June’s full moon is known in Europe as the #RoseMoon, named for the season when roses are at their glorious peak. In North America it is the Strawberry Moon, marking the strawberry harvest, while elsewhere it is called the Hot Moon, reflecting the arrival of summer heat in June.
A rare summer-night aurora over South Indian Lake, Manitoba.
With only a few hours of darkness this far north, I captured a starlapse of the #northernlights dancing across an indigo sky while the last glow of twilight lingered on the horizon after midnight on June 24, 2026.
#Aurora #AuroraBorealis #Manitoba @Storyful
@Goldmoone@julestcb@Katsbigopinion2 Even if her friend gave her permission I wouldn't do that if it was me. It's like I forbid my son to have haribos so I never give any to his friends eventhough their parents wouldn't mind.
This was nearly over before I pressed the button. Adult Kingfisher is feeding a wee fish to newly-fledged junior 1 (with back to camera), then junior 2 arrives, and then all three exit to left of frame. On the River Kelvin in Glasgow this afternoon.
This is a ladybird larva. It looks nothing like a ladybird. It looks like a tiny black alligator with orange spots — and most gardeners crush it thinking it's a pest.
That mistake costs the garden dearly. An adult ladybird eats around 50 aphids a day. Its larva can devour up to 500 before it pupates. Ten times as many. That strange-looking creature working its way along your tomato stems is the most effective phase of a ladybird's entire life.
Once you know what to look for, the larva is unmistakable: an elongated blue-black body with six orange spots along the sides, six short legs, slow and methodical movement up and down stems. It doesn't fly, doesn't jump, doesn't hide. It moves from one aphid colony to the next and feeds continuously for two to three weeks before pupating.
The pupa looks like a small, still orange droplet fixed to a leaf — and it too gets removed during routine plant tidying. Inside it, the adult ladybird is forming.
If you find aphids on a plant and ladybird larvae among them, leave them alone. The biological control is already working.
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With everything we are hearing right now about ticks this seems like good information to share.
“Here’s what I’ve learned after more ticks than I care to count.
First, whatever your uncle told you, forget it. No matches. No nail polish. No Vaseline. No soap on a cotton ball. All of those do the same terrible thing, they stress the tick out, and a stressed tick empties its gut back into the bite before letting go. Which, if you think about what that actually means for a second, is literally how Lyme and the rest get transmitted so you’re not speeding up its exit. You’re making it throw up into you.
Fine-tipped tweezers. Grip right where the mouthparts enter the skin, not the body, the head. Pull straight up, steady, no twisting, no jerking. It’ll feel like it’s resisting because it is, the mouthparts are barbed. Just keep the pressure on and it lets go in a few seconds. If a piece breaks off in the skin, leave it alone. Your body pushes splinters out. Digging around with a needle does more damage then the fragment ever would.
Clean it with alcohol or soap. Wash your hands.
Now here’s the part most people skip: don’t flush the tick.
Tape it to an index card. Clear packing tape right over the body, write the date and where on your body it was, and stick the card in a drawer. If you come down with anything weird in the next 30 days, rash, fever, joint pain, that flu-that-isn’t-flu feeling, that tick goes with you to the doctor. Some labs will test the tick itself, which is faster and often more reliable than waiting for antibodies to show up in your own blood. A dated tick taped to a card is one of the most useful things you can hand a doctor who’s trying to figure out what’s wrong with you.
The other thing worth saying out loud: if the tick was engorged when you pulled it, and you can’t swear it was off your body within 24 hours, call your doctor that same day. Don’t wait for a rash. Fewer than three out of four Lyme cases even produce the classic bullseye. A single preventive dose of doxycycline within 72 hours of a deer tick bite cuts the Lyme odds way down, and most docs in tick country will write that prescription without giving you a hard time, especially if you walk in with the tick taped to a card and a clear timeline.”