Eerie Echinacea

This was supposed to be a pink variety. (Magnus )
It's not.



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Hole in the wall

This starling is looking out from a nest inside a concrete block.



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Sunflower (thanks, squirrels!)

This volunteer was almost certainly planted by a squirrel using seed from the feeder. It's about 5 feet high and has a bud at almost all of the leaf axils - 15 so far! The 3 other volunteers are smaller and so far have just one bud each.


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Location:Wheaton MD

Garden mystery

What is this? It is a structure made possibly of mud or something resembling fine sawdust. It is attached to the stem of a sedum. There is a small hole that looks like an entrance. Who made it? How ? Why?



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Location:Wheaton MD

Sunday after rain

Sitting out in the back yard in the shade of the viburnum. A stunning zebra swallowtail visited the dark purple butterfly bush for a while. It was too quick for a good photo.
The chickadees don't seem to mind having me so close to the feeder. They are cautious but keep coming back. Sometimes a nuthatch joins them.


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Spring again, begin again

Yesterday was sunny and warm enough to leave my jacket at home and go out with just a fairly heavy sweater. We had a nice neighborhood walk, roughly 2 miles. We passed a flock of crows up in a group of trees, conversing. I would like to know more about their talk. In the afternoon I stopped at Johnson's, which is showing signs of spring. Pansies were on sale so I got some to plant in the back corner around the toes of our little magnolia.

Backyard birds this morning: downy woodpeckers, house finches, red bellied woodpecker hanging on the bottom of the feeder (showing the red belly) and reaching up for seeds, male and female cardinal, junco, mourning dove. A Canada goose flew over the neighborhood. A black squirrel is working hard on the spilled sunflower seeds, eating some and burying some here and there.

Garden: The shorter early daffodils are still in bloom and the taller trumpets have joined them. The next wave is just beginning: the first orange-centered flat one is opening. I'm encouraged to see buds starting to open on the little star magnolia I planted last fall. I was very careful about cleaning up the fallen leaves, and am hoping for no return of the black spots (fungus?) they showed last year. The forsythia will bloom soon. The crocuses are finishing after a nice show. The sedum is up and in back already shows signs of having been nibbled by finches. I've only seen the house finches do this.

Morning start: 2005 vintage pu-erh. Sun salutations (not many, not too vigorous!)


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Location:Wheaton

Back again

Too much time has passed for me to fill in all the blanks. Recently my mother passed away. Here is the garden I made in her memory:




On the right is a lovely pale lilac rhododendron (Boursault) now out of bloom. There are hostas and astilbe moved from beds she planted, along with sweet woodruff, lady's mantle, white bleeding heart, white campanula carpatica, white dianthus, impatiens, and one lily of the valley. Her ashes are in the ferns. Planting it over a couple of weeks was very satisfying.

Back in the yard

It's really spring here in Maryland and edging towards summer. The pink peonies are blooming (they were supposed to be a pink, a red, and a white, but they are 3 very similar pinks). We've seen a few butterflies this month (dark comma, tiger swallowtail, cabbage whites) but their peak is yet to come. The bronze fennel is growing and fluffy. Today we saw the first baby mantises in its fronds. I've planted a few more annuals, which I managed to buy at a little garden center on Rockville Pike, in spite of getting so bewildered by Montrose Parkway as to end up circling the same new and empty parking lot twice, in search of the southbound lane.
The overgrown mugho is on its way out. It was too big and I was tired of dealing with the annual sawfly infestation. So far I've lopped off the top as far down as I could manage with my ratchet pruners. The rest will require a saw. It looks odd right now but just having it shorter improves the proportions of that area.
Photos later, after I coordinate my multiple gadgets.

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More about Spring

The first lilac blooms mark the transition from early to mid-spring. The tulips and second wave of daffodils are blooming too. Birds are finding their turf; the house finches are back, nibbling on the sedum. And the first butterflies (cabbage whites) are out.











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Spring at Brookside Gardens

Highlights of our walk at Brookside Gardens this afternoon: spring bulbs, flowering trees, and hellebores.

















