I've given the milkweed patch in my garden a few years to start attracting swarms of monarch butterflies, and because this is common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) which spreads from its roots...
Remember how I was recently hopeful that my large and ever-expanding colony of common milkweed would finally rear its first "crop" of monarch caterpillars?
One of the tasks that I had on my list for this spring in the garden was to remove or at least drastically reduce the milkweed in my yard.
Randomness again today.
A collection of tidbits today, starting with my Musa basjoo hardy bananas. This is what they looked like a few days ago:
Random things from around the garden, starting with milkweed bugs (Oncopeltus fasciatus), not yet mature (nymphs):
My patch of common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) is quite large this year, probably bigger than it should be, as it has taken over a good portion of my prairie beds. More for monarch butterflies to find was my thinking. I check for caterpillars a few times each week, and so far, nothing. I've seen a few monarchs cruising around the garden, but what were they waiting for? Have I "sacrificed" my beds for nothing?
For those of you who are thinking about the Monarch butterflies and want to plant milkweed (something in the Asclepias genus) and are thinking big, think Asclepias syriaca, or common milkweed. A volunteer showed up in my garden two years ago.
I don't know if it got as cold as they said it would last night, but this morning when I checked it was 0ºF (-18ºC), which is cold enough. In fact, I'm not in the mood to show you anything wintery today, so I decided to look back into my pre-blog photo archives to find...
A couple of weeks ago I was talking about volunteer plants, in particular this larger one which was growing at the front of one of my beds:
Out of all of the butterflies that are zipping around my garden right now, there is one that is a bit more relaxed but you will probably miss anyway.
I've heard that with our mild winter it's going to be a good year for insects -- or bad year, depending on what your opinion of these fascinating, omnipresent creatures is. If the number of butterflies that I've seen in my yard is any indication, they're right.
One of the highlights of my garden in September is the Liatris aspera, or rough blazing star. It's the end of the season counterpart to the June-blooming and more common Liatris spicata, or gayfeather.
The black swallowtail caterpillars that I hastily rescued as I was going out of town two weeks ago and then pupated in the jar have hatched!
In my garden it's peak butterfly time, which means it's peak butterfly photo time on this blog. Besides, we're having a late-season heatwave and it's just too hot to do other stuff in the yard -- unless you like reading posts about watering? That would actually be an easy post: "I turned on the hose and walked around for an hour or more, depending on the time of day and when I last watered."
As I've said before, I can't help myself when it comes to butterflies. I love watching them and photographing them.
Sometimes doing a daily blog about gardening (and the things in the garden) is a pain. I really want to be out in the garden every day for hours, documenting projects, photographing flowers and insects and bamboo, and generally just enjoying the environment I've created. Unfortunately I don't always have the time for this, or the weather isn't cooperating, or both.
I have a fascination with the flying nectar-drinkers in my garden. Bees, hummingbirds, butterflies, moths -- I could watch them for hours (if I had that kind of time). Even with my tight schedule I find myself watching them feeding whenever I can, and ten minutes watching the same insect do the same thing over and over again is not unusual. Nor is it ever boring for me.
With all of the bamboo maintenance projects I've done recently (tying up floppy bamboo, controlling escaped rhizomes) you'd think I'd be done with those for a while. Nope. There's one project left that I haven't gotten around to tackling: controlling one more escaped bamboo.
Some days you just need to see butterflies. This is one of those days.
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