slow day out back

it must be august because the jerusalem artichokes are in full bloom...and, for august in these parts, it is a cool and overcast day which, in insect terms, means nothing much is going on...not that things are at a standstill...

a solitary bumblebee had the run of the blooms...

almost all of the teosinte plants have begun to produce silks...

and since the sap of the teosinte has a fair amount of sugars in it they have attracted ants who have herded their aphids to the stems just below the flowers to feed...if they become destructive something will have to be done...in my experience that won't be necessary...we will, however, be vigilant...i want ears and seed...

as another sign of august ( and the nearness of autumn ) the butterfly weed is producing seed pods...

two years ago from early july until about this time in august the ancestors of these plants were alive with monarch butterfly caterpillars...now for the past two years all they have had on them is pods...monarchs are officially endangered and i saw one last year...zero this...we can argue about the whys ( or you may...i will abstain ) however the empirical evidence is in my yard...which is a marked absence of maonrchs and their progeny...so it's a slow day and near as i can tell the news is a lot worse than anyone is willing to admit...have a look around where you live...what's changed?