Beautiful Ohio and Fall Craftiness

Fall is here in Ohio and it's gorgeous. The goldenrods and asters are feeding millions of insects it seems. The insect hum is audible several feet away from the plants - magic.

A few black-eyed Susans are in bloom again offering up their nectar and happy yellow color.

A plant we adore...the always colorful Sweet Gum (Liquidambar styraciflua) is really starting to put on a show:

It seems this Silver-spotted Skipper likes it too.

Dryad's Saddle on our woodland trail.

Our hundreds of oaks are growing, which is great for us, the birds, the caterpillars, etc. and we marvel at their fall colors too.

Here's one of the many caterpillars that feed on oaks, a stunning Crowned Slug. The first time we saw one of these was in 2005 at the location of my first job out of college so it's fun to see it again!

Hmmmm...is this the Sharp-Stigma Looper? The back-lighting is difficult, but that marking seems fairly sharp to me. Let me know what you think. Their hosts are aster, goldenrod, horseweed and tobacco.

Due to some health problems that popped up unexpectedly, we will NOT be at the Dawes Handmade Fair in November, but we will get our online shop open soon. I am having some technical difficulties with our web store, hence the delay. Fear not though, Steve the tech guru is stepping in to assist me. Whew!

We will have soap and salve as soon as we open and then lots of reclaimed wood creations too. We just scored a whole bunch of great wood and slate at an auction to stock Steve's wood shop back up. This is just the first load!

$24 for all that slate. Yes, all of it. Wild.