Just grass. And spit.

The grasses are probably the most important of the plant families to us humans. I'm ashamed that I know so little about them. I collected heads one afternoon, from one small field; there were more than a dozen different grasses, but I could never identify them.

I occasionally take photos of an interesting head, and then try to find it in my books or on the web. I never do; they're more confusing than caterpillars! My guidebook, Plants of Coastal BC, says there are over 200 species in our area, mostly indigenous.

At Elgin Heritage Park last week, we found a few that I'd never noticed before.

The terrain: flat river delta, soggy wet, even in mid-summer. The grass would be over our heads, but we're standing on the bridge. Behind us, on the opposite side of the bridge, the grass is mixed with taller cattails.

Along the pathway, grasses compete with the blackberries and other shrubs, springing out of the thickets to dangle their seed heads in our faces.

This was really red, almost purple in the sunlight. A tall plant.

Another one, even more purple against the buttercups.

I think these are the same kind. They are growing on the riverbank, with no competition.

Laurie found this, a fuller, fatter head. It seems, from the photo, since I didn't see the plant, to be a rush. But which one?*

*Laurie says it's probably Cocksfoot grass, Dactylis glomerata.

Note to self: "Sedges have edges, rushes are round." The stems, that is.

Farther from the shore, where the ground rises and dries out, other, shorter grasses grow around the lupins. And this week, they were in the midst of a population explosion:

Spit bug** heaven!

**Nymphs of the Froghopper family, aka Spittle bugs, snake spit, frog spit. Laurie knows them as "cuckoo spit". The one that we see in this area is the Meadow Spittlebug, Philaenus spumarius. I have found them on my roses and the hydrangeas at home.

Pinhead spiders, pinhead spider food

With the onset of fall weather, we've been hurrying to finish postponed summer gardening chores, and settle the gardens in for the rains. In the last three days, Laurie chopped down a small tree and we dug out its roots. By hand, digging and chopping, prying and scraping. I thought we'd never get it done. I've finished cutting down the summer's crop of ivy that was making a new onslaught on our evergreens. The rhododendrons are pruned. My shade garden is cleaned up, fertilized and mulched. The hawkweeds are no more.

Whew!

I was too tired to look at the blog yesterday.

This afternoon, the last thing I (thought) I would do before I quit for the day was to cut off a couple of old hydrangea flower heads whose stems had broken.

There were spiders among the drying petals. I went for the camera.

Worn out dark blue hydrangea

The spiders were all tiny, some barely big enough to cover a pinhead, some slightly bigger, but more mobile.

I snapped umpteen variants of this; Ma spider just slipping around to the far side of the stem.

And as I chased spiders, I found a whole community of critters, so small that I hadn't realized they were there. So that's what all the spiders have been eating!

Snail, a couple of millimetres across.

Another snail.

Whiteflies. About 1 - 2 mm. A pest, but they weren't too numerous. And winter is coming.

Baby American house spider. Probably eats whiteflies; they're about her size.

Another one. These were so small that I couldn't see what they were with the naked eye.

A small meadow spittlebug, Philaenus spumarius, about 1/4 inch long. Another of the critters that keep moving to the far side of the leaf.

A very small weevil that I couldn't identify. I like his back markings; the back side of a comic-book hawk? A Sasquatch in a rain cape?

Earwig hiding in the crotch of a flower stem. A composite; one photo had the head in focus, another had the tail. And none had the middle. And then the 'wig ran away.

This earwig was from a few days earlier, on a rhododendron leaf. I really want to get a good photo because I love the markings on the thorax. Try again!

This spider, and several others like her, fell out of the flower heads as I de-leafed them. They're very fast runners.

Chased but not caught: a flock of those orange flies with the red, red eyes. And I put my head, again, through a cross spider's web.