SqueakyChu's 2012 Gardening Diary

My reference list:

1. Caterpiller identification Guide
2. Native Species Attracting Wildlife List - a Google doc for everyone to use!

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This will be an abbreviated version of the diary of others...

:)

Sunflower seeds (Tiger's Eye mix) went into the garden this week. I've never planted them before. They are the small black kind so I'm expecting that birds will be eating them instead of humans. :)

I'm trying to plant mostly organic seeds and vegetables (or as many as I can). My local Whole Foods market sells Seeds of Change? (organic seeds).

I gave a few of the extra seeds to my sun, hoping he will plant them in his garden as well. He's new to gardening and decided to try a smallr aised bed this year.

Yippee! SqueakyChu's got her own thread!!!

Sunflowers are so beautiful, and they come in so many different types.

Since I feed the birds, there are usually a few 'volunteer' sunflower plants in my garden.

That is "if" I have a garden. I also have three feral cats, one of who has decided to sunbathe in the very spot I picked to plant peas. For her (Lord Bravery is her name), sunbathing consists of rolling over on her back multiple times to be sure all parts of her are warmed by the sun. *sigh*

I feed birds, too, but it seems as if the mourning doves and squirrels eat whatever seeds fall to the ground.

Last year I had my garden become a certified wildlife habitat through the National Wildlife Federation. Have any of you done that?

SqueakyChu, I have four (five?) feral/strays that I feed. Most of them I have trapped and had them "vetted" (neuter, rabies shot, overall health check) so they have a better life than if they were totally unloved. They also love to sit/lie/roll where I am trying to plant, so I use a piece of fencing and just lay it over the gardening area to 'discourage' them.

Sometimes it works...

I've thought about having my yard be a certified habitat, and I'm pretty sure it qualifies (we have an overgrown wooded lot next door that is next to an overgrown wooded area) but have not done anything about it yet. :)

Addendum: it's five I feed....

How do you deal with feral cats and feeding birds at the same time?

I stopped birdfeeding for years thinking that it would be unfair to entice birds to visit a yard where I'm also feeding feral cats.

Now... on topic!

P.S. Notice the clover and the plantain in my lawn. That's my lawn going "native". :)

P.P.S. Of course, the cats are parts of my garden wildlife - even though they are predators!

(7) Squeaky, when I had about 10 ferals, I stopped feeding the birds. I have recently started feeding the birds again, but all the feeders are up high and there is no cover next to them. The birds fly from the trees or roof to the feeders and back, with very few trips to the ground.

So far, I've not found any feathers.

I'm going to post some pictures...for those who are beginning to doubt if I have a garden at all. :)

This is what will turn into a vegetable garden later this season. Now you can see roses (red) and sage (purple) in bloom. Disregard the dandelions (herbs) and periwinkle (invasives). :O

Flowers...



Chives in bloom

.


Rose

.


Sage in bloom

I have yet to see a hummingbird or a beautiful butterfly in my garden. The hummingbird feeder is up. I'm waiting...

Your garden is beautiful!

As for cats in the garden, I've learned to live with it. I rarely direct sow because the soil gets disturbed and when I have to I seriously over sow. Even starting seedlings in flats, I sow extra for 'kitty depredations'. It ultimately works out.

Here at our new place, I know of four ferals (only one of whom I see with any regularity and I think she's pregnant - can't catch her) plus my own cat hoard. They do make gardening fun!

My cats rarely go after birds, but they love watching them. I think of feeding them as compensation for the general danger of having the cats around.

I'll probably get the NWF certification once I get my garden established here, but I'm actually more interested in getting certified as a Monarch Waystation by the folks at www.monarchwatch.org. Hooray for milkweed!

BTW, great pictures - thanks for posting them!

I've noticed that as more birds are fed in my yard, the three cats tend to notice them less (unless that is my imagination). However, so far this year, I've only noticed one pile of feathers (a caught bird, obviously) in my yard. I, too, have the feeders up high and tend not to "ground feed". I've put up a bidhouse and a suet basket with string, etc. for nest builders to raid. I love having birds back in my yard.

Can you point me to the page about the monarch certification program? That's something in which I might be interested. I didn't see it on the main link.

Gorgeous pictures! Your roses look kind of like my roses (I have both dark pink and red climbers).

10: I'm going to post some pictures...for those who are beginning to doubt if I have a garden at all. :)

Never doubted for a moment. :-) What's the size of your yard? You describe different things at different times.

> 16

My yard is very small in the back and is pretty messy. What you see in msg #10 is a picture that I took to show off what looks good so far. My front door is on the side of our house and that picture is looking out my front door sort of towards the back yard. You'll see it for real in June! :)

All close-ups of flowers are pretty. They don't show the other garden disorder. :)

After reading about 80% of Waiting for the Dark; Waiting for the Light by Ivan Klima, I decided I really did not like the story nor did I want to finish reading it. I found it tedious and confusing. I will pass this book along to someone who might appreciate it more than I have.

Why not compost it?

Well, this IS a gardening thread...right? :D

BTW, SqueakyChu, I also take my photographs so the disorder around the pretty stuff doesn't show...

> 18

I don't need to compost it. I'm going to Bookcross it!

I also take my photographs so the disorder around the pretty stuff doesn't show

Heh!

I actually spent most of today tryng to tidy up my yard. It really does look a whole lot better now.

Do you have space in your yard for a Mulberry tree? They're great for birds and squirrels (even chipmunks), but the berries can be messy so it shouldn't go near your car, concrete, etc.

Well, I'm going to avoid white mulberry trees (Morus alba L. - which have fruit that can be black, pink or white when ripe) because the kind that often grows here is not native to my area. It actually originated in China. I have a very nice tulip poplar (native) that my son planted about 10 years ago, a pretty old black walnut (native), a flowering dogwood (native), and just this year we planted an Eastern redbud (native). I am trying very hard to avoid alien species in an effort to provide the best habitat I can for animals.

The problem with birds eating mulberry seeds of alien species is that the birds, in their droppings, spread those seeds, making more of those trees grow, thereby crowding out native species. There is a native-to-my-area red mulberry tree, but I've never seen one.

I've always lived near white mulberry trees, eaten the berries, and even made a tree house in one when I was a kid (...and my freind fell out of one as well). I do have a soft spot for them, as I do for some other alien plants that I've been only, just now, starting to remove from my garden.

I have a red mulberry tree (Morus rubra, I believe) behind my house and the squirrels and birds just love it. I'm hoping I can start a few more from cuttings - I hear turkey and deer like them, too!

How tall does a red mulberry tree get?

