A Bit of This and That in a May Garden

Things stay the same sometimes in my garden.  The pathways are trimmed of all vegetation, including the strip along the sides of the pathways if it contains grass.   Personally, I feel it’s difficult to garden in the south once the weather begins to warm up, and the abundance of blood sucking ticks takes all the pleasure out of becoming immersed in vegetation.

A sheet of toilet paper was used last week to catch an illusive one trying to flee further up my leg.  Sounded like Velcro pulling apart when I loosened its legs from my skin, the little devil, and flushed it down the toilet.  Yesterday was spent carefully cutting down batches of bottlebrush grass that someone else failed to trim while it was shorter. 

Well, that someone else, while cleaning up the cuttings, brushed them against me when passing by.  Brushing my hair out afterwards over the sink, a tick fell into the washbasin, causing my demeanor to sink along with that creature as it was dropped into that swirling vortex of toilet flushing blues.

I don’t dally much in the garden area now.  Whatever we haven’t planted will be waiting until late fall or finding a new home in the trash can.  It’s so tricky now with the heat and cool in the house.  Days have been close to ninety degrees F., while the evenings still cool into the low sixties.

Okay, so much for the weather and its effects on my well-being.  I did manage to find enough interesting things to photograph for a decent presentation, although the focus is a bit off on a few.  Telephoto shots of a bird at the bird bath… almost in focus, but I deleted about a hundred photos of Grackles at the bird feeder that were nowhere in focus.

It’s a tad frustrating… okay, truthfully, it’s a screaming fit of screams frustrating that this new cellphone is getting the best of me.

Today started with a new door put in, then a new door ordered to replace the new door put in.  It’s what happens when the sales representative flubs up the order.  I suppose we’ll wait another two months for the second door to be made.

The afternoon was heavenly.  A cool breeze and comfortable humidity – it won’t get any better than that, if you pooh-pooh the existence of ticks.  We cut down the bottle brush grass along the pathway by the prairie garden, and braced the grass further in with plant supports to keep swaying in the breeze to a minimum.

As a child with a mom who loved the wildflowers in the desert of Nevada, we always accompanied her in the early spring after it rained to find the wildflowers that only grew a few inches tall with their amazing blooms that would fade away too quickly when the drought period came.  My love of wildflowers has never ceased since then.

Clasping Venus’s Looking Glass wildflower (Triodanis perfoliate) is an annual that would appear in springtime in my garden when the landscape was mostly in sun.  It is capable of growing three feet tall, but in our clay soil all it could muster up was about a foot in height.  As shade took over the garden, it disappeared.

After years of looking, I found a nursery specializing in wildflower seeds sold individually, instead of in a mix.  Four packets were bought last fall, and when I emptied all four packets into a cereal bowl, it looked less than ¼ teaspoon.  It was mixed with a handful of dry dirt and scattered into the prairie garden. 

I found one plant of Venus’s Looking Glass blooming today.  Of course, the photos were out of focus, but tomorrow’s another day.  One miracle out of a thousand seeds… I’ll take it.  I’m hoping to get them established in the prairie garden, even though their time in the spring is so fleeting.

I’ve rambled on long enough, and it’s so late... I’m not telling you how late.  

Until next time…

Eastern Purple Coneflower, Echinacea purpurea

Flower just opening up.

Penstemon digitalis 'Husker Red'

A cultivar that attracts pollinators, but not as many as the species attracts.

Cicada exoskeleton clinging to 

Primula meadia, Shooting Star seed pods

Clematis viticella 'Purpurea Plena Elegans' (non-native)

Since this is a double clematis, it is of no use to pollinators.

It can serve as protection for birds and other wildlife, 

if it has lush growth. 

I thought these had died years ago from drought during the summer,

but with much rain our last two springs, they are a large vine once again. 

I watched this honeybee search each flower, 

trying to find a way to any nectar, with no luck.

Wild Garlic, Allium vineale

Non-native and quite invasive.

Flowers are usually followed by bulbils (small bulbs), 

and sometimes bulbils grow instead of flowers.

Small and purple, each bulbil sprouts a stem,

which makes it look pretty wild.

Daylily with a small purple flower.  

Not sure what its friend is.

(At first I thought a tick, but the shape and coloring is wrong.)

Tree. weed. friend or foe?

This is not the same type of native clematis 

that has grown here in past years.

