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What is this eating on my fennel? June 11th. "The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity" ~ George Carlin
The new flowerbeds are filling up with plants to attract birds and bees and butterflies. So far, I haven't found any of the small yellow eggs on the butterfly weed that say the Monarchs are here. But a wide variety of tiny blues, painted lady's, zebra swallowtails and yellow sulfurs have been visiting. Then I saw this tiny creature on my fennel. The books say that this should be a black swallowtail... but it doesn't look like the picture. So more searching on Google and life cycles of butterflies and finally a picture.... an unlabeled picture.... then, even more searching. This fellow, or gal... (how DO you tell the male from the female caterpillar???)... was about one centimeter long with the tiny tufts of hair that were almost non-existent; black with a white belt and small orange nubby dots. Finally, I found a site that showed me the changes butterfly larvae make even before they morph into the butterfly. Sure enough... this IS a black swallowtail caterpillar that has graced our new garden!!
Then, I went out the next morning to check on our resident and was I ever glad to have already taken a picture of this fellow... because......
What a difference a day makes! June 12th.
Black swallowtail caterpillar. Papilio polyxenes 
The caterpillar had certainly changed his stripes... and color... and size. He grew, overnight, to two centimeters and now looked like the typical black swallowtail larvae. They love the fennel and parsley... but, I began to worry about the birds. The cardinals would surely have their eyes on this creature soon... after all, he is supposed to get to four centimeters in length before he builds his cocoon. So I took a big box, cut out the sides and covered it in a bit of screen mesh I had. I have a jar with water and holes punched in the lid in which I put cuttings of the fennel and parsley. I also stuck in a bare branch with small limbs for him to attach to. And I have moved him inside the sunroom. It is the 15th and he is almost three centimeters long. I expect it will be one more week before it is time for him to build his chrysalis and then another two weeks before he emerges. Isn't nature wonderful?
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See how her shade garden has grown....."Growth is a greater mystery than death. All of us can understand failure, we all contain failure and death within us, but not even the successful man can begin to describe the impalpable elations and apprehensions of growth." ~ Norman Mailer
The idea of me trying to do a Wordless Wednesday is ridiculous... impossible... not likely. There are just too many thoughts that pop into my head and have to get out. Take this shade garden. Since the house is so new, the trees that are actually IN our yard are still small, though growing and now around 10' tall. So the only real "shade" area is a recess by the front porch and between the porch and the outside wall of the master bathroom. It gets morning sun but by noon is in shade and even a little sooner, now that the calla have grown up again. Last year I planted two fern able to withstand cold weather, several hosta and columbine starter plants from my friend Marcia, two astilbe and then in the fall a puny looking hydrangea (Cityline Rio). The plants did OK but nothing really special and then they died back. I had to cut the remaining yellow leaves and stems back to the ground and I put bamboo sticks into the ground to mark the plants for mulching. All winter the area was a sea of brown mulch with stupid little white sticks protruding. I only wish I had taken a picture of the space back in early March... now, these pictures would be even more dramatic.
In late March the little sprouts started coming up. First the fern in the foreground and then the hosta and astilbe. For a long while, I thought the fern in the far back left of the space was dead... then tiny little curly cue brown worms started sticking heads through the mulch. I have added a white bleeding heart and a heleobore and two more different varieties of columbine this year.
Onward and upward
Everything has done well this year... the hosta have already bloomed once and have doubled in size. One of the astilbe (white) has doubled in size and the other exploded, mounding up to five times its size last year. Both ferns are great and the hydrangea is blooming. The only thing is that I was confused about the hydrangea. I thought it would be purple with green in the center if I made the soil more alkaline so a bit of lime and egg shells... and then a bit more. But I now find out that I should have tried to keep the soil more acidic; thus the pink. I have dosed it with the first of many coffee grounds... and we will see what happens.
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Delicate petals with wild outrageous color. Hybrid Tea Rose - Sedona "We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses." ~ Abraham Lincoln
Last year's construction included a 15' x 6' garden plot in the middle of the patio. We did not think this through with regard to our soil composition and drainage and with the rain and the misplaced "thoughtfulness" of the guy who took up the old grass (and put it in the flowerbed), we had a swampy, muddy mess. It was the kind of mess that kids would love, but not adults. Drilling holes and putting in rock did not help... only made it worse. I finally put on some oversize knee wading boots and started in to remove the sod from the bed. It was cleverly hidden by the muddy ooze and when it did come up in big pieces with that attached green plastic netting sod usually has, it made this deep slurpy sucking sound. Unfortunately, my boots also got stuck in the middle of the bed and when I pulled the grass up with its slurpy sucking sound, I lost my balance and sat down in the gooey, oozy, mud. I had more mud on my person than I had ever managed to get on me when I was a little girl in Roanoke making mudpies under the carport next to our house. Not only that but I WAS STUCK... literally. I finally had to climb out of the boots and retrieve them by hand from the side. After much more angst, and a bit of gratitude that my folks have no idea how to use a digital camera... I extracted myself and eight wheelbarrow loads of nastiness from the "swamp", as it was affectionately being called at that time.
Not willing to be outwitted by a hole in the ground, I mentioned the problem to the sprinkler system guy when he was there. Immense joy filled my heart to find that he also did drainage and he thought a large dry well would do the trick. It did. So I hauled in bags and bags of top soil, amended top soil and compost and a tiny bit of coarse sand and started planting. Now there are 19 or so rose bushes growing and even thought it is the first year, we have roses. I have learned a lot... bareroot are better than plants, most white and yellow roses are not as fragrant as red and pink ones, aphids really do run from ladybugs and we have beavers in our neighborhood.
So here is one example of my roses... two blooms from the same bush in variations of red... this bush produces blooms that range from bright coral to rich red to peachy pink and everywhere in between. It has finished its first bloom, I have pruned and now it grows again... hopefully to bloom while Stephen is here.
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It's June... time for the calla lily to bloom. "Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character, though few can decypher even fragments of their meaning." ~ Lydia M. Child, Letters from New York, 1843
I have not had time to write with all the gardening. I am trying to get our new flowerbeds looking, well.. right. No, I am not a professional and while I really wanted to have an organized plan for the space... it hasn't turned out that way. You see, there are just too many really great plants and shrubs and flowers and way too little space! So the well organized, sterile and formal garden space is not what we have. Ours is what I would call casual chaos with color mix; plants to attract birds and butterflies and hummingbirds. Of course, if you have butterflies you will have more birds because some birds eat butterflies... I didn't really consider that last part. Hopefully, the birds will prefer all the little bugs that have shown up for the flowers.
The calla lily are in the front, more formal flowerbeds. These were my mom's idea. She likes the calla. I thought they would die, but each April they start coming back up and they are NOT the most considerate plants. Little calla come up all over the place and have to be pulled out to keep them in check. These are the yellow and we also have a dark pinkish purple variety, though they are not this robust.
I have so many pictures of the garden this year and so little time to post them. Someone should keep prodding me along.....right? Oh... My brother will be here the second week in July and I hope to have things more squared away then. We will be tree shopping for the fall.
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