Blueberries and blooms

 It’s blueberry season. We can’t grow blueberries here. Our soil is all wrong, and blueberries are fussy. I make a point of stocking up on Michigan blueberries in July. This year, I had a yearning for blueberry pie, so I made one. It leaked all over, as fruit pies will, but what remained in the crust was delicious. I don’t think I’ve had blueberry pie since I was in high school. I’ll have to add it to the rotation.

Blueberry pie

The drought continues. We were all excited last Saturday morning when we had an inch of rain in the gage. It didn’t seem so good when we found out that places to the south got upwards of 3”. We could have used that.

Some, but not enough

The harvest continues apace. My vacation with Jane is coming up, and I’m frantically trying to deal with everything from the garden so far before I go. Pretty proud of myself for harvesting some of my carrots before they become the size of tree trunks and just as woody.

Carrots harvested at a reasonable size

The pullets are almost adult sized, although they will not start laying for several months yet. This morning was the first time they came near when I tossed out the scratch grains. They hovered outside the hens, looking for an opportunity to dart in and grab a kernel. So far, they are mostly unsuccessful. They will do better when the 2-year-olds go to their new home at a friend’s house.

Most of the time, the pullets hang around under the cover of one of the apple trees. Here is Brownie II.

Brownie II hiding beneath the Macoun apple tree

It is hard to get pictures of the pullets in the open, as they are always moving. Here is one of the golden-laced Wyandottes, for example, with her heads and legs blurry as she ran by.

Golden Wyandotte on the run

Silvia sort of posed, although I caught her lifting her foot.

Silvia on one leg

Our beehive is going crazy. Terry and I had to put another “super” on the top to make room for the expanding population. It’s going a lot better than last year. Maybe we will even be able to sneak out some honey.

Busy bees

We got Russian bees this year. Here is a photograph of two of our comrades pollinating a female zucchini blossom.

Thank you, comrades!

In spite of the drought, we have insects everywhere. This is a painted lady butterfly on a purple coneflower. If you look closely, you can see her proboscis in the flower.

Painted lady drinking nectar

Tiger swallowtails will let me walk right up to them as long as I’m not holding a camera. I chased this one all over, and this was the best I could do.

Camera-shy tiger swallowtail on beebalm

Over the summer, a truly enormous plant grew behind one of the compost bins. I couldn’t tell what it was from the leaves, so I left it. It is almost as tall as the tractor shed!

Giant multi-stemmed mystery plant

My bet was that it was some nasty invasive, but to my delight, it turned out to be evening primrose! The red stem was a hint, but I wasn’t sure until I saw the flowers.

Evening primrose

This is a close-up of the primrose flower. There are pollen granules on the pistil. Perhaps it will disperse.

Primrose close-up

One dewy morning, the prairie dropseed glittered in the morning sun. I couldn't resist an artsy photo.

Dewy prairie dropseed

The natives that I grew from seed this year are doing well. The only annual I planted was partridge pea. I worried that it would not establish because the stupid deer kept eating the shoots. Dry as it has been, I suppose they go after anything that has been watered. Finally, the partridge pea is winning, though. If it sets seed, it may persist and spread.

Partridge pea flowers

The cup plant shows no indication of blooming this year. I’m happy enough to see it developing large leaves.

Cup plant getting mature leaves

The swamp milkweed is about to bloom.

Buds on swamp milkweed

The first plant in the rain garden to bloom is Great Blue Lobelia. The stripes on the underside of the flower are characteristic of the species. Ecologist that I am, have to wonder how that benefits the plant. And I’ll never know.

Great Blue Lobelia

All of the plants in the rain garden are perennial, so I have no idea who will bloom this year and who will wait. The blazing star seemed to be shooting up some floral stalks. Time will tell.

Bingo was a very bad boy today. He tore up the floor strip covering the transition between the kitchen tile and the living room wood floor. As you can see, however, he is a master of looking innocent.