Winterthur Viburnum flowers

Small Wolf Spider

Woodland Pinkroot, Spigelia marilandica

Winterberry 

Ilex verticillata "Sparkleberry"

flowers with a black hover fly.

Although a cultivar, it attracts plenty of insects.

Five foot tall plant, opening bud looks like a Fleabane.

Small Orange Fly, about 1/4th inch long.

A set of Joe Pye Weed leaves unfurling.

Then the stem will grow and a new set of leaves will unfurl.

Joe Pye Weed plants on left, and Turtlehead plants on right.

I thought this was a Carpet Beetle on the Fleabane, 

but the color pattern is different.

I haven't found a similar photo to identify it.

Butterfly Weed flower buds

?

Taken at birdbath by back deck.

My commentors identified this as a female House Finch.

This post is linked to:

Saturday's Critters

My Corner of the World

Funky Dunky

 

Miss Charlotte, the delight of any camera in sight

It’s said she’d rather snooze than beautify,

As her low key contenance rather delights her humans.

 

She may know her given name if it’s to her advantage,

And much of her is as one imagines,

As she disappears - the rest of the day – hidden – not here.

 

She vanishes within herself with that long empty stare.

A mystery not waiting to be solved.

She’s her own being living in middle-class luxury.

 

A tricky balance, not rocking the boat,

Giving affection one pinch at a time,

Seeking the contentment of solitude,

In an environment of multitudes.

I’m thinking, more or less, that sums it all up,

Meeting half way in all there is to say.

 

She’s an enigima - someone’s darling in her long, lost past,

Another one's darling in present tense,

She is Miss Charlotte - and that's one hundred percent enough.

Very little of the garden this time around, as we are having to work out the kinks of giving our terrier a good quality of life before we must let him go.  It’s been tiring searching for food he will eat that doesn’t cause more problems with his kidneys.

My phone camera sometimes refuses to take a photo until I go out of camera mode, then back in.  Other times it wants me to do something it has picked out, instead of the choice I have picked out.  It’s very exasperating arguing with that darn thing.

Blooms have come and gone without a photo to record the event; but that’s life, isn’t it.  Most days are filled with so much rain, we’ve had to do our pruning in between all the storms of the day.

Charlotte’s macro photos came out nicely, but I think I must increase the pixel rate on the telephoto ones, like the grey squirrel.  The quality of its photographed fur leaves much to be desired.  I haven’t used a regular camera for so long, I’m having to reteach myself how to work the “Pro” App.  At least when I use focus, green appears around the subject when it’s at its best.

The first cicadas of the season have begun digging themselves out of the ground, and climbing up any plant nearby to shed their exoskeleton before drying out and flying up into the trees for courtship time.  I briefly saw one today as it tested out its wings with a few buzzes, then flew up into the canopy.  It was only about an inch long.

Watched a newly appearing lady bug, still in its yellow phase, stretch its wings out a few times, then have the audasity to fly off before I could photograph it well.  A small snail traveling in creep mode, became a small snail not traveling in squashed mode, when I totally forgot in my hurriedness where it was.  I feel a tiny bit bad about that one.

The Sweetspire is the darling of the Carpenter Bees, and amid all that buzzing one might think a few photos would follow below, BUT... with sunshine in one's eyes it was a lost cause.  I had to be content watching all the tiny shadows buzzing around on the ground.

I'm calling it a day, as I'm working without my laptop; writing at a computer whose chair hates me profoundly.  The laptop's at the doctor to see if it will go into it's chaotic phase for him.  Circles popping up and disappearring just as fast, then word documents opening in differeent size windows, layering upon each other as the circles are still dancing about, then... well, it goes on and on and on.  I have a little monster on my hands, clearly possessed.

How beautiful are the rosy footsteps of May! Less showery and changeful than April, and not so heated and burdensome as June, she stands like a gentle mediator between the two... With her soft blue eye, and her mild but radiant countenance, she comes like an angel of light among men... She scatters in her path the sweetest flowers of nature, and everywhere breathes fragrance and joyousness. The birds of the air are carolling her welcome, and even the mute beasts of the field seem happier at her coming. ~"May," Eliza Cook's Journal, 1850

This about says it all with my garden this year.  

Stay happy and safe and full of love.

Itea virginica 'Saturnalia' (Sweetspire)

 Clematis Venosa Violacea.

Dustin

This Post Is Linked To:

Saturday's Critters

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

My Corner of the World