Planter box build: day 1

This past weekend I helped my friend Eric build a planter box for the bamboo I gave him earlier this summer. Although this is a pretty large plant, it kept blowing over, and it really needs more room than its pot can provide.

The nice thing about letting them have the potted bamboo for a month or so before permanently planting it is that they could move it around and figure out the best place for it. They already knew they wanted it positioned to provide late afternoon shade for their deck, but exactly where wasn't certain. As it turns out, the first place we put the pot was decided to be the best place for it, so that's where we'll build.

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Tiny Whitey gets a name and a home

If you weren't reading my blog in April, you may not know that I have a partially-adopted stray cat (Super Whitey) living in my garage, and that she had two kittens in April. They also live in my garage. I sure do wish I could use my garage for garagey stuff, like parking cars. Today we took a significant step toward that goal, as one of the kittens found a home at 4 1/2 months old.

As is customary in our house, stray cats only get descriptive names until they are adopted. Since Tiny Whitey went to her new home, she's now called "Luna".

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Big and not so beautiful

I'm going way back into the garden photo archives for today's post, which is something I don't normally do except when I want to show how things have changed in my yard, or how some plant did in previous years. Today it's all in the past though, and it's not going to be pretty. Did you read yesterday's post about the insect photos from last summer? Did you get to the photo of the ants on the big dead caterpillar? Did you find it to be creepy? If so, was it the ants that bothered you, or the death aspect? Or maybe the giant caterpillar? If it was the caterpillar that you didn't like, then you're really not going to enjoy today's post.

I'm writing today about two large insects that I found in early fall in 2004. First up is this huge caterpillar, the largest I've ever seen.

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Insects from last summer

As mentioned yesterday, I found a few interesting photos of insects and spiders from last summer, and I want to share them with you now. I'll put the "cutest" ones first, saving the "creepiest" for later in the post.

It pays to keep a camera close by when in the garden, or even on the deck, as this little guy was on the table. I've never noticed this insect anywhere in my garden before (or since), so it was right place, right time for this one.

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Just Bamboo Photos

So I was looking through my old garden photos, trying to think of a topic for today's post. There are a few cool insect images from last summer that I haven't shared with you yet, so I started getting those together. Then I realized that I've been doing a lot of insect posts lately. I have to remember that this is a gardening blog, not "let's look at another bug", and even though insects are an important part of a garden, they're not the most important part.

The most important part of any garden is bamboo.

Well, plants. But today it's bamboo specifically.

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Time for some butterflies

Besides being hummingbird season, this time of year is also the best for butterflies in my yard. The butterfly bushes earn their keep and attract all sorts of the beauties. I'd like to take a look at some of them right now.

Since the types of butterflies that I see changes almost every day, with some species only stopping by very rarely, the images here don't represent the only types of butterflies that I see -- they're just what I've seen recently.

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Hummingbirds at rest

Late summer is hummingbird season in my garden. There's constant traffic around the feeders, flowering vines, and other hummer-friendly flowers. They're seemingly always moving around, chasing each other away from favorite feeding sites, the air filled with their chirping and twittering.

As I walk around the garden, tiny birds buzzing over my head, it seems to me that hummingbirds don't know the meaning of the word "rest". That's not true though. Watch long enough, or look hard enough, and you'll see that they do actually stop for breaks when they can.

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Agastache

One of my favorite genus of plants is Agastache, or "hyssop". I love their spicy, minty foliage, their fruity colors, the way they attract bees and hummingbirds. I love that they're quite easy to grow, that they reseed, and that deer, rabbits, and every other mammal around here won't eat them.

They're just a great plant to have in the garden, and I have quite a few of them. Unfortunately, this hasn't been a great year for the Agastaches in my yard.

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Banana update

At the end of June I got a few banana plants on sale. Let's take a look at how they're doing today, just under 2 months later. (It might help if you refer back to the original image.) First up is what was the smallest of the three plants, which is now the largest, depending on how you measure.

This plant is producing huge, beautiful leaves now. These leaves are over 3' long and about 1' wide.

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