I would really love to have lots of trees, but then I wouldn't have much of a yard. My neighbors keep on chopping their trees down so I have this obsession with planting more of them. I feel like the lorax. I just don't have anywhere to put more trees.

I looked it up the other day because I saw a huge red mulberry in the National Monument nearby. Estimates vary, but they can get to be 45 - 60 feet. I'm guessing that's probably too big for your yard.

At my old place, a neighbor had a bunch of trees cut down along the lot line. When I asked him why, he told me the trees had been dropping things on his driveway. Things? Leaves, branches, water balloons? For a while another neighbor and I had a running joke about 'naughty trees'. Happily, where I am now I have no near neighbors and plenty of space for all the trees I want - two reasons I moved.

Oh, yeah. That would be w-a-y too big for my backyard! I can dream, though.

My younger son bought a house last year that has a wonderful treed lot in the back. No one can touch his trees (except for the wildlife which steal his apples and pears!).

However, in his neighborhood, he spearheaded a drive to stop the cutting down of trees at a nearby church construction site. I think the issue is still pending. Hooray for him, I say!

People are silly...think on it: all those naughty trees and animals making footie-prints and dropping leaves in their nice neat and tidy yards....

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xk2y90_bugs-bunny-sahara-hare_shortfilms (go to the 2:00 minute mark to see reference)

Do you have to subscribe to watch the video?

I had a neighbor like that. He bought his house with well established (80 ft tall) pines bordering our lots. When he discovered that the trunks are entirely on my side, he had a tree butcher cut every branch on his side. He admitted he was trying to kill them, and they would naturally fall towards my house because of the weight unbalance. He was a nasty old drunk.

Since his lot is so sunny, he stayed indoors the entire summer with the air conditioner blasting. Hmmm.

(28) @2wonderY
I didn't subscribe to watch the video....?

I don't think my neighbors cut down their trees to be malicious. They know I'll just plant another one on my side of the yard.

I decided to start a wishlist of native-to-Maryland plants to start a butterfly garden. I'm posting pictures here on Pinterest. As I acquire them, I'll add the year (in parentheses).

31: Funny, my wishlist has exactly the same items. :-) Now to figure out where to put them...

Well, now I made it into a Butterfly and Hummingbird Garden. My goal is to replace all of my invasive daylillies with native plants. We'll see what happens.

I do have one or two cultivars of especially beautiful daylilies that I plan to keep, though. :)

My latest addition is a Pinterest board of wildlife spotted in my garden. I saw everything I posted today, except for the squirrel which I saw earlier this week (and he no longer has the opportunity to get into that particular position as I moved the birdfeeder). Only a few of the pictures on Pinterest are my own, but you can tell them because they have the red and blue dot from Flickr as well as the name SqueakyChu at the bottom. Check out the picture of the bumblebee. It came out fantastic!

The best part of my garden today is the rose bush which is in full bloom. It's my only rose bush, and I won't plant more because I hate plants with thorns. As soon as this bush blooms, it gets some sort of yellow leaf rot, and I hack off most of the branches. :)

This is today's garden:

Yeesh: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_bumblebee_species. Try this: http://www.bumblebee.org/NorthAmerica.htm.

(34) That is a gorgeous picture of a Bumblebee! What type of camera did you use?

I think this: http://www.bumblebee.org/Impatiens.htm, http://bugguide.net/node/view/56797. I'm looking also at some photos I took last year, not as clear as yours but seem the same type.

> 35

Yikes on that first one! I found the second one earlier today but the bumblebee whose range included Maryland didn't seem to match what the markings of the bee I photographed looked like. I'll stick with just "bumblebee" for the time being. :)

> 36

Usually I get very frustrated with my camera as it's a point-and-shoot, but, every now and then, it comes up with an especially good shot. That was one. The camera is a Canon Power Shot SD750 Digital Elph.

> 37

I don't think so. Let me post another picture here so you can see the markings better:

Here's my deal. Get your plants in. Start taking pictures of bumblebees (that goes for everyone here in this group). We'll see how many species we can identify!

Bumblebee picture # 2



... and then he flew away! :D

I'm so amazed by all of the bumblebee markings and all the species. I always thought a bumblebee was "just a bumblebee". Little did I know...

Katherine, *my* bumble bee is deeper in color and has a sharper, more defined and smaller spot on it's back. After all, this is a *Maryland* bumblebee! LOL!!

Don't you love seeing all the pollen sticking to it? :)

I've always found insects fascinating.

I think it's a Bombus bimaculatus!

44: Hmm, maybe so. Seems to be considerable variation in both. I bet an expert would look at other features and know immediately.

I have a butterfly bush (yeah, non-native) that attracts bumblebees more than butterflies, and I love how they wallow in the flowers.

My butterfly bush and my butterfly weed disappeared! I think other invasive plants ate it. ;)

Seems to be considerable variation in both

Now I want to photograph other bumblebees to see if they look different. Think they'll let me?

My butterfly bushes died, too, SqueakyChu. :(

I've a photo of a bumblebee somewhere on my hard drive...I'll try to find it.

Ooh! Let's compare bumblebees. :)

Bumblebees have been buzzing all around me this weekend, but there's not much to land on yet.

From last July:

Yeah. Yours looks like a bombus impatiens. That's what you said earlier. :)

Okay, here's my bee picture:



The bee is a bit wet, so I'm not sure if we can tell what kind of bumblebee he/she is...

I'm still trying to figure out the bees, but I'm saving this for later...

ladybug identification! :)

Here's one: Bumblebee Identification

That document is so large that I'm having a hrad time opening it. :(

I have a heart-shaped lavender bed (my lads made it for me when they were about 14--the shape was a surprise) which just hums with bees when the lavender is blooming. I get a lot of small honey bees but I have noticed over the years that a lot of different bee types seem to love it. Must take the camera out in late June. I wonder what lavender honey tastes like?

I have some lavendar, but it's being devastated by periwinkle. One of my upcoming tasks will be to de-periwinkle the area around my lavendar plant.

The farmer that does my CSA has an apiary. I love when she sends me (once a year) honey from her beehive.

I harvested and ate one radish from my garden this week!

Did I tell you that I planted one peanut plant and one cotton plant? I've never grown them before so this should be fun. My cousin in Israel would think this is funny as his kibbutz has fields and fields of cotton. Ditto for sunflowers. Only two of my sunflower plants have sprouted so far. :(

One peanut and one cotton? I'm not sure, but you might want to check to see if you need two for cross pollination.

