I got a chance today for a short photo shoot while making some adjustments to the netting on the poplars in the greenhouse.  This is George.  He (or possible she) is a Forest tent caterpillar, distinguishable from the evil Eastern tent caterpillar by the longer hair and white keyhole or footprint shaped markings on each body segment.  Also by virtue of being much cuter.

I haven’t really said anything about the project I’m volunteering with this summer.

It looks like this now:

The tented trees have been infested with forest tent caterpillars - a local native species well known for its ability to completely defoliate a tree and cover it in great masses of silky mess.  The trees are two species, oak and poplar, and the tent caterpillars will be allowed to have a go at half of them.  The other half will be allowed to grow unmolested - for a time.  Eventually, the tent caterpillars will be removed, and gyspy moth caterpillars (an invasive species which has proven rather damaging) will get their turn at not just the half which had been munched upon by the tent caterpillars, but also the fresh and tasty unmolested trees.  Lucky gypsy moth caterpillars!  There’s a small catch - half of each batch of trees (the pre-eaten and the virginal) will be dosed with a virus known to affect gypsy moth caterpillars (and not in a good way).  The general idea is to figure out if the chemicals produced by the two tree species after defoliation by tent caterpillars has any effect on the virulence of the virus in the gypsy moth caterpillar.  It is believed that this is the case, and we’re looking for some hard numbers to put to it.  In the meantime, there are eggs to hatch, leaves to freeze-dry, and baby caterpillar food to prepare!

Seriously, you’ll ruin your very late mother’s day surprise.

My latest pottery experimentation, to be foisted upon my poor unsuspecting mother:

No, I have no idea what it’s supposed to be for.  Nuts.

Inspired by my previous post, my friend Shai made an excellent Thing in a Jar.

I think it looks a bit like a fetal pig.

Jon says it’s more like an unidentifiable internal organ.

After photoshop crashed the other day, my computer locked up completely, and now it won’t boot at all, so it may be a while before I get to those cottage pictures.  It’s such a pain to try to do image editing on the ploptop.