On Wednesday afternoon I asked Martha if she would like to accompany me over the hill to the Glen Canyon Park. She accepted--but I think she thought I was already "over the hill"--since earlier in the day I had cancelled an appointment for a hike with Herb.

I took this photo of a yellow lily  near the door, just as we left Westwood. 

Along the soccer field, the pretty but troublesome Field Bindweed  was found surviving the Heavy foot traffic. (We commonly call this  a Morning Glory.)

Inside the park boundary we searched for Myrtle Spurge in the areas where we had helped to remove it last year. Happily, we found none and we even noticed that the owner of the adjoining rockery had removed the spurge plants that had been growing nearest the fence. There is still plenty of it in his rockery, however, but it is apparent that my warning about the plant's invasiveness is having an effect.

I have been watching the development of a couple of plants of Common Bugloss, another invasive weed and I intend to remove them before they distribute seed. 

Common Bugloss

One of the Bugloss plants had two nymphal cicada skins attached to it. I recognized them only as insect exoskeletons when I took this picture  but an email to Fred Schueler gave me a quick identification. Fred suggested that I find out what species of cicadas might be present in this area. Through E Fauna, I found a photo of the cicada Okanagana occidentalis that was taken on Mount Kabau, near Osoyoos but there may be other species here also. Searching the internet for "Cicadas Okanagan BC" turned up references to Okanagan cicadas in a most delightful blog, http://okanaganokanogan.com/ in which I found pictures of cicadas, even a sound recording and a photo of an adult cicada just emerging from its skin! I have now signed up to receive this blog.

On the matter of signing up to receive a blog, you can easily sign up to receive my blog. On the first page of each of my blog post where it says “Follow by email” there is a button to "Submit" your email address. Our daughter Karen writes:

"Dad, I'm glad I subscribed to your blog, even though it means getting your emails twice -- once from you and once from the blog. Reading your text in the format of the blog, with the small photos that I can click on to see full-size if I want, is very nice and I find I absorb your information better. The only "catch" is that when I want to send you a reply I need to remember to replace the blog address with your address -- but that's easy to do. Also, for anyone subscribing, they do need to sign up with Google, but I haven't experienced any drawbacks to doing that; they don't send spam or anything!"

In some areas of the park, especially those recently acquired, there are old tree stumps which are rotting and disintegrating--on their way to add organic matter to the soil. On one such stump, I noticed a pile of fine sawdust-like material, frass, which indicated the presence  of a larval wood-boring beetle. 

Looking closely, I even saw the pile move, as more sawdust was thrust up by the active grub  below. The light, fluffy sawdust was easily blown away, revealing a hole in the stump and giving me a glimpse of the yellowish-white larva below.

A nearby stump had a very actively moving jumping spider. I do not know the species but searching through E Fauna turned up a very similar picture of Platycryptus californicus, so I have tentatively applied that label to my photo.

Another commonly seen invasive weed is Dalmation Toadflax. I noticed that most of the toadflax plants seen on this day appeared to be very sick--tattered and torn, weary and worn. 

Looking closely I saw that a black insect was feeding on their leaves. 

Knowing that efforts are being made to find biological means of control of the worst of our invasive weeds, I did a search for references to control of Dalmatian Toadflax and learned that the Regional District of the South Okanagan and Similikameen has such a program in place, using a weevil specific for toadflax, the Toadflax Stem Weevil (Mecinus janthiniformis) http://www.rdosmaps.bc.ca/min_bylaws/legislative_services/weed_control/FACTS

HEET_DT_FINAL_Dec2005.pdf/

Our Regional District of Central Okanagan must have a similar control program in place, or else we can thank the Southern Okanagan RDCO for the welcome extension of this toadflax parasite. In any case these weevils seem to be doing a good job of control.