Late butterflies

Late Butterfly

This Painted Lady (as I believe her to be) found late season  afternoon warmth on the west wall of our house. We were both enjoying the late October sun.

Buckeyes

Buckeye on sedum 9/5/10

September has brought us some beautiful Buckeye butterflies, sometimes as many as five at once. They feed on the sedum, seeming to prefer the variety with the flattest panicles, if that's the right word.

Swallowtails

The past couple of weeks have brought as many as ten swallowtails at a  time to our butterfly bushes. The white one has been especially popular. I'm not sure if that is because of its color or its height. It is our tallest bush and the swallowtails concentrate on its top half.
Mostly we get the classic Eastern Swallowtail, although  we   have seen an occasional dark form female and a few Spicebush Swallowtails as well.
Sometimes a pair seem dance together in the air, spiraling upwards, trading places, almost touching.

End of Summer

 
 



Yesterday morning was overcast, windy, and threatening rain, but the volunteer zinnia was still blooming. A lone monarch clung to it, feeding.

Butterflies and others

A lovely sunny day, and several butterflies--skippers, cabbage white, Painted Lady, and a Red-spotted Admiral. Also I startled a large preying mantis into flight.

Neighbors

Start at the back door to see:
--Tiger swallowtails and a monarch sharing the butterfly bushes and a hot pink zinnia.
--By 8 a.m. sun like a spotlight on the orangey red zinnias, cosmos, blackeyed susans, and echinacea in the back corner. (The year is turning around: A few weeks ago the sun arrived at 7:30.)
--Hummingbird swooping past the butterfly bush and up into a hemlock two yards away
Moving to the front yard, don't miss the bumble bees, and an occasional honey bee (suggesting a nearby beekeeper?).
Head down the street to the next corner and startle goldfinches who rise, twittering, out of a neighbor's mass of echinacea going to seed.
Further down the street, pause to admire the Sri Lankan monks' peppers and beets growing neatly at the feet of a statue of the Buddha meditating tranquilly in a 50 year old American suburban lawn.

Signs of summer

Watching an Eastern Swallowtail on the butterfly bush.
Buying peaches and tomatoes at the Saturday morning farmers' market in Kensington.
Sitting in the shade of a pale lavender crape myrtle in bloom, listening to the cicadas.
Buying a few last plants for the summer garden and deciding that it was too hot to stay outside and plant them.
Reading the forecast for Sunday and hoping the rain doesn't start until after I've planted things in the morning.

November butterflies

As mentioned in my previous post:
Painted Lady:

Buckeye:

Cleaning up

Yesterday afternoon was another installment in the flowerbed cleanup saga. This time I worked on the back (south-west) corner. Accomplishments included removal of the big old dead deciduous azalea, digging out a lot of poke weed, and generally digging up and replanting (rearranging) the daylilies in that corner, and the bulbs hiding in their toes. Weeds and weed roots (couch grass, poke weed, and bind weed) filled 2 county-approved paper yard trim bags.
That limited area at least is a lot better but I was rushing. I need several days I don't have to finish and really think things through.
While I was working 3 butterflies came to the purple butterfly bush: 2 painted ladies and a lovely buckeye.

Summer's still here

Yesterday's excitement was a hummingbird's extended visit to our butterfly bush. I think she might be nesting nearby. The last caterpillar disappeared on Friday. I am hoping that they all went off to pupate safely and will emerge later this month as 5 lovely butterflies.






Meanwhile, the yellow squash (Early Prolific Straightneck) keeps producing. The one plant is about right for our squash-eating pace.

Summer in the backyard

I've neglected this blog, but I've been inspired to revisit it as part of a convergence of interests: knitting and ordinary nature. By "ordinary" I mean what's here next to us wherever we are, visible every day if only we look.
So where does the knitting come in? Well, I've started reading Michele Rose Orne's book Inspired to Knit. Her designs are a bit frou-frou for me, but her process intrigues me enough that I've joined the related knitalong. The idea is to create our own seasonal "mood boards", starting with summer, with a view to using them as inspiration for our own knitting designs . She suggests collages of things torn from magazines, found objects, etc. I just took my coffee out to the back step and sat a while.
Here's what I've noticed so far:

• Summer here is hot. The strong sunlight calls for strong colors--zinnia shades, not sweet pastels.
  
  
• At this point in the summer everything is overgrown.
• There are beautifully striped black swallowtail caterpillars on the bronze fennel, and all sorts of bees on the mint blossoms.
  
  
• Butterflies in flight include Eastern swallowtail, Cabbage white, Buckeye, various skippers.
  
  
• Flocks of goldfinches (more black and yellow!) visit the zinnias for the seeds.