"Sweet May hath come to love us, 
Flowers, trees, their blossoms don; 
And through the blue heavens above us 
The very clouds move on." 
- Heinrich Heine, Book of Songs

A bit belated, but I finally turned the page...!

We are having a lovely May so far. I haven't had an opportunity to give everything in my yard a real good once over, but from what I can see, it looks like everyone survived our wicked winter. My vines are up over 1.5 feet and the delphiniums are already 6 inches. The only downfall of the season for me is that the creepy crawlies are now out and about.... so I thought I'd share this interesting story I stumbled across yesterday:

This is pretty scary!

Almost 50 million years ago, ants the size of hummingbirds roamed what is now Wyoming, a new fossil discovery reveals. These giant bugs may have crossed an Arctic land bridge between Europe and North America during a particularly warm period in Earth's history.

At about 2 inches (5 cm) long, the specimen is a "monstrously big ant," said Bruce Archibald, a paleoentomologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia who reported the discovery today (May 3) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Though fossils of loose giant ant wings have been found before in the United States, this is the first known full-body specimen.


One living ant species, Dorylus wilverthi, has queens that reach the size of this ancient ant, though Titanomyrma was big all over while D. wilverthi gets its size from an abnormally swollen abdomen, Archibald said.

Archibald dubbed the new ant Titanomyrma lubei -- "titan" for its size, "myrma" for the Greek, "myrmex," or ant, and "lubei" for the fossil collector who discovered the specimen, Louis Lube. The burning question, however, was how giant ants ended up on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. 

The full story here if you are interested.


Also, you may have seen the story about a cat who was dubbed the world's loudest purrer (is that a word?!) The other day ABC news reported that Smokey is now officially the Guinness World Record holder. I love the profile below.