I've been eating blueberries off my bushes, but noticed someone else has been 'pecking' them. This morning I saw who else has a taste for the blueberries: a blue bird called a Blue Jay! He landed on one of the bushes, flapped his wings for stability, speared a berry with his beak and flew off!

Yay, radish! I bet it was yummy.

'Twas!

58: I don't think I've ever seen either a peanut plant or a cotton plant. Suppose I'm too far north. :-(

And now, with luck, you will. Yum for the radish too--was it a hot one?

I haven't eaten a single blueberry from my bushes (just planted them this year) - the birds (I suspect catbirds, since they love the non-human-edible berries and did a number on our cherry tomatoes last year) have been eating them all. I like the catbirds, so I'm not too upset - next year I'll put some netting over the plants as soon as they set fruit, though.

My butterfly garden must be starting to work. Today I discovered this summer azure (butterfly) on my lovage plant. :)

What a great pic!

Thanks! I was so lucky to get it. There were two of these butterflies, but one flew away. I kind of had to sneak up on the second one to take his picture quickly before he flew away as well.

It's kind of hard for me to tell the species of a butterfly if he refuses to open his wings and then also will not allow me to photograph him! :D

This is actually a kind of small butterfly. It's about 2/3 the size of the more common cabbage white butterfly.

I love taking pictures of insects! They're so amazing when you see them magnified.

65: Beautiful!

So far I have lots of moths in my compost bin.

I am not happy with my camera for macro photos, though maybe what it needs is experimentation with settings.

Film editing helps, too. I just found that I can use a "sharpen" edit on my computer if I get the picture a bit too fuzzy.

There is lots I need to learn about my point-and-shoot camera (a Canon Elph), but I don't have the time or patience to be fooling with the settings. What I really would like is a digital SLR camera set at automaic all the time. :)

Here's another garden photo of mine that I think you might find fun...

Pill bugs!

I've not been here the last couple of days but will be home, Lord willing, tomorrow!

I still call them potato bugs! :)

Roly polies!

LOL!!

Pill bugs!

Wood louse. And that is not a pretty pic to eat brekkie in front of (which isn't grammatical but haven't finished my coffee).

Aw. Pill bugs are sweet.

>76 tiffin:

I find them rather innocuous.

For a gardener, I'm not much of a bug person, unless it's bees, dragonflies and butterflies. I REALLY HATE earwigs.

A volunteer red oak...



This tree was planted for me by a squirrel. I have no red oaks near my house, but I was bringing acorns from a tree near my work in DC to feed backyard squirrels. I just transplanted this tree to a place where I hope it grows big and tall!

By the way, I pulled up all of this periwinkle today and replaced it with bark mulch. In that spot, I will be putting non-invasive plants which are native to my area.

To the left you can see some lavendar. That's not native, but I'm trying to save it. The periwinkle was strangling it. :(

In addition, the lily of the valley plants have got to be removed. One thing at a time, though. There is lots of work to be done in my garden.

I'm living vicariously through your gardens, SqueakyChu!

I spent the weekend visiting my uncle, and now I'm tired and it's going to rain all week...oh well.

BTW, I resent the 'wood louse' label: pill bugs (or whatever you call them) are BENEFICIAL bugs, like earthworms (they have too many legs to be technically called 'insects').

I've a lot of millipedes resting in my Tipsy Pots...I suspect they are attempting to get off the ground and all the wet!

Sorry, fuzzi, it's just what they're called in these parts. I didn't name them! I think a louse was a bug name before it was an insult for a rotten person.

And that a louse is the singular form for lice....ewww....

...bad connotations with that word!

I do enjoy regional names for things...what do you call a 'sub' sandwich in your area? Hoagie? Long John? Grinder? Hero?

I call it a sub! :)

ETA: in Rockville, Maryland, USA

It's a Grinder (New England).

Just popping in to add another pill bug name - doodle bug.

>84 SqueakyChu:
Hey, I used to live in Rockville, MD. We had THE smallest house in Montgomery County, just 5 blocks east of the Metro Station. It was a garage converted to a 1 bedroom house. But since it was set back farther than the other houses, we had a really nice front yard.
What's your neighborhood?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodlouse

list of nicknames here

80: So where is the oak's new home?

> 87

I live in Twinbrook (near the Twinbrook Metro).

> 89

I relocated the oak tree to the back of my small yard. It's near, but not too near, my back neighbor's fence. He probably won't like it because this tree will get *huge* and, at some point, start dropping acorns all over his yard. I have a second volunteer read oak tree growing that I'm going to give to my son and daughter-in-law (I love saying that - they're newlyweds!) because they have a much larger treed yard.

All hell is breaking loose in my yard. A wooden birdhouse, holding baby wrens in our dogwood tree, is being dive-bombed by a robin who just built a nest on the same branch as the birdhouse. What nerve!!

Get the broom and sweep the robin stuff away! They can be obnoxious, can't they.

"There goes the neighborhood..." :D

Well, it seems as if the robin gave up. The nest was completed, but now it's abandoned. The robin could not get into the wren's house, nor could it scare the mother wren away because she is feeding her babies.

I think the robin just wore itself out banging into the birdhouse all day long. The baby wrens probably just thought they were rockin' in a cradle! :)

My garden is like watching The Nature Channel. It provides entertainment 24/7.

And it's FREE. :)

Ah, Animal Planet Suburbia. Such fun.

I learned that while a blue jay will intimidate a single robin, the robin can call in reinforcements and two robins can chase off the jay. I'm also enjoying the catbird love triangle in our backyard -- a pair and a single male who hasn't yet given up and keeps singing.

>96 SqueakyChu:: I know exactly what you mean! We have live theatre just outside the kitchen window all day long. The mourning doves put the run on everything but the bluejays don't take no sass from those fat blighters. One day a hawk swooped down and blasted into the blue spruce, chasing a male cardinal out and all over the yards--we had never seen anything move so fast. Throw in squirrel fights and chipmunk escapades, as well as robin squabbles, well, it's busy and noisy at times.

ETA: one of the best was the flicker feeding her baby right out of (one of the many) anthills in the garden path. It's why I won't use poison in the anthills so I'm a bit over run with them.

Good for you Tiffin! Ants do wonderful excavations that allow the soil to breathe. We are in their territory, not the other way around.

The best bird comedy I've witnessed was a nesting pair of grackles. The built a slap-dash junker in my pine tree, and a storm blew it out. You should have heard the recriminations between them!

I bet you wouldn't like ants so much if you had fire ants...


Fire ant 'bites'

fuzzi, that's ghastly! We have red ants, which give a nasty nip--come to think of it, so do the black ones if disturbed. My Nana used to boil up a kettle and pour the water on an anthill. It doesn't hurt any birds but you wouldn't do it if you were a Jain. I'm not: I'll stomp on earwigs with impunity.

