Christy Solo

Last week’s Oregon Trail themed All Things brought to mind The Oregon Trail video game. Created as an educational tool in 1971 Oregon Trail has since sold over 65 million copies and created a legacy.

This week’s crawly is a Beetle of Mystery! Not wholly, we do have some facts, but we also have a lot to learn yet.

One thing we know for sure is they fall into the None More Flat category of arthropods. Meet Uleiota truncata a Silvanid Flat Bark Beetle.

Where there’s a will…

No. Really. Make a will.

If you’ve made a will, please tell your next of kin that you’ve done so. Also, tell them where it is.

This week in All Things Oregon we’re going to travel the Oregon Trail. Luckily for us we can do so from the comfort of our homes, because it was brutal. It was also how many of us, no doubt, ended up here on the West Coast via long-ago family members who completed the treacherous trek.

Last week on social media a mutual (mutual = someone who follows me and whom I follow back) posted a lovely photo of a monarch butterfly (Danaus Plexippus). They tagged me in the post and asked me a question about monarch butterfly wings.

Not the four-legged kind, though that would be fun too.

My current yard puppies are a passel of juvie Steller’s Jays who are filling my yard with their antics from dawn to dusk.

This week’s All Things is all about the most Oregonian newt there is. The Mazama newt (Taricha granulosa mazamae).

This week’s crawly is the personification (arachnification?) of the Itsy-Bitsy Spider. No doubt they’d climb right back up the waterspout if washed out. Meet the Family Dictynidae (dic-tin-eh-day)AKA Mesh Web Weavers. We’ll call them Dic-teeny spiders for the duration because it’s easier to spell and accurate.

Tying in with this week’s All Things, I basically have a xeriscaped yard. Not out of design or desire, necessarily, but because my well puts out *maybe* 1 gal. per min. in summer and early fall. Irrigating three-quarters of an acre simply is not happening.