Summer blooms

 Full disclosure: I took these pictures awhile ago. I have, temporarily, gotten caught up with the weeding and finally have time to write a brief post. We’ve been getting rain on a regular basis, although it looks like Beryl is going to be a bust. She’ll be dropping all her moisture south of us, if the forecast is correct. I’ve gotten all my native seedlings in. Here’s Rain Garden II.

The start of another rain garden

I have extended the pollinator garden by the south garden. This is a pic of the established garden.

Pollinator garden after several years

One of my favorite flowers is butterfly weed. It takes a few years before it blooms, but I’m pleased that several plants are now established. If the flower shape looks familiar, it's because it is a milkweed, like rose and common milkweeds (see below).

Butterfly weed--a very orangey orange

Here is the new one. It includes rose milkweed, meadow blazing star, great blue lobelia, wild senna, partridge pea, common ironweed and penstemon.

The extended pollinator garden, all natives

The Milkweed Forest, as Terry calls an unmowed patch of the field where common milkweeds are abundant, is crazy with blooms. And yet, I have only seen one monarch at a time. You’d think there would be more.

The Milkweed Forest

Common milkweed

We have seen but one monarch caterpillar. Sadly, it was gone when we went back to collect it to raise in captivity. We suspect a bird ate it. Every Introductory Biology text I’ve ever taught from says that the caterpillars are toxic from eating the milkweed, and birds leave them alone. Unfortunately, the birds have not read the textbooks.

Monarch caterpillar

The black-eyed Susan seedlings were two feet tall and terribly root bound by the time I got them in the ground. That very night, the deer came along and trimmed them down to one foot. And so I had to put them in bondage the next day. They are recovering now. I can’t decide whether to uncover them or not. What to do….

Black-eyed Susans covered in deer netting

The seedlings I planted in the Milkweed Forest last year are very, very crowded.

Cup plant, rose milkweed, Joe Pyeweed, wild senna, partridge pea, all crammed together

Many bees visit the rose milkweed, such as this bumblebee.

Bumblebee on rose milkweed

The cup plants are doing well. The cup plant catches water where the leaves are fused at the stem, making it available for birds and bees. I noticed that even when there has been no rain, enough dew accumulates in the cup to make a little puddle.

Cup plant

I took a walk to the creek one day when it wasn’t beastly hot. The bleeding hearts I started from bare roots all sprouted and are getting big. I don’t suppose they will bloom this year. Perhaps next.

Bleeding heart

The catalpa are in bloom.

Catalpa flowers. These have suffered some wind damage

As are the elderberries.

Elderberries--lots of fragrant flowers, surprisingly few pollinators

There was a robin nesting in the magnolia by the garage. When I first spotted the next, a little bald head was sticking up. Then mom or dad came back to guard it, and I didn’t see the baby anymore. Note that this enterprising robin has incorporated plastic strips from a fraying tarp into its next. Waterproofing!

A robin on a nest built in part with plastic tarp strips

When the thyme was flowering in the high tunnel, it was visited almost exclusively by this bee-mimicking fly. We know it’s a fly because it only had two wings instead of four (not the best way to tell, because bee wings are hard to count), and its eyes are very large. Some fly eyes touch in the middle of the head.

A bee-mimicking fly, with eyes that touch on the top of its head

We have a whole lot of smooth sumac next to the road. I have never seen it flower so prolifically as this year. It might be because it doesn’t have the bright red clusters of berries that staghorn sumac has. I grew up with staghorn sumac in Michigan. When I moved to Illinois, I wondered why the sumac branches weren’t fuzzy. I caught on eventually.

Smooth sumac in flower

Friday marks exactly 7 weeks since we got the chicks, and that means its butchering day. It makes me sad, yet in death they fulfill their function in life. They are a prey species. Just a link in the chain. They’ve had a good life, however short.