Owie!

The first time I experienced fire ant stings, they had climbed up my pant legs and started stinging all the way up...I was dancing around like a fool before I ran inside and stripped off my jeans. Their colonies are impossible to eradicate, so we concentrate in getting them to move their mounds away from the gardens.

Sorry for the thread hijack, come over and hijack mine. :)

I learned that while a blue jay will intimidate a single robin, the robin can call in reinforcements and two robins can chase off the jay.

Yesterday we saw one catbird (who has a nest of babies) chase a bluejay out of the cat dish (where he was stealing dry cat food).

It's a zoo out there!

Oh...the robin came back this morning, but I was gone all day so I dont' knwo what happened today.

> 99

one of the best was the flicker feeding her baby right out of (one of the many) anthills in the garden path.

So cool! I refuse to use pesticides as well.

> 101

Yikes!!

> 104

Sorry for the thread hijack, come over and hijack mine.

No problem. I'm fascinated by insects. I'll stick around and learn something.

Our nest of baby wrens fledged this morning, but neither my husband or me saw them leave. We never even had a chance to count them. :(

It all happened so fast! I then had the job of cleaning out the birdhouse in hopes that, later this season, we will be able to attract more birds to it.

It was quite a fun experience to watch the process of the adult wrens do the nest building, nest maintenance, and feeding of the young. I never could not figure out which wren was the male and which was the female.

The robin gave up with banging on the wren house and simply abandoned the nest that she built. That's okay.

This is the wren house we have (manufactured by Looker):

.

I found out the hard way about bird mites, but now that they're gone (from the birdhouse as well as from my husband's and my arms), we're about ready for another bird family to move into the birdhouse.

A male wren (the same one, perhaps?) has spotted the empty house and has claimed it as his own. He goes in and out of it, then sings a loud serenade nearby, hoping to attract another female into his abode. :)

110:
bird mites
Ewww.
sings a loud serenade nearby, hoping to attract another female into his abode
It's quite the spiffy abode. He will surely be successful.

I'm glad he's trying to start the process all over again. It was sad to see no bird activity in the backyard after all of the bird frenzy of this past month. I learned that a mother wren will make over 1,000 trips a day to her nest to feed her nestlings! It was amazing (and tiring!) to watch.

Here's what's happening in my garden today...

The wild begamot is blooming, and a bumble bee is visiting!

And the chirping birds. On your way to a nature preserve! I have one wild begamot that's just beginning to get buds. How's your Joe Pye doing? I'm getting buds there too, but they are prone to drooping in the heat.

Yeah. My JPWs droop every afternoon in the heat, and then I run out to water them with a pot full of water. I think they'll do okay, though. They always look good in the morning.

It's my hydrangeas that have pretty much given up the ghost from all the heat.

There is a male wren singing around the birdhouse again today. I'm hoping for another female wren to approve of the new nest he's built and decide to move in! I looked at it the other day when he was gone. Shh! Don't tell. :)

The nest is built of twigs and spider cocoons. It's furnished with one soft feather! :)

115: Aw, what a sweet nest!

I now know why I have no peas, beans, or sunflowers. We saw one of these in our front yard last night. LOL!!

Oh those! All over the place here, even in the city. Cute but destructive.

I saw one of those wascally wabbits in my back yard last night, as did my dog!

She barked and ran at it, so it scurried into a large woodpile we have in the backyard. While my dog was sniffing at one side, the rabbit emerged from the opposite side, and then ran PAST where the dog had her head in the pile...and made it to the woods without being noticed, except by me. It was kind of funny, and I thought of Hazel and Bigwig and all the rabbits from Watership Down. :)

I love the bunnies. I don't mind them eating my crops. They are soooooooo cute!

My first "good" butterfly sighting! It was an anise spicetail spicebush swallowtail butterfly. It didn't land on anything today, though. Yesterday it landed on my euonymous bush.


Photo by bobistraveling, flickr-CCA

lovely butterfly!

Hi Madeleine - just discovered this thread lately and was catching up with some of the developments...

Living in a flat we have no garden of our own as such, though we do have an elevated deck thingy at the back, and we're nestled at the top of the houses by the foot of a semi-wooded hill (this being a medieval Welsh town there is of course a small castle ruin up at the top...) so there's a fair bit of greenery around us. (My favourite part though is actually the two large stone walls to the left and rear that remind me a little of Jerusalem...). Fortunately, my job means that I get my fix of outdoor spaces and non-tree species, birds, insects and other wildlife.

I just wanted to say what an enjoyable thread this is and how great the photographs are. Well done for getting that squirrel to stash that Red Oak acorn for you, and well done the squirrel for forgetting about it!

And yes, what a beautiful butterfly that Anise Spicetail is!

I adore blue butterflies. Yay!

Beautiful picture!

And welcome @PolarisBeacon! Glad to have you here. :)

> 124

Hey, Paul!!

Welcome!

Any chance we could see the beautiful view you're describing of your surroundings? Welsh countryside sounds so exotic to me!

Heh! When I lived in Jerusalem (in 1973), the back of our apartment overlooked the desert, a brownish place all filled with sticker bushes and twisted olive trees. I have a painting here at home that reminds me of that scene. It was so barren except for the occasional Beduouin tent for that was where they used to graze their sheep and camels.

When my cousins come to visit from Israel, they always marvel at how green everything is here in the Washington area. Although, with global warming, I don't know how long that will last. :/

Your job is such a cool employment. We could certainly could use your expertise and knowledge here on this thread! :)

After a huge storm we experienced three days ago (and after which I only got my electricity back last night), a neighbor had a huge maple tree come crashing down. The trunk was a good two and a half feet in diameter. The inside seemed to have been eaten away. An arborist here said that was due to carpenter ants and bagworms.

> 122, 124, 125

I totally misidentified that butterfly. I edited the message above to correctly identify it as a spicebush swallowtail. I was very excited that finally I'm getting results from my native plantings. I have a long way to go, though, but this is a very fun project.

I have all of the native species of fauna that I've foudn so far this year in my garden listed here on Pinterest. This is an ongoing project.

> 126

I can't claim it as my own. Photo credit posted. Thanks for the reminder.

Oh, that's where you've been, powerless.
Do you have a spicebush swallowtail host plant?

What a beauty! Is it just me or has it been a good year for butterflies? We've had some lovely visitors here.

>126 fuzzi: & 127 - Thank you both!

