Be like the flowers, turn your face to the sun.- Kahlil GibranSunflower
Be like the flowers, turn your face to the sun.- Kahlil GibranCategory Archives: Garden
Be like the flowers, turn your face to the sun.- Kahlil Gibran
Just another day in the garden
The milkweed beetles are busy making more…
and the apples are blushing at the sight!
The scarecrow is not very scary and watches it all with his ears in a twist.
Some flowers make me think of lace embroidery…
But the hoops are buried in the cabbage patch!
Lazy Sunday
I didn’t even step foot out of the house until near 8pm today. It wasn’t all that hot, only in the high 80’s, but the glare of the sun kept me inside on the couch with a new book. I was lazy, but my husband got a lot done, at least. The vegetable garden is weeded and presentable enough that I might share a pic or two of our baby peppers and tomatoes. The grass is cut and the patio finally cleared of clutter.
I wanted just to share this pic of my *bog* garden – isn’t it monstrous?! Every year I warn myself not to let it get out of hand and it gets away from me anyway. The Joe-Pye Weed is beginning to bloom and is almost as tall as our new gazebo. The goldenrod and swamp hibiscus are just as tall. The purple loosestrife needs to be cut before it has a chance to make seeds. Down low under all that shade are a few plants struggling to find some sun and have a chance to survive.
Our plan had been to have an early dinner and head down to the beach for some surf fishing with my husband’s brothers, but he lost track of time and I took a longer than expected nap. Oh well. At least I had a few minutes in the garden with a nice breeze and the company of the fireflies. Wish the weekends didn’t go so fast!
Purple waterlily
There’s only time tonight to share this pic of a new waterlily; it had already closed for the day when I got in from work, so I’m not so sure what it really looks like. So far it seems similar to the purple and yellow one I had last summer, but the flowers are much smaller. What’s really fantastic about this lily is the leaves – they’re large and splotched with purple. I’ll have to work on a better pic to share that includes the lilypads and maybe a sunbathing frog.
What’s bugging me – second attempt
Besides Mary threatening an extended hiatus from blogging, aphids are bugging me. I hate the little suckers! There’s almost no other insect that I would say that about, but I wholeheartedly hate aphids. I think it stems from my beginning days as a gardener. Of all the things to start with I chose roses. I bought lots of beautiful old garden roses and some beautiful David Austin roses that I coddled and crooned over. Even then I knew better than to spray them with pesticides, so I devised many creative and non-lethal ways of eradicating these nasty bugs – none of which worked at all. Eventually I got to the point that I would just run two fingers down each stem of my rosebushes, squishing the bas*ards along the way – with my bare hands – yuck!
I’m too squeamish to attempt that now – especially since there are so darn many of them on each plant. I don’t have roses anymore, but they’re feasting on my milkweed plants instead. They’re really not harming anything, but they look so ugly and make me squirm.
Something mysterious is also bugging my new Sour Gum tree. I first noticed ants crawling on the ends of the branches and they led me to find aphids, or some other aphid-like insect, that’s feeding on the new growth. They didn’t seem to do any real damage and they’ve since more or less disappeared. Instead I’m seeing these roundish holes cut into a lot of the leaves now, but I don’t know enoug
h about insect pests to be able to identify the culprit. My guess would be some type of leaf-cutting bee, but who knows? My Dirr manual says that the most common diseases and pests are canker, leaf spots, rust, scale, and the tupelo leaf miner but none of those seem likely. I wonder if any of you plant geeks have any ideas? There’s also a cute little spider that’s made a web on the shady side of the tree; I’ve tried identifying the bugs it’s catching, but the mummified corpses in the web give no clue either.
So what’s bugging you? Or your garden?
I can add to my list of things that are bugging me – Blogger! It’s gone all wonky again and I fear that this post will show up multiple times, if it shows up at all!
Just kidding, Mary!
Too much of a good thing
Everything in the pond is growing out of control! The mint that grows along the rock edge is spilling over and sending roots into the pond. The water lettuce and hyacinths that we bought in early May are reproducing at a frightening rate. We bought three of each and must have at least 50 of each now just two months later! It’s no wonder those two are considered noxious weeds in tropical climates. I’ll have to find friends with ponds who might like a few dozen floating plants. Maybe I can throw in a dozen baby fish for free? Having some shade and cover for the fish is important, but you can see from this pic that more than 2/3 of the pond surface is covered by plants – that’s too much – and may lead to problems with the oxygen level in the pond. Anyone want some free plants?
Puddle party
I mentioned that I went out the other day to photograph insects at two of the local parks. It was a beautiful day to be out, but not so great for taking photos because of a constant breeze. I was hoping to find some colorful butterflies, but other than a few impossible skippers, the butterfly of the day was the cabbage white. They were everywhere, thick as thieves! The red clover and thistle seemed to be a favorite at one park, whereas the herb garden, and specifically the lavender patch, was the hot spot at the botanical park. I’d forgotten how well these butterflies like lavender since I don’t have it growing in my own garden any longer.
Anyway, while checking the pond edge for dragonflies, I came across this group of cabbage whites puddling along a damp place in the path. I’ve seen photos of swallowtails doing this – Larry has posted a few on his blog – but I’d never seen it for myself. I read tonight that it’s usually the males that do this as the minerals they collect from the soil or manure or whatever is thought to increase their breeding success.
There’s been very little butterfly activity in my own garden so far this season. The swamp milkweed is blooming and I saw my first monarch this past weekend. I’ve been checking the plants for eggs or caterpillars, but haven’t found any. There are lots of aphids and a few milkweed beetles making their living out there, though. The black swallowtail caterpillars that I posted about last week grew very fat and disappeared – I have my eyes out for a cocoon, but don’t have much hope of ever finding them.
Borage blue
Have you ever grown borage? Is there a prettier shade of blue? Well, I don’t think so, or at least this is another to add to a very small assemblage of true blue flowers. I’ve been seeding these for the last few years after seeing them at the local botanical garden, and finally this year I have some flowers! The bees adore this plant and the flowers are edible; all parts of the plant are, in fact, but I don’t have the heart to taste test it just yet. It’s just too pretty!
Someone’s been awful busy
Suddenly our little backyard pond is full of baby fish. In fact, I think we have more babies than grown-up fish-making fishies. It’s quite a surprise when your pond population seemingly doubles overnight. Makes you wonder how you could have missed the fish being so busy! Some years are like this; the fish are very fertile and make lots of little gold and black speckled babies, other years there are none or at least none survive long enough to be visible to us. I wonder why that is?
My husband and I have been amusing ourselves the last few days by trying to get an accurate count of just how many babies there are, but it’s next to impossible. They dart and hide very efficiently. We’re guessing whether they’re goldfish babies, koi babies, or mutts of some sort. The fish aren’t telling; neither is the fairy who keeps watch over their antics.
Not the only ones
Bunnies aren’t the only ones…
who enjoy fennel…
and dill…
and parsley!
I found four of these black swallowtail caterpillars yesterday munching away on the parsley in the herb planter that Mary included in this post. I’m reasonably sure that the caterpillars in the other photos (taken in previous summers) are black swallowtails also. Unlike monarch caterpillars which look the same throughout their growth, swallowtails change with each instar and there’s a lot of variation among individual caterpillars. This one I photographed looked like a bit of bird poop yesterday when I first spotted it.
So in addition to providing fresh herbs for our table and the bunnies’ twice daily salads, my little garden herb patch feeds the next generation of flutterbies!