Identified with help from What’s That Bug?
Duck
This Year’s Performance
Master Lee’s School of Praying Mantis Kung Fu and Tai Chi Jeung will be performing at the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts on Saturday, June 2, from 2:30pm to 3:45pm at the adult involvement stage. It should be quite a show, so show up early and tell all your friends!

So It Begins
This morning I spent a couple of hours planting the last of my salsa plants for the year. I have twelve pepper plants in the ground, and three tomato plants in containers.

I have eight plants in my front bed, six of which are visible in this photo.

Four more plants are in the back, near my recently-planted Arborvitae at the north end of my property

The tomatoes were a spur-of-the moment decision, and will supposedly thrive in the pots.
The pepper plants are as follows:
1 Red Cherry
1 Kung Pao
1 Hungarian Wax
1 Concho
1 Serrano
1 Pimienta “Cowhorn”
2 Anaheim TMR 23
2 Super Cayenne II
2 JalapeƱo
The tomatoes are as follows:
1 Amish paste tomato
2 San Marzano paste tomatoes
That’s right: twelve pepper plants this year. I had three last year, and they did amazingly well in containers. This year I wanted something a little more aesthetically pleasing, as well as manageable, considering my limited space. I do not expect all of them to thrive, but the ones that do bear fruit at the end of summer will help me to learn where to plant things next year.
I have a couple of unused containers left over from last year, so if I find any more interesting/promising pepper seedlings, I may put them to some use.
Grackle
Old, Older, Oldest
These photos are of three sets of stairs which ascend from Division Avenue North to the Lookout Park area on the northeast side of Grand Rapids. The oldest set of stairs is really only visible as such in the winter and early spring, when the snow has matted the weeds down to conform to the terrain of the hill.