Well I don't have any good photos yet of the views - the light here this 'summer' has been so awful that I've not had the chance yet. But to whet your appetite here is a (slightly) romanticised painting of a view of the hill where the town is by an early 19th century artist named Ibbetson Julius Caesar (!). The castle (ruin) is on the hill in the mid distance, and the town is on the slopes below it - conveniently omitted by Mr Caesar.



The hill itself is realistically proportioned but those jagged things in the distance are really just hills. Lovely nonetheless!

(edited to correct spelling of artist's name)

> 128

Do you have a spicebush swallowtail host plant?

LOL!! If I do, I don't know about it. I'll have to look it up! :)

> 129

Is it just me or has it been a good year for butterflies?

It's been a terrible year for butterflies for me. This was only the third butterfly I saw that wasn't a cabbage white. I'm assuming, though, that the two spicebush swallowtails I saw one day after each other was the same one.

> 130

Wow, that looks like something out of a book I'm now reading. That book is Clermont by Regina Maria Roche and is actually set in Dauphiny, France. It's just that I imagine the countryside looking like what's pictured in Caesar's painting. It looks lovely...and very exotic!

> 128

It turns out that the host plant for the spicebush swallowtail is the...ta da!...spicebush. Duh!! :)

It seems as if it would be worthwhile to track down one of the native varieties and plant it in my garden. Don't you think?

Eek! The northern spicebush (Lindera benzoin), native to the Eastern United States, grows 15 to 20 feet tall! I'm not sure where I'd put it!

What's happening in my garden today...

1. A mother starling was seen feeding her baby starling pellets of cat food intended for our feral cats. Usually it's just an adult blue jay that steals them. :/

2. Harlequin bugs are back. Yuck! :(

136: Huh. I do not have those, but then I do not have the plants they like. Ew. Last year I grew a gourd plant out of curiosity. It became host to hordes of squash bugs on its leaves, then met its demise during a heat wave. I got a grand total of three gourds. This year, I deliberately did not repeat the experience. The harlequin bugs look to be more generalists.

135: Do you have spicebushes in your neighborhood? Anywhere you can surreptitiously plant things that don't fit in your yard?

I guess I could put it in my "native" section. I don't want to plant anything else right now because I can barely keep what I have already alive due to the extreme heat!

I have a terrific acrorn squash growing in my "compost volunteer" area! :)

Test your wildflower knowledge.

I passed the beginner's test for Maryland! I surprised myself by getting them all correct. Some were lucky guesses, though. :)

That was fun! I did Pennsylvania as it is likely closest to south central Ontario and got them all right! Some guesswork there but...

I tried the Southeast, and by deduction and some guessing got 9 out of 12 correct.

Thanks for the link!

What's new in my garden today...

My cardinal flower and Joe Pye weed are both beginning to bloom. True to my garden, I see no butterflies and no hummingbirds, although a tiger swallowtail butterfly did visit my neighbor's purple coneflowers. Mine were too short! They are some cultivar called "knee high". :(

Oops! I mistakenly decided to check the birdhouse on our dogwood tree as I've seen no activiy near it. Lo and behold, after I removed the roof of the birdhouse, a wren flew out of it, and I saw that the nest was filled with brown eggs. Later I saw the wren go back in the house. I think I might have given her an awful fright so I'm not sure if she'll decide to stay to sit on her eggs or not. It's her decision now! :)

Well, at least you know butterflies are in the vicinity? I had one flitting around my butterfly bush this morning, first I'd seen that wasn't white, I think maybe red admiral but I didn't get a photo.

So your male wren attracted a mate? A secret romance? Or was the male actually female?

It started out being the male, because he was singing his heart out. Then I think it was the female who would go in and out of the house, probably laying an egg a day. She probably had them all laid now and was trying to get them to hatch when I so rudely startled her. I still feel bad about that. Bad timing, I'd say!

Heh! At least your ants could move their larva. This lady wren is taking her eggs nowhere! :)

I had one flitting around my butterfly bush this morning, first I'd seen that wasn't white. Let's keep a tally, shall we? Starting from now.

Murder in My Garden

It has finally happened. One of our feral cats (we have three) got to a songbird. It was a tufted titmouse (and I just love those jolly little birds). I saw Mama Cat through our window, crouching down with a guilty expression on her face. I ran outside to see what she had, and it was a freshly killed tufted titmouse. Perhaps one of a pair as I saw another one in the dogwood tree. What alerted me to this situation was a loud chattering by our resident wren.

Anyway, I guess the female wren decided to stay. I'll call her Mrs. Wrenfield (to distinguish her from other wrens, of course). She has put up with a lot over the past two days. Beside my taking the lid off her house two days ago, my husband cut the grass yesterday and kept hitting his head on the birdhouse, sending it swinging wildly. Today, Mrs. Wrenfield was witness to a murder just below her house. There goes the neighborhood! :)

Sad as the murder was, assuming the last brood of baby wrens was 6 (I never got to count them) and that we only had one songbird death (that I actually witnessed in our yard) this year, we are still plus 5 songbirds. We may up that count if Mrs. Wrenfield puts up with us long enough for her current batch of eggs to hatch.

More later...

Hey! This is thread is beginning to feel more like a blog! Cool. :)

I suppose once she's laid eggs, she's kind of stuck, but oh my, what a neighborhood to have chosen!

I guess that's why the other wren moved out. I'm assuming both wrens in the birdhouse this summer have been different females.

If you've got feral cats, you've lost a lot more than one songbird this summer (from the cats' whole territory, not just your yard), you just didn't happen to see any of the others. One feral cat will probably kill a couple dozen birds a year. Clearly you're okay with this, since you feed both the feral cats and the birds, so while I disagree with you I'm not going to argue about it with you here.

The issue is that I've had the (spayed) feral cats since 2002, and I'm clearly not going to have them killed.

One feral cat will probably kill a couple dozen birds a year.

By summer's end we'll have had approximately 12 baby birds raised in our yard - so the effect overall will be zero.

Clearly you're okay with this

I cannot change nature, nor do I think I have the right to kill creatures for no reason.

Of the feral cats, I was able to save the second litter, tame them in my own house, and have them adopted into homes via a local no kill shelter. The first litter was beyond taming.

This was the litter we rescued and tamed...



The "murderer" in my garden was the mother of these kittens. I have a feeling that she had been much abused when young. I found her tattered, scraggly, skinny, and just having had given birth. Of the three feral cats I still have (mom and two daughters), she is the most shy. I've never been able to even touch her for the entire ten years I've been feeding her.

This is she...Mama Cat.



Mama Cat is probably all or part Maine Coon. This breed of cat is known for its hunting ability.

