Here I was just minding my own business, observing all the lichen bits on a nearby tree, when who do I see? None other than the beautiful, the amazing, the tiny yet mighty, red Velvet Mite!

Do you have annoying brownish bugs crawling all over your doors and windows? Are they periodically bumping or flying into you at the most inconvenient times? Do they frequently come inside just to get stepped on (or sat on!) accidentally and emit an unpleasant stinky odor when squashed? If so, you are not alone.

Finally, on to the good stuff – the wild grape jelly! In my last post I started writing about wild grape season being in full swing and collecting grapes for making jelly. We got through the grape collecting part and juicing the grapes, but didn’t get to the actual jelly making part… So here we go!

Its wild grape season here in southern Michigan and the vines are finally covered in little purplish-black berries. Technically, it’s actually been wild grape season since late August, but I’m only just getting around to picking and processing them lol. Good for me that they have a pretty long ripe season around here (about late August through October). That means that it’s also jelly making season!

Do you have black bugs with bright reddish-orange markings all over your screens? Are they congregating above the door constantly in your way? Or maybe they are just sunning themselves on the front of the garage? Yep, I do. Meet the Boxelder Bug.

Have you recently started noticing things quickly scurrying over your floor? Have little furry things been startling you as they brush across your feet while you try to watch tv? Have there been dark blobs dropping from above every time you open the garage or outside door that then disappear so quickly you hope you imagined it??? Well, I certainly have.

It’s that time of year again… The days are getting shorter and cooler, the mosquitoes are finally cutting us some slack, the hummingbirds will be migrating soon… And the Yellowjackets are suddenly all over my hummingbird feeders.

Did you know humans aren’t the only species that have farmers? Ants farm too! Instead of keeping dairy cows or goats though, ants maintain aphid farms!

🎶…. Keep them beetles rovin’ 🎶… This funny looking critter in the photos is a Rove Beetle. I don’t know why the Rawhide song popped into my head when I found this guy, maybe just the rhyminess of it (rollin’/rovin’), but now that I’ve associated the two, I’m stuck on it. While many younger generations probably have no idea what in the world I’m talking about, I imagine some of you more experienced folk probably get the reference lol :)

Do you have large patches of your garden plants that mysteriously go missing overnight? Did you check everywhere for caterpillars and frass (caterpillar poopies) to no avail? Can’t find the leaf-chomping culprit anywhere? It might be a grasshopper!