triacanthos var. inermis

This species is 'three thorns' and the is 'spineless.' Spineless three-thorned honey locust. Popular here, though disease prone.This is my first representative of the clade Fabales, the nitrogen fixers. #gardening #backyardwildlife #backyardbiodiversity

A sieve full of glistening red cherries.

19. Prunus cerasus
Now serving. Although the records from the landscaper show a sweet cherry, this is a sour cherry, probably Montmorency. Highly productive. I share with the neighbors, birds, squirrels, and beetles. #gardening #backyardwildlife #backyardbiodiversity

Many pairs of reddish green maple seeds hanging from a branch.

18. Acer tataricum
Introduced to North America in the 20th C from southeastern Europe. Neighbor's tree overhangs my yard and seems to feed the squirrels.
#gardening #backyardwildlife

A brown moth with its wings folded. Wings are brown with black stripes and two gray patches on each.

17. Euxoa auxiliaris
A migrant that comes from the plains in spring. In '23 there were hundreds in our house. Not too bad this year. Delicious to birds and bears. "Miller moth" is a very common common name and not useful except locally.
#gardening #backyardwildlife

A swarm of bees in a tree

A bee on purple lavender

16. Apis mellifera
There are plenty of honey bees in our neighborhood, and the helpful resource at www.pollinator.org/pollinator.o... tells me that all of them in Colorado are A. mellifera. One of these photos shows a swarm last year in the neighbor's tree.
#backyardwildlife #gardening

A black and yellow wasp with orange antennae on a paper nest.

15. Polistes dominula
European paper wasp.
One more today, because I enjoyed the picture. A pair of these wasps is guarding a nest on my gate. When I approach, they raise the fronts of their bodies in defensive posture. I retreat.
#gardening #backyardwildlife

Grasshopper with vertical stripes on femur.

14. Bruneria brunnea

Brunner's slantfaced grasshopper. It seems a good season for seeing grasshoppers then spending time trying to classify them. This one is certainly not the same as the two-striped, but whether my ID is correct, I can't quite say.

#gardening #backyardwildlife

A grasshopper sitting on an electrical cord

13. Melanoplus bivittatus
​
It seems that classifying grasshoppers (and insects in general) will be a detailed task. This is the two-striped grasshopper, though I would have said it has one dark stripe.

#gardening #backyardwildlife

yellow and black butterfly flying through the blue sky with some trees and power lines

12. Papilio multicaudata

I believe the black and yellow swallowtail butterfly that drifts through my yard a few times each day is the two-tailed swallowtail.

I had to be fast to snap this photo with my phone.

#gardening #backyardwildlife

A small, elongate, almost-white spider on a bit of wood.

11. Pisaurina mira

Seems like spiders will be hard to identify, but from the way this one carries itself, and from body shape, I think it is a nursery web spider. Perhaps a young one. It was almost translucent.

#gardening #backyardwildlife

Microscope image of a bindweed mite. From CSU Extension website.

10. Aceria malherbae

I ordered bindweed gall mites last year, and they were delivered this week--a tangle of sickly bindweed in a Styrofoam container with some ice packs. I don't have high hopes that they will eliminate my bindweed problem, but at least they can try.

#gardening #backyardwildlife

Sprays of white blossoms against green foliage.

9. Syringa reticulata

The Japanese tree lilac didn't bloom for a few years after it was planted, but now it is a late-spring regular, a bit ghostly against the green.

#gardening #backyardwildlife

A leafy weed growing from gray rock chips.

8. Lactuca serriola

The mother of all lettuce. Ceremonial emetic. Maror for Pesach. Sedative. Analgesic. Euphoric. Associated with the Egyptian god Min. My new policy is "identify and learn before destruction."

#gardening #backyardwildlife

A spiky green plant amongst thyme leaves.

7. Cirsium arvense

Creeping thistle. Canadian thistle. Lettuce from hell thistle. Call it what you will, it is my spiky adversary in the west-facing thyme lawn. As Euell Gibbons would say, "many parts are edible." But the internet warns they cause flatulence.

#gardening #backyardwildlife

Not everything is broken. In the park, above the dog walkers, roost a great horned owl and two owlets. Impatient for dusk, they call gently to one another, inviting me to notice, to seek, to find, to gaze into wild eyes and smile. Beneath the tree is a feather. Not everything is broken. #poetry

Dense, wet foliage.

Having a monsoon season feels exotic, especially in the morning when all the shrubs are bowing down with the load of rain. I haven't even turned on the irrigation system yet this year. #gardening #denver

Serviceberry bush leaves and immature fruits.

Serviceberry leaves with droplets of rain.

6. Amelanchier x grandiflora 'Autumn Brilliance'

We put in several serviceberry trees when we re-landscaped, and they are all doing well. That said, I have never eaten a single berry. Perhaps this is the year.

#gardening #backyardwildlife

Text of a poem about acquisition in modern times.

This morning, I read a @mariapopova.bsky.social essay about a beautiful children's book called "The Wanting Monster."
www.themarginalian.org/.../29/the-w...
Although I am torn up about many much more difficult things near and far, over my espresso I wrote

A Tale of Fulfillment

#poetry

A poem about pain scales.

While waiting for Sly and Family to move on out, I have put my thoughts into words. Probably somewhat risky, given medication and pain. #kidneystones #poetry

Cover of Sly Stone's memoir. Sly with a decent afro, shirtless, patchwork jeans, green Adidas on his hands and knees.

The naming is now official. I await the (even more painful) emergence of "Sly and the Family of Stones." Sly clocks in at 6mm. According to experts and ChatGPT, I will be mice elf again. #kidneystones

Moving my cartoons with me from twitter
#NephSky #MedSky #Nephrology #Kidney #KidneyStones #Stones #Urine #microscopy

The pain scale should be based on soccer competitions. "My pain reached Champions' League levels overnight." Or "My pain is in the Isthmian League." #kidneystones

A relatively small fox squirrel on a wooden fence, looking at the photographer, with leaves behind.

5. Sciurus niger
For a couple of years, my fox squirrels have been unable to reach the bird feeder. Instead they raid my fruit trees. Squeeze here and it will come out there. #backyardwildlife #denver #biodiversity

"our entire culture seems to have forgotten that identities and opinions are the least interesting parts of people — ripples on the surface of the ocean of the soul, shimmering but shallow, pervious to every windsweep, irrelevant to the depths."

A dogwood flowering, with a red, spotless ladybug on one of the flower heads.

Cornus stolonifera. For number 4, I want down a bit of a rabbit hole into the taxonomy of dogwoods. Who knew? Is it Cornus alba, Cornus sericia? Call it 'red osier.' And I'll get to that bug, too. #denver #backyardwildlife #biodiversity #gardening

a poem about broken heartedness

#poetry from the fragility of the heart.

You’ve curated a beautiful woodland. Tagging my Surrey woodsman @illiswilgig.bsky.social

Interested to hear more about access restrictions. What was going on “before?”

I’m almost done with my first pass through the book, and it has been mind blowing. The ideas have already changed the way I look at reality and my reactions to what I perceive.

Let's make this happen!