I think she's beautiful. Clearly, I'm protective of her.

I'm certainly not suggesting you kill the cats, and I apologize for giving you that idea! If it were me, I'd have them spayed and released, so that the population doesn't increase, and stop feeding the birds. You've made a different choice, which is fine.

My cats (all six of them - mom plus five kittens originally) were all spayed/neutered and released. Even though I feed birds, there are now less dead birds in my yard than before when I was not feeding birds. This is the first dead bird I've found all year long. I have found dead mice and an occasional baby rat.

I started feeding birds last year as part of the National Wildlife Federation certified wildlife habitat program. I made them aware of my feral cats. They said that does not have to interfere with my being part of this program. I do take precautions to safeguard the birds by hanging feeders out of cat reach.

What I do have is birds who steal cat food. Even today, I saw two starlings, a mom and a baby. The mom starling was feeding the baby starling some cat food pellets from the cat food dish!

The other day, I watched as a starling was standing in the cat food dish eating the cat food pellets while one of the cats was sleepily observing her (with no intention of even chasing the starling away!) from nearby simply lazing around under the picnic table. On top of the picnic table was a squirrel lying flat (trying to cool off in the heat), head drooping off the table top, eyeballing the cat. It was actually a funny sight.

I personally think that my garden ecosystem is in pretty fair balance, despite this first tragedy of the year.

One thing I have to say about the disappearance of songbirds is that I truly believe that loss of natural habitat is a much greater reason for their decline in numbers than most of the blame being put on feral cats.

I do agree with control of feral cats, though, and encourage anyone with a feral cat "problem" to contact Alley Cat Allies.

I don't mind discussing the problem of feral cats versus songbirds as I know there are many points of view. I am willing to listen to everyone's thoughts about this issue.

This link tells what the Audubon Society says.

Simply put, I interpret this to mean that it's humans rather than cats that are killing off most of the birds.

From that website:

"Once large blocks of unbroken forest are being shattered into increasingly smaller fragments, allowing predators as crows, jays, raccoons, possums, feral cats and fox to prey on once-secure migrant song bird nests.

In other words, birds are losing safe shelter as well. This is human, not cat, destruction.

150: I've never been able to even touch her for the entire ten years I've been feeding her.
My two cats are from a semi-feral litter. Someone dumped a pregnant cat on a colleague's farm (this was a decade ago), the kittens were born in the barn, and had little contact with people until he rounded them up at age three months or so. (My two are now strictly indoors.) One of the cats is friendly toward me, but afraid of everyone else, and hides under a blanket (a ridiculously gigantic lump but he feels safe). The other cat hovers around me just far enough away that I can't quite reach, wouldn't even let me scratch her ears until she was about six years old, and still skitters away to avoid getting picked up (which makes annual trips to the vet iffy). Only three months, but it was a crucial three months.

152: It was actually a funny sight.
That would've been quite a photo.

152: I personally think that my garden ecosystem is in pretty fair balance
You're certainly going above and beyond to make it so. I'm realizing as I trod a similar path several steps behind you, how much consideration and work just one year of yard improvement requires.

how much consideration and work just one year of yard improvement requires.

...but now it's there for you to enjoy each year ever after. Keep adding to it and improving it at will. I can't tell you how much enjoyment I get from looking at the garden each day. I am actually more entertained presently by the wildlife than by the plants, but much of the wildlife would not be there, but for those plants, feerders, watering stations etc.

I've noticed this week that the only wildlife that uses the hummingbird feeder this year are bees! I don't know why. Last year I had quite a few hummingbirds come to visit the hummingbird feeder.

Ha! I don't know how I missed this thread for months! Darn. Now, I've got you starred and I'm working my way through the posts. I'll catch up soon.

Hi Karen,

Thanks for stopping by!

I see it was back on April 22 of this year that I declined your kind invitation to create my own thread here on this group. As you can see, I've changed my mind since. :D

I think you are wonderful to spend so much time and money looking after feral cats. There are a couple of pockets of feral cats in town somewhere but out here we just have barn cats and wandering toms, or, people's pets. The farm cats can be seen sliding across the roads and disappearing into the long grass of the fields but they don't come around our small group of houses. There was a round-up in town a few years ago where they neutered and spayed all they caught but I haven't heard anything lately.

My current cat has caught the odd chipmunk but she goes through periods of not wanting to go out at all (like now). My previous cat, the long-lived Iris, was a fierce huntress but moles and voles were her game--although I did see her stalking a crow when she was an itty bitty kitteh. What does the most damage to our birds is the hawk or the bay windows. I had a partridge go through the living room window once--I figure he was attacking his reflection during their mating season. Most of the birds like to go the other direction, up in to the blue spruce not far from the feeder, or into the birch. It's as though the "regulars" know the score. During migrations is the tricky time so we leave the windows unwashed then.

Our feeder is on a high pole with a squirrel baffle around it and seems to be cat proof--a strange cat was seen to be trying to leap up out there one day but it was fruitless, plus I shooed him away with the broom and he never came back.

Thanks for sharing your story, tiffin.

I like hearing how others deal with feral cats and birds. You can no more rid your environment of all feral cats than you can stop birds from seeking food or shelter in that same environment - even if you didn't feed the birds.

Ultimately we all live in the same world, and, as the saying goes, it's the survival of the fittest. It's mostly man (though sometimes it is predators) that drive some species to extinction. There is a big push locally these days to try to contol or rid areas of "invasive species". Yes, feral cats are also considered an "invasive species". That's why control of (not harm to) them is so important.

I was also thinking about how many birds visit my yard all day long. Perhaps it's hundreds throughout the day if the feeder stays full. The cats are only here briefly in the morning and again in the evening when they get hungry. They will even look in our window and "tap" on it if we don't bring them their food in a timely manner. :)

Here's a picture of UglyFruit getting ready to "tap" on our window. She wants me to serve her cat food pellets, not birds that will fly away! ;)

By the way, Mrs. Wrenfield has been seen going into the birdhouse at least four times today. She stuck around!

158: Well they've got you trained.
159: Yay!

We are theirs; they are not ours! Seriously.

The Missus and me think that Mama Cat is very beautiful.

She is very dignified as well. When ever she sits up, she primly places both paws together (as you can see in both pictures!).

My garden today...

Yellow flowers...


Threadleaf coreopsis


Black eyed susan

Red flower...


cardinal flower

and, disgustingly, last...what I pulled out of the stem of my squash vine...


larva of a squash vine borer

Yuck!

Smash it! Smash it!

