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.

Spring bloom report

Daffodils:

• Earliest ones are almost done
• Midseason ones are peaking
• Later ones are starting in sunniest areas

Lilacs: Yes, they both have a LOT of buds this year!
Tulips (Gudoshnik etc): just open
Azaleas:

• earliest red out front has a few blooms near the ground.
• Both of the oldest deciduous (red, gold) still look dead--probably are.
  

Spring Again

Late March: Daffodils mark the start of Gardener's Remorse season, when the gardener realizes that it's too late to get an early start on anything. I spent part of the morning cutting honeysuckle out of the forsythia and checking up on things. The old deciduous azalea looks dead after last year's drought, but the lilac has a lot of buds. A lone cabbage white was our yard's first butterfly.

Sun again

This morning has been warmer. A Carolina wren was singing in the backyard during breakfast.




After some cool days with rain and clouds, today's sun brought out more butterflies: cabbage whites, a sulpher, a monarch, a few small skippers, and this lovely Red-spotted Purple.

More Wheaton MD Butterflies (and a bird)

Fewer tiger swallowtails this weekend but an influx of fritillaries made up for it. Also fewer bumblebees. And the bird--sneaking around near the ground, perhaps a female yellowthroat. Shy.

Skippers

Gray Hairstreak

Fritillaries

Walking, gardening, dining

We walked to Brookside Gardens in Wheaton Regional Park -- almost 3.5 miles (round trip) according to the gmap Pedometer site. A lovely walk that made me tired enough to be calm. I already had a head start on tiredness from working outside in the sun planting the various things I bought last week (white butterfly bush, 2 caryopteris, purple coneflower, helenium, plus all the daylilies I had to move to make room, plus the bit of deutzia I brought back from Maine.)

A fritillary (not sure which medium sized one) seemed to be ovipositing on leaves of violets in the yard, seeming to favor younger leaves in areas I had watered in the course of my planting.

We had dinner at the Mykonos Grill (nice vegetarian moussaka).

Is worry a lack of ahimsa towards oneself?

Small town parade

We went out before lunch walking to a nearby store and found the intersection of Georgia & University blocked off for a parade in honor of 50 years of the Wheaton Rescue Squad and the 83rd Annual Convention and Parade of the Montgomery County Volunteer Fire and Rescue Association. It included a line of firetrucks and ambulances several blocks long, pompom girls, "cowboys" on horseback--one with a long horn steer--and endless sirens. Baffling, deafening, and surprisingly moving as an assertion of a real community tradition.

Butterflies

Intermediate form of the black female eastern tiger swallowtail, looking dusted with a black haze. Wheaton MD 9/4/05

Back to the backyard

About the yard:
Crabgrass. Weeds in the flower beds; not so many in the lawn, not since "Trugreen Chemlawn" mistakenly treated our lawn instead of the one at the same house number on the next street.
But we did have some nice lilies and the butterfly bushes are attracting butterflies and (this morning) 2 humming birds.
About the blog:
It's been neglected, I admit. I have had many ideas for what I thought of as letters I should write to others. But maybe this is the place for them. I'll try that in a bit.

Spring:

The new lilac (Nadezhda) is lovely.

Morning song

Repeated song just at dawn: carolina wren. Big sound for a small bird.

Tree Gone

Sunday a tree service man came to give an estimate. Tuesday night the tree was gone, along with all of our piles of twigs and branches. They will return to chip up the stump. We never heard from the 3 other services we called.

It's a relief but the yard seems uncomfortably exposed. This is why I got that tree in the first place!

crape myrtle? small magnolia? how big a tree?

Weather

Lovely days. sun, warm but not oppressive. Soft breeze morning & evening.

Combinations

Heliotrope & cosmos
Liatris & white echinacea
Orange daylily and purply pink phlox
Variegated liriope & yellow daylilies

Volunteers

Several Verbena bonariensis volunteers are up. The first bloom is caught in the curve of a yellow lily's petal.
Cleome is (are?) showing up here and there in various shades. Always welcome.

Blooms

Sunday morning I weeded, going after the rampant bindweed with some success, and attacking the cluster of mulberry seedlings with a hoe. The parent birds (robins & mockingbirds) were out with their toddlers. The house wrens seemed to be still taking food to the nest. The double daylilies (flora plena or some such) have started blooming, taking over from the classic orange. The patch of yellow daylilies by the front step--4 different kinds-- is looking fine. And in the back corner, one of the 2 plants in the clump I moved to make room for a buddleia turns out to be red with a gold center, very hot. Moving along the beds, inspecting, weeding, thinking about new possibilities, is satisfying work. And play. No committees, no meetings, no project plans, no milestones on which to report, and no one else making any decisions or judging the outcome.

Cloudburst

Fairly hot, overcast, lilies blooming. One trumpet lily scents a room without setting off a headache. Went out at lunch time to walk & get some take out .
Late afternoon: cloudburst, downpour. Then steamy and sunny.

Butterflies so far

Cabbage white
Eastern tailed blue
Tiger swallowtail
Question mark (or comma?)
Silver-spotted skipper
Some sort of sulphur, not well seen
Painted lady (or poss. american?)