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Out in the yard again

With a new iPhone and a new computer come disruptions of old habits and the sometimes puzzling fun of working out new ways of doing things. I thought I could blog from the phone and use photos but I'm guessing I need  one more app to complete the equation. But getting photos to my Picasa web albums from the phone is easy, and getting them from there to Blogger on the computer is easy, so maybe it's ok that it's less easy to work the complete process on the iPhone.
I'm spending most of a nice weekend pottering around the yard, cleaning up here and there and rejoicing that my knee has decided that squatting occasionally is ok. Maybe it likes spring too.
I have several different varieties of sedum out front (no longer or never labeled) and was surprised to notice differences in the location of their first spring shoots. I thought of the plants as roughly similar in form but  with different flower and foliage colors. So I expected that they would all sprout from a rosette of leaves at the base of the plant. I was diligently removing old dead flower stalks and stopped just in time on the last plant, when I realized that, unlike the others, it had no basal rosette, but was starting to sprout new leaves on the old stems.
I expect plenty of praying mantises this summer, if the number of egg cases are any indication.
I'm seeing a lot of bird activity. A male house finch seemed to be inviting a female to assess the attractions of our forsythia bushes. One surprise is that, although many migrants have returned, the juncos are still here.
Here's a daffodil:

Spring and a Full Moon

Last night's grand full moon seemed like a celebration of spring. We've had two nice days and the forsythia and early daffodils are in bloom. Spring is yellow!

Late fall

Nest

This leftover nest remains in one of the forsythias. The interior is smoothly  plastered with a thin coating of dried mud. I haven't done any research yet but think it probably belonged to a robin or catbird.

I spotted it while wrestling honeysuckle out of the bushes.

Most of the trees have lost their leaves, but our little crape myrtle was still showing some fine color. Earlier in November I cleaned up and enlarged the flower bed around its toes to make room for planting bulbs: mixed tulips, grape hyacinths, and the forgotten daffodils I dug up accidentally. If you think you have spotted a great place for bulbs, you probably already planted some there! The back corner of this little bed is now home to a new, small clematis called Chevalier. It is still green, but has been outside just long enough to begin to show a slight touch of bronze.

Behind this bed, and to the right of the forsythia, is what's left of an old viburnum. Through the years it has suffered from our indecision about its ideal form (small, multistemmed tree or large bush?). In the meantime, the main central group of trunks died and rotted. Now all but the base of the dead center has been removed, leaving a sparse and scraggly cluster of younger shoots coming up from the roots. We hope that pruning will encourage them to branch out and act like a bush again. In the meantime, the leaves are a lovely golden shade. (See photos below. Someday I'll learn how to align them better.)

Crape myrtle "Natchez"

Tulips, grape hyacinths, and daffodils

Clematis "Chevalier"

Viburnum

Mantises

Mantis on fennel

When I stepped out the back door, there  she was on the fennel plant by the step, making her way south. Was she the remaining adult from the little band of mantis infants I saw when summer began?

Northwest of the fennel, on a patch of sedum, I spotted a mantis's egg case near where I had recently seen a different, greener mantis. I've never seen the hatchlings emerge, so I'll try to keep an eye out come spring.

Mantis egg case on sedum

Brookside afternoon

Hot Maple

Fall color at Brookside

Yesterday afternoon found us enjoying a walk at Brookside Gardens, one of our favorite uses of our Montgomery County tax dollars. The many varieties of Japanese maples extended the color range beyond what we see in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Brookside camellia, Brookside bee

At this point in the fall, the main blooms were in the greenhouses, where we enjoyed the end of the chrysanthemum show (soon to be replaced by the popular annual model train exhibit.) But a few outdoor plants were still offering some flowers.  Pansies benefit from fall planting here for best spring display, and we admired a large bed of them. The camellias were also still in bloom and attracting bees as well as a few wasps.

In the visitors' center there was a nice display of wall hangings in botanical and nature themes, by Verena Levine, Diana Garrison, and Janet Wildman. They were described as quilts, and certainly used some quilting techniques, but the size (too small for a bed) and the surface detail were more suitable for hanging. Possibly the term 'quilt" seemed more accessible.  I especially liked "Forest Floor" by Levine and Garrison, for its use of applique across block boundaries to suggest ferns and vines.

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.

Fall surprise

Late summer was a busy time, and not much attention was paid to the yard. Then, in mid-October, after being away for a bit, I found these late instar Black Swallowtail caterpillars lingering on the bronze fennel next to the back steps. They are gone now, off to winter over (I hope) in their chrysalises. Failing to find them, I leave the fennel uncut. On a sunny afternoon the warm fennel smell still floats above the foliage.

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.

Dahlias after all

I grew up with the impression, based on parental tastes, that one ought not to like dahlias, and indeed I find many types unpleasantly stiff and oddly colored, as if they were badly tinted plastic. But they have a sturdy reliability in this region which appeals to me. This year I tried a pack of Fresco Mix around the toes of the new crape myrtle, next to the rescued coreopsis. They are short, mostly shades of red with one or two yellows. Just now they are surging into a new round of bloom, in spite of the heat and  storms we've had. The yellow centers match the coreopsis. I mean to plant lots of them next year.The only disadvantage I can see is that, like begonias, they don't seem to attract our local pollinators. I can't recall ever seeing a bee, wasp, or butterfly visit them.