0;) :angelic look:

I cannot stand to squash bugs. That gives me the creeps. I picked it up with a plastic bag, twist-tied it and threw it in the trash! :)

Maybe birds would eat if if you put it in a dish.

The flowers are cheery.

Despite its sluggish appearance, the squash vine borer larva moves fast! It would not stay still long enough for me to take a picture of it. I had to snap that photo quickly.

You sure saved the worst for last. Gack.

LOL!

It was truly gross.

Three cheers for the gardern (I mean garden, but I liked the misspelling) warriors!

I grew up smashing bugs in my mother's garden, so I guess I'm immune to the ick factor, well, except for really slimey stuff, like slugs! For those, I use salt...

My garden today

I found an amyrillis bulb upstairs last week that I'd toally forgotten about. I was drying it to overwinter it. I put it outside and started watering it, and now it's sending forth a flower stalk. I post a picture when it blooms (and may also bring it into the house then to protect it from thunderstorms).

So much for the sunflower seeds that didn't grow at all. Since our last rainstorm, they've begun to grow in a clump under the bird feeder! :)

The wren keeps going in and out of the birdhouse, but just from time to time. I have no idea what happened to the eggs. Obvioulsy they haven't hatched. I'm not about to de-roof her house again, though!

I decided to put hulled safflower seeds in the bird feeder instead of sunflower seeds to see if I attract any different kinds of birds. They appear to be the same kinds of birds. My first takers were a tufted titmouse, a chickadee, and a house finch.

those chickadees! They'll eat anything!

Actually, I love them. I get chickadees, house finches, and goldfinches. Also squirrels. And cats. And then my dogs chase them all away and we begin from the top...

I found three good sized Summer squash fruits today!

@SqueakyChu, ever try safflower seeds? I've had blackbirds hogging the feeders, but when I switched to safflower seeds the blackbirds stopped coming.

>175 fuzzi:

I'm trying safflower seeds this week. I've never attracted
blackbirds to my feeder, though.

Quick! Go pick your squash and make this recipe. I made it this week! Three squash will work. I used two squash.

Ack, I saw hulled and thought it said sunflower!

:wiping glasses on shirt:

My Garden today

Well, the excitement on The Nature Channel (i.e. my backyard) is picking up again. Today I'm watching two wrens making multiple trips in and out of the birdhouse. That means two things to me...
(1) Mr. Renfield is a nicer guy than the husband of the previous resident of that birdhouse.
(2) Mrs. Renfield's eggs must have hatched!

:)

oooh! baby Wrenfields!

We'll see...

With the last brood, all of the fledglings left the nest before I got to any of them. This time I moved the location of the birdhouse so I can see the openeing.

Congratulations!

I was getting disappointed that I'm not attracting more butterflies to my garden (See qebo's thread and our fun contest), but this morning I saw a hummingbird at my lobelia cardinalis plant and, later, at my phlox plant. I guess the lobelia cardinalis really works to attract hummingbirds because my husband said he also saw one at that plant.

I keep forgetting to put out my hummingbird feeder, but it's best that they take nectar from real plants, I believe.

By the way, Mrs. Renfield has a nest of babies. I could hear them when I was walking near the birdhouse. They must have loud voices because I'm hard of hearing, and I wasn't even wearing my hearing aids at that time.

I have seen 0 hummingbirds. :-( You may be losing in butterflies, but you're winning in birds.

Hooray!

Hint! You can plant native plants to attract hummingbirds! :D

Look at this, though...

I started a Google doc (which we all can use jointly) to see which plants are attracting which wildlife. I hope all of the members of Gardens and Books will use it. Feel free to share this link with interested friends as well. It's open to anyone who has this link.

P.S. Don't be afraid to use the Google doc. It's a shared document, no different than a wiki - only, it's a spread sheet! :)

P.P.S. It also has a chat! :D

Woohoo! Another butterfly...



*runs to qebo's thread to post it there as well*

P.S. It's a Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos)

(184) What is the difference between column A and F?

Column A is the plant - Column F is the Animal

186: A is the plant and F is the animal.
184: Starting today?
Hint! You can plant native plants to attract hummingbirds!
Yeesh. I think I'm about done for this year. Another round of improvements next year.

I've learned something from my spread sheet already. If qebo and fuzzi can both have red admirals on their plants in PA and NC, there should also be a few for me here in MD! I'll be on the look-out!!

> 186

Column F just became column C. I figured we should startw ith the Latin name.

> 188

Starting today?

Starting already! I want to see what plants are bring what animals to our gardens.

Another round of improvements next year.

LOL! Isn't that what this is all about?!

We're not just about books and gardens anymore. We're about the whole shebang (the entire LT ecosystem) which includes, books, gardening, reading, native plants, and pollinators! ;)

This is the cardinal flower on which I saw the hummingbird feeding today.

Pretty!

It was prettier with the hummingbird hovering near it. :)

They are hard to 'catch'...

Wow! You guys rock!

The hummingbird was back at the plant today. It really works!!!

This morning in my garden...

The hummingbird came back...only this time to the window where I was sitting where he took a few sips from the hummingbird feeder. I'll be sure to keep it available from now on until the hummingbirds leave the area in the fall.

The baby wrens. One is so cute! It keeps popping its head out of the birdhouse hole and opens its mouth waiting for its mom, Mrs. Renfield, to return with some food. :)

I seem to be doing better with birds than with butterflies! :)

Can you get photos without scaring them?

I can't because, if I go outside, the baby goes inside the house. I watch it through binoculars from inside.

The Renfield Family leaves home...

I'd been watching at least one baby wren sticking his head out of the birdhouse all day, but my husband said he saw at least three heads pop out all at one. When I got home from a trip to the store, I heard loud wren chattering from our hedge. Fearing the worst from my feral cats, I looked into the bush from where the noise was coming but saw no scattered feathers (a sure sign of a bird kill). Then I noticed that the mother wren was not feeding her babies any more.

I waited a while and then took the top off the birdhouse to look inside. There I found one lone baby wren (fully feathered and crouching down). I replaced the birdhouse roof and went inside to wait. The baby bird kept sticking its head out but seemed to be going nowhere. Then my daughter came to visit for the evening.

I'm guessing that, by today (a day later), the last baby fledged the nest. I'll go out later and look inside the birdhouse. Two succesful broods of wrens raised in our yard this year!

The one good thing about baby wrens is that they don't drop to the ground as they fledge. They fly directly away fromt he nest, fortunately making them less prey for my feral cats.

Without wrens and with little to no butterflies, my "Nature" Channel" is going to seem a little less interesting for a while.

