The Surprise of a June Day in August

Gulf Fritillary Butterfly

American Snout Butterfly, Libytheana carinent

Pearl Crescent Butterfly

I don't think I would want just three summer days as a butterfly,

but it sounds like music on the page.

Bumblebee and tiny Mason Bee

on Monarda fistulosa

Bumblebee and non-native Honeybee

Green Sweat Bee

Carpenter Bee

Carpenter Bee, Green Sweat Bee, tiny Mason Bee

You can see the difference in size from big to tiny.

Bumblebee

Common Green Bottle Fly, I think, with Green Sweat Bee.

This Carpenter Bee has wings that are further apart.

I used to look at August as the most insufferable month of the year, but months aren’t always logical these days.  Something peculiar is happening.  A giant portion of June leaped forward into August, and part of August is falling back into June.

As usual, I’m at my garden table on the back deck at the same time the neighbors’ children have burst forth from the school bus to wreak havoc on my wellbeing.  Larger green cicadas are fewer in late summer, and revving up their song of love sounds gentler than the hordes of spring red eyed cicadas.

It is so pleasant this week, 81 degrees F. at 3:30 in the afternoon.  The heat can still be felt though, until breezes pass across the deck playfully ruffling my hair.

A squirrel is busy chattering, as a female cardinal has lighted onto a viburnum twig to pick at the yellow cream berries slowly ripening into tiny pale pinks before turning into an ocean of dark blue.

Cottony clouds are passing over to dim the sun intermittently, and it feels wonderful to be liberated from the four walls of stuffiness indoors.  Traffic is picking up, as it always does this time of day, past the house next door, and is joined by the noise of a light aircraft passing over head and fading away.

Mud dauber wasps are flying about, no doubt looking for mud and spiders.  While we have mud for the taking, the poisoning of the ash tree every other year decimated the spider population for now.

A group of leaf-footed bugs have been spotted on the coralberry bushes where the ash tree trunk once stood, a few are mating, and others sucking juice from the berries.  It has been the first time in thirty odd years that I have spotted any creature enjoying any part of the bushes.

Blue-Eyed Grass has been ordered to fill the containers of non-native herbs, along with something new to me - Scrophularia marilandica (Late Figwort).  Deemed not front yard worthy, it will be tucked into the back garden in semi-shade to hopefully surprise us next year, as it is a magnet for attracting insects with the nectar refilling in the flowers quite fast.

A chickadee chirps off and on, and if it had babies in the bird box this year, I missed it all.  The American dogwood has ripening berries this year, and although sunburned a bit, it is surviving with the extra watering.  It does get shade past 4:00 in the afternoon, but next year maybe not so much with the position of the spring sun.  Then it will most likely die.

A Spicebush Swallowtail was spotted early afternoon along with a pair of American snout butterflies (Libytheana carinenta), and as I sit here typing, I am noticing many turned under leaf edges on the Spicebushes, signaling each is a sleeping bag type protection for a baby Spicebush caterpillar.

I think potter wasps are their worst enemy, as a baby caterpillar will fit nicely into one of their mud creations.  It is the way of nature, isn't it.  Fairness has nothing to do with it.

What a fiasco!  I just noticed sprays of water shooting up around five feet into the air at the ground birdbath, as about fifty blackbirds, six or seven at a time are flapping away madly taking short baths, one wave after another,  before moving into the neighboring trees.  It all ends in less than a minute.  That actually took my breath away… sigh.

The mosquitoes have descended upon me like a wave of blood suckers out for the kill.  I’m out of here!

Later instar nymph

Brown Marmorated Stink Bug, Halyomorpha halys

Detected in the US in 1998 and are now widespread.

Pink Turtlehead

Wild Senna, Senna hebecarpa

Clematis viorna

Seed heads, and I think the brush looking ones

are from flowers that weren't pollinated.

Snail

Viburnum nudum 'Winterthur'

Ironweed, Vernonia fasciculata

Joe Pye Weed going to seed.

Juvenile Cardinal

Beauty Berry 

Coralberry

Leaf-footed Bug

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My Corner of the World

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

Saturday's Critters

It's the little things that are my life.

 

She sights a Bird—she chuckles—

She flattens—then she crawls—
She runs without the look of feet—
Her eyes increase to Balls—

Her Jaws stir—twitching—hungry—
Her Teeth can hardly stand—
She leaps, but Robin leaped the first—
Ah, Pussy, of the Sand,

The Hopes so juicy ripening—
You almost bather your Tongue—
When Bliss disclosed a hundred Toes—
And fled with every one—

    ~ Emily Dickinson

~ July 29

A severe thunderstorm warning has been announced.  Of course, I can see it with my own eyes.  Besides cats and dogs, it seems to be belching out hippopotamuses and alligators with all that never ending baritone thunder rumbling across the sky.

Second week of under ninety-degree weather with most afternoons filled with raindrops; some pounding the earth into a moonscape while other days see it caressed ever so softly with the love of an angel.  We need the moisture, but I think the tree frogs floated down the street two days ago in a swift current for an adventure over the horizon.

I’m stuck indoors.  Hmmm… says much about my home, that outside is preferred to inside… or, maybe not.  My home is in a never-ending fluctuation of messy, not so messy, messy, not so messy, messy… you get the drift.  What ever happened to clean?!?

My houseplants are a redeeming feature of the lesser sort, since I chose the uneventful Peperomia’s as my plants to cuddle with care.  Personally, I think they are torturous creatures in that they just sit there, forever.  That’s it… just sit there!  The diva of the group did sent up a “flower” of sorts proclaiming it’s top-notch of the bunch this year.  Hip hip hooray.

I’ve fried them, baked them, starved them, drowned them, parched them to a crisp, and sunburned one that grows a cover of fuzz to prevent sunburns… I feel a bit guilty.  I know I saw one the other day trying with all its tiny might to dislodge it’s roots from its pot to run away from home.  I’m a bad mother.

Two more bite the dust.  I’ve tossed them into the trash can… my bad.  Two will be repotted into straight Fox Farm Ocean Forest soil, and the juvenile, still in its infant pot, hopefully will be repotted before August.  It’s