Declaring farmland 'blighted' would create urban renewal district in north Hillsboro

I don't know what to say. Except that eventually all the cities will swallow up the land between them as they merge together. Like what is happening in central Florida right now. This is progress?

Oregonian photo of 'blighted' land. Borrowed w/o permission.

Crab spiders

Tiny 5mm crab spiders up close & personal on a pear blossom.

Best viewed enlarged, with a click!

Cleaning her paws. Mmmmmm pear pollen!

Macros and Turkey Tails

Turkey Tail or Trametes versicolor, a polypore fungus and one which I currently have a personal interest in, is in the news. 

This is a macro of a very young mushroom. Actually there are two. Both look similar on the top, but very different underneath. The turkey tail is the left in the first photo and on the right in the second. The other polypore has false gills or folds.
Please click on & enlarge

Turkey tail pores. Looks like a coral reef.

Enlarged, it's quite hairy.

Because of the shallow depth of field at this magnification, twelve frames were shot at different focus points and then stacked, or merged together so that the entire subject is in focus.

This is photo #1 with only the foreground in focus

And the last photo with the farthest portion in focus. I'll spare you the ten in between.

The difference is easier to see when you enlarge them.

The Bees

The bees got some flying in after it warmed up to 51* today. The pears are all blooming, apples are starting as are the cherries. They seem to prefer the pear blossoms.

They look better enlarged, so click on one.

Getting some plum sap or just taking a break.

Andreninae (Mining Bees)

Wax moth larva

Crawling around on some of their cocoons , I let it out before it wanted to leave it's home. It wasn't happy. I deep sixed it afterwards.
From a box of frames I forgot to store properly. Most of them are salvageable. I'll put them in the freezer for a couple of days to be sure the eggs and any larvae I missed are killed.

A tiny hairy beetle

Trichodesma cristata – Anobiid beetle

 Adult: 5-6mm.

Order Coleoptera/ Family Anobiidae – Death-watch beetles

Should I be worried?

Click to enlarge & appreciate it's hairiness.

"The larvae of Trichodesma spp. feed in dry dead wood and have also been found to invade houses and other structures, in some cases, causing considerable damage to timbers.  Many of the Anobiid species of North America are what is termed glabrous, (having little or no body hair) but this remarkable little species is very hairy, or a pubescent beetle as you can see. Intermixed with the light hairs are patches or tufts of stiffer black hairs making the genus, Trichodesma, easily recognized. Death-watch beetles get their name from the fact that they, like so many other borers, make a ticking noise in infested wood. The early Europeans gave them this name because when the sound was heard in the quiet of hospitals or the bedsides of the dying" ...

Arctiinae (erebid moths)

Dr. Paul Hammond, identified the orange and black  caterpillar as Ranchman’s Tiger Moth and the other one as a Garden Tiger Moth.

Eggs are laid starting in July. Large bluish-white clutches of eggs are laid on the lower surfaces of leaves. The caterpillars hatch in August. They spend the winter on the ground in protected places and pupate from June to July of the following year. The moths hatch from July to August.

The caterpillar of the garden tiger moth feeds on various kinds of non-woody plants, as well as bushes and trees. It is especially fond of raspberry,blackberry, viburnum, honeysuckle, erica, and broom.

At last! Something that eats Blackberry and Scotch broom! Of course at least these two also dine on Lupines. 

Photos by my wife.

From Wikipedia:

"Local folklore of the American Northeast and the American South hold that "woolly bears" (or "wooly worms" in the South) have the ability to predict the weather, similar to that of the groundhog. The forthcoming severity of a winter may be indicated by the amount of black on the Isabella tiger moth's caterpillar—the most familiar woolly bear in North America. More brown than black is said to mean a mild winter, but more black than brown is supposed to mean a harsh winter.^[13] However, the relative width of the black band varies among instars, not according to weather."

This is obvious, as we are currently having a record mild winter and these are more black than brown.