Invertebrate of the Year nominee: Hummingbird moth

You know how nature likes to fool you, like you have a meeting with your boss and you can't keep your hair from looking like a mop and you lose your job? You all know what I mean. Anyway, this is the humming bird moth--nature fools you in many ways. It LOOKS like a little hummingbird AND it is a moth that flies around in the day. So you go, "Neptune's Barcalounger! What a tiny bird." Then when you realize it's moth you look around to see if anyone heard you? You all know what I mean. Invertebrate of the Year Nomineee: the White-lined Sphinx Hummingbird Moth, Hyles lineata.

Plant of the Year Nominee: Galium verum

If there is any more beautiful yellow I'd like to see it. This is a great year for this plant, called lady bedstraw.

Seasons to Date

These are the seasons at 42.31, -73.55.


1. Amelanchier (March 26)
2. Taraxacum (April 21)
3. Sweet Vernal Grass (May 10)
4. Viburnum (May 27)
5. Galium (June 10)
6. Day Lily (July 4)

New Season: Day Lily

On or about July 4, the season of Galium gives way to a season that is more able to deal with the heat of what used to be called summer. I use the word summer in the same way that people use the words "wort" or "thy" or, "My mother will bake thee a bannock." We who follow this blog (which is actually nobody ) scoff--yea! we scoff!--at the use of outmoded words for seasons,

As summer progresses, Galium turns into the next season, Day Lily. I chose it because Hemerocallis fulva reminds me of a firework going off on the Fourth of July, which for the many of you reading this in Borneo is the US Independence Day, the day in 1776 when US botanists formally severed ties with the tyrannical English botanists lead by John Ray and his band of wild naked taxonomists. (Actually John Ray is a GOD, more on him later.)

Galium: Trifolium repens Plant of the Year Nominee

Every once in a while a plant has a banner year, can considering this is legume and its flower has a banner its a banner banner year

Trifolium repens: white clover. So common! And yet so overlooked. But not by me, no siree.

Nominee for Plant of the Year