Bad boy Bingo in his favorite cat tree

 

 

Abundance

 The drought continues. We saw a welcome site on July 12, but it passed through too quickly, leaving us with a scant 0.3” of rain.

Fifth oak in the rain

At that time, the grape jelly was being swarmed with scruffy, damp-looking oriole juveniles. As of this writing, most of them are gone. We see an orchard oriole now and then. They used to move south at the end of June like clockwork. Have they gotten the word about triple-digit heat down there?

Soggy, scruffy juvenile orioles

From the 12^th to the 22^nd, we had not a drop. Saturday night we got half an inch. We didn’t have to water yesterday. Whoop-de-doo.

Many things are starting to ripen, including the tomatoes and cherry tomatoes in the high tunnel,

New Girl tomatoes

Supersweet 100 cherry tomatoes

Zucchini.

Zucchini

And cabbage. It’s early for cabbage. A little tiny bit of me is hoping we don’t get a huge amount of rain all at once, lest these lovely cabbage heads split with the sudden influx of water.

Cabbage

Most excitingly, the high tunnel peaches are getting ripe. Terry found two of them on the ground, bruised from the fall, which prompted us to pick the 18 ripest ones after lunch yesterday. They are beautiful and largely blemish-free, which I find amazing. Yes, they are in the high tunnel, but there’s no shortage of insects in there.

Beautiful, perfect peaches

I harvested a lot of things yesterday. The carrots are big enough to eat. The challenge is to pick them before they get too big, at which point they will be woody, or split, or both. I planted some onion seedlings in bunches in the spring for green onions. In theory, the crowding keeps them from getting big. When I wasn’t looking, though, they got big anyway.

Yesterday's harvest, left to right: 18 peaches, a bunch of pickling cucumbers, 6 standard tomatoes, many overgrown scallions, carrots, 6 zucchini, bunch of cherry tomatoes, one hill of red potatoes, 2 Napa cabbage.

I’m almost to full-blown Putting Up mode. I get a little panicky this time every summer, but what gets done gets done. Terry grilled burgers with foil pack new potatoes and overgrown scallions, zucchini, and jalapeno peppers. Even when I’m overwhelmed, going to the garden to get supplies for supper that day never gets old.

I have a new camera which has a better close-up range than my previous camera. I have been taking too much time playing with it. Here are some early efforts.

A bumblebee with leg baskets full of pollen on a purple coneflower.

Bumblebee on purple coneflower

I have grown purple coneflowers forever, yet this is the first summer that I noticed that the anthers (pollen-producing boy parts) develop in a ring from bottom to top.

Circle of pollen-producing structures (yellow) on purple coneflower

This is a skipper butterfly on beebalm, apparently not realizing that the flower is for bees.

Skipper sipping pollen from beebalm

I had a hard time getting everyone in focus for this one. A spider is wrapping silk around a metallic green sweat bee. A video would have been better, but I’m not there yet.

A spider industriously wraps a sweat bee in silk

I hope that you, too, are enjoying the abundance of the season!

Pollinators

On June 29, one week ago Thursday, the chrysalis Terry rescued from the watering can had turned black. He thought it had died. I realized that it had become transparent. Soon we could see the orange of its wings. Terry took it out to the shop with him so he could keep an eye on it. Nancy posted on Facebook after my last blog entry that as long as the butterfly could hang to dry its wings, it would be okay. At 8:30, Terry called to say the adult had emerged. I got my camera and went out to see. The chrysalis case lay in the bottom of the jar like discarded plastic wrap. The butterfly hung on the milkweed plant Terry had put the chrysalis on when he took it off the watering pot.

Monarch right after emerging

It was soon apparent that it would need more room. Terry and I carefully put a popsicle stick under the milkweed to hold it up higher.