Guess I'll concentrate on the hummingbirds for the rest of the season. :)

Does anyone here know about or have brood boxes in which birds can overwinter? If so, what has been your experience with them?

Ah, it is all sort of like graduating from something, or somewhere. Bittersweet. Love the accomplishment. Hate the goodbyes.

> 200

Karen, you're so right! I wish we could go for another brood, but I think it's too late in the season. :(

200: Two succesful broods of wrens raised in our yard this year!
Congratulations!

My baby is gone, too!

I just looked into the birdhouse by raising its roof. The birdhouse was empty!

I don't have any bird houses right now, but I have read that on cold winter nights they are used by some birds as shelter.

Did you know that Chickadees will cram themselves in a bird house in order to survive the most bitterly cold nights? A whole flock of them will huddle together for warmth and survival in an empty bird house!

Well, then I'll clean out this bird house and hope someone will occupy it later in the season.

I didn't know that, fuzzi, but I'm going to put a bird house or two out for the winter now.

I'll let you know if I see other birds checking out our birdhouse. The only species that will fit through the hole size are house wrens and chickadees.

Here's what's left of the house wren nest prior to my cleaning the birdhouse.



Interesting, eh? :)

The house has now been washed with a dilute solution (1:10) of household bleach and rinsed with water. It's now been left out to dry in the sun. Once it's completely dry, I'll rehang it.

I was using gloves for this procedure since there are teeny, tiny bird mites that infest the birdhouse. All of the nest material was bagged and thrown out in the outdoor garbage can. This procedure leave the birdhouse clean and pest-free for its next occupants.

P.S. I should have taken a picture yesterday of the last remaining baby. I didn't want to scare it, though.

This plant (blue lobelia - Lobelia siphilitica ) may not look like much, but it is native to my area, and I saw a hummingbird feeding on it today! That's the first time I ever saw a hummingbird feeding off of a flower that wasn't red!

I get many chickadees here and I'd not heard that they might like a winter abode. I'll do some shopping for an appropriate shelter, or two, and get some hung before the winter rains begin... next week? No, really, we don't get too much ugly weather until October.

I was wondering if I could hope for another wren brood...with global warming and all that. What do you think? The last one had a duration of about 7 weeks from start to finish (including the time the male spent signing to attract his mate...whom he then abandoned once it was time to forage for food for the babies).

With the last brood, we saw one female inspect the male's nest, decide she didn't like him or the nest, and then fly away! :)

I like the way your bird house was constructed, with the roof that just lifts off! What a nifty idea...

That birdhouse was recommended to me at the nature store where I shop. It's a local store that I love to support.

Nice store. We have Wild Birds Unlimited, which is nice, too, but I've not seen that easy access roof bird house there: http://greenvillenc.wbu.com/

I bet, if you asked them to carry it, they might order products from the company which is Looker.

The other thing is that you just might not be aware of the easy access roof. I wasn't aware of it until the shop owner showed it to me. Otherwise, it looks like a regular birdhouse.

Thanks, I'll check into it. :)

By the way, fuzzi, where in Eastern North Carolina are you? I'm coming to Emerald Isle with my family soon. It would be fun if we ended up near enough to you so that we could meet.

About an hour's drive west of Atlantic Beach or New Bern, not very far. :) We've done a long weekend at Salter's Path.

I'd love to meet!

Addendum: Yahoo Maps says 2 hours' drive...Very doable...

So we can meet wherever. Atlantic Beach is about half hour north of where we're staying! Spend the day at the beach with us! We can go on an insect hike! :D

I'll private message the information to you now.

Woo! I'm psyched!

Info is now posted to your profile page. For sure, we'll get together!

I'm planning on and looking forward to it!

I'm turning green. (I am from the evergreen state, after all)

This will only be a mini meet-up. A bigger one is coming up in September at the National Book Festival.

I know but I'm saving to fly to Hawaii in November, a trip to the east coast in September might just break the bank.

I understand! :)

Today in my garden...


Wool carder bee on blue lobelia

Well, this bee got the right plant! In its description, it said this bee likes blue flowers with deep throats.

How did you identify the bee? I have all sorts, but I'm afraid of the time sink if I begin...

I can't remember how I got to it.

However, now that I'm looking through the bee guides, I think that my original bee was not a bumblebee at all but rather a carpenter bee. :/

Huh. I'm noticing that the milkweeds are attracting several sizes of bumble-bee-ish critters, similar appearance but different sizes. The butterfly bush gets only the largest.

My question is: Is it "bad" to have a butterfly bush if you have other native plants around it?

I'd suppose not. The butterflies like it. My problem is not so much that I have a butterfly bush, but that I have a butterfly bush in one of the very few locations where a bush will fit in my yard.

>228 SqueakyChu: That's a handsome devil.

Today's Garden News...



My first and only cotton plant is starting to make cotton bolls. I plan to use this natural cotton for bird nesting material for next year.

Our second brood of wrens fledged successfully. I'll be ready for breeding season in 2013.

The nice thing now is watching the hummingbirds which have finally decided to return to my garden. They are coming to the plants and the hanging feeder.

I'll also be on the lookout for the female monarch to return to the swamp milkweed as I want to take a better picture of her so I can post it to the butterfly competition thread!

I AM IMPRESSED!

235: My first and only cotton plant is starting to make cotton bolls.
Oh, cool!

female monarch
Yes?

Watch out for boll weevils...



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boll_weevil

Icky! icky! icky!

Creepy! Do they come this far north?

I tried to find out. Looks like they went as far north as southern VA:

http://www.cotton.org/tech/pest/bollweevil/

Heh! I'm safe then.

Unhappy garden today!

The only thing I found of any interest today was the squash vine beetle whose larvae have been destroying all of my squash vines. Disgusting!

Nastybad!

My mother used to perform surgery on her squash vines when borers hit...a wilted leaf was the first clue, and a small hole with 'sawdust' was the clincher! She'd use a sharp paring knife to slice open the affected vine, remove the borer(s) and then tamp some dirt over the incision...the squash vine usually survived!

I've done that over and over again this year. Frankly, I'm not a surgeon and am getting tired of doing squash vine surgery every day. Those creatures are disgusting! :)

This is one I surgically removed from a squash vine this summer. :(

I'm actually saving some of the small winter squashes. They should be small, but fine, once the vines are all dead.

I can't believe I had been so hesitant to join this group. It seems as if I spend waaaaaaaay more time here on LT than with anything that has to do with books and reading.

Oh, yeah. Sometimes, I do go back and look at the TIOLI thread. :D

Do you read anymore? ;)

See you on the new thread!

I do. Read, that is.