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You have to get up early in the morning to catch pumpkin blossoms at their peak. They’re spectacularly huge, but they start to wither as soon as the sun comes out. Here are two from a city garden that by this time of the year is mostly pumpkin vines.
Another picture of a Spotted Lanternfly nymph, just because it was posing so decoratively on a ray of Cosmos sulphureus.
These little black bugs with sporty polka dots are the earlier nymph stage of the spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula), the pest that has invaded Pittsburgh by the zillions and is threatening to kill off our local population of Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima), another invasive pest that is the spotted lanternfly’s primary host. Old Pa Pitt recalls an old Roman saying about the curse of an answered prayer that seems appropriate here.
An Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) sitting very still in a patch of Crown Vetch (Securigera varia) in South Side Riverfront Park.