Cinematic Inspiration

In the arbor in my backyard there are literary and movie quotes made with bricks:

 This is a quote from the movie Bringing Up Baby, starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. It says, "In moments of quiet I am strangely drawn to you, but, well, there haven't been any quiet moments." I was thinking about this quote as I walked around outside today because it encapsulates the feelings I have had about my backyard the past few days. Meaning, it's been too windy and cold, and I don't like that. I love my backyard, but ugh! Why does it always have to be windy? (By the way, I had to brush away a lot of dried leaves to take this picture, and was kind of disappointed not to find any bugs hiding in the leaf litter).

 Here we have an emblem of spring with the remnants of the winter.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 

 Wasp. I saw this when I was finished with my bug walk, meaning I had gone around the whole yard looking for bugs, and was not actively looking for them anymore, I was just walking around enjoying the sunshine during a lull in the wind. And maybe procrastinating on what I needed to be doing in the house. Anyway, I was just walking around, and this buzzed right past me and landed on the ground. Huzzah!

 And then less than a minute later, about 20 feet away, I saw this wasp crawl out of the leaf litter and then fly away. I wonder if it spent the winter in the leaf litter, and I saw it as it was emerging from its winter snooze.

 2 days in a row with little moths landing on rocks.

It is rare for me to see a twice-stabbed lady beetle's face. Usually they have them tucked under their pronotums (pronota?). But this one was crawling around, so it had to be able to see where it was going, I guess.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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 Mite. I can appreciate this mite, but today I went for allergy tests and found out that I am severely allergic to a relative of this creature–dust mites. Those I do not appreciate.

 I have had a theory–sorry, hypothesis–about the snakes I have been seeing on the little hill in the front of my house. I think that they had a winter den there, and that snakes have been emerging and dispersing. I think that there were at least 3 individuals, and possibly more (I know there were at least 2, because a few times there were 2 out there at a time). But I think that one of them has stuck around all this time, going back into the burrow when it's too cold, and coming out to bask when it's nice and sunny. Well, today the snake was there when I went out to do my bug walk, but I think later on it moved on...
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 I was taking pictures as usual, and as sometimes happens I got too close, and the snake got annoyed, as you can see from this defensive posture. So I backed off and moved around to watch it from a different spot. The snake started to move toward where I know its hole is–I have seen it disappear down the hold several times. It didn't go down into the hole, though...

It started moving away, following along above the bedrock ledge that runs along the front of my yard by the street. It followed it from a distance to keep from alarming it, and it slithered in a leisurely fashion. It eventually stopped along the top of one of the rock outcrops. I watched it for a few minutes there, and then went on with my bug walk. When I finished by walk I went back to look again, and it was gone. I will be very curious to see if it is back in its usual spot tomorrow, but I have a suspicion that I have seen the last of it.