Suspended by a popsicle stick

By 8:36, the wings were almost fully expanded. Terry transferred the butterfly to a milkweed that was still alive. He checked on it periodically through the morning. At 10:30, it flew away. For better or worse, we may have left the “pupate on plastic” trait in the population. Who knows where it might lead? In a few generations, we might have chrysalises all over our watering cans! Have we begun domestication of monarch butterflies? I hope not.

In our pollinator garden, the purple coneflower is just starting to bloom

Purple coneflower

As is the beebalm.

Beebalm

One lonely poppy is all that is left of the large population we had a few years ago. That makes me sad.

One lonely poppy

The black-eyed Susan is out of control. They probably crowded out all the poppies.

So much black-eyed Susan!

The most common bee on this flower is (I think—I am no expert) a tiny sweat bee.

A sweat bee

Backside of sweat bee with pollen on legs

I also saw a bee I had not seen before. It had an odd habit of climbing over the flower with its abdomen in the air.

Bee with abdomen in the air

Upon further inspection, I saw that it carried pollen on its abdomen rather than on its legs as most bees do. This is characteristic of mason bees.

Mason bee with pollen on the underside of its abdomen

The early sunflowers are blooming. Sunflowers, like black-eyed Susans, are composites, meaning that they have a centra disk packed with numerous tiny flowers surrounded by flowers that have one large petal each. The petals are called “rays.” The early sunflowers have interesting floral tubes in the disks. The black-eyed Susan disk flowers are not so pretty.

Early sunflower

A green sweat bee was busy collecting pollen from the early sunflower.

Green sweat bee

Interestingly, I only see native bees on native plants. Our honeybees mostly visit clover in the field. I saw one honeybee on a milkweed plant this morning. I have often heard that honeybees have been bad for native bees because they compete for resources, but I am not observing much niche overlap. Maybe honeybees will use native flowers when clover becomes less available, or natives use clover when native flowers are not available.

As long as I’m on the subject of insects, a lovely green fly landed on the door to the deck. When I see things I have never seen before, it could be because it's rare, but I usually suspect it’s because I haven’t been paying attention. So much beauty in the world still to discover.

Green fly's back

Green fly's belly. Such a lovely shade!

The black raspberries are ripe. I have been scratching up my forearms every other day for a week. I think I’ll end up with enough for one batch of jam.

Black raspberries

The red-winged blackbirds must have a nest in the bushes nearby. They scold me constantly while I pick. It makes me nervous, as I have been nearly concussed by a blackbird flying full-speed into my head. Ow! So far, I have not been physically attacked. It’s too hot to wear my bike helmet. My brain would melt.

Blackbird scolding me

In the gardening news, I took off the last row cover, which was over the cabbages and Brussels sprouts. They look so wonderful when first exposed. Soon the leaves will be riddled with holes from cabbage worms, and I will have to start spraying with Bt.

Cabbages and Brussels sprouts

Butchering day is tomorrow, and not a moment too soon. The meat chickens are about at the weight limit their legs can hold. They lumber rather than walk and flop on the ground as soon as they get where they’re going. They eat a lot, poop a lot, and stink a lot. They have had a happy life. I’m a little sad to send them to Freezer Heaven, but mostly I’m ready for my chicken chores to get back to normal. Butchering is a long day of real work. It’s a relief to get it over with.

Rooster, left, and hen meat chickens

I ordered a couple extra laying chicks this year because I’ve gotten roosters among the hens for the last two years. I’m pretty sure they are all females this time. A friend took one of the pullets, whom she named Penny, to replace poor unfortunate Ethyl, who was crippled and had to be culled.

Penny (left) has left her meat chicken friend to go to a new home

We moved the rest of the pullets down to the orchard last night. I’ve decided to name the white and silver one Silvia. The rest are not yet named.

The white and silver pullet is Silvia

The Wyandottes are developing their black-lined brown feathers. Time will tell if there will be enough difference among them to give them names.

The Golden-laced Wyandotte on the left is getting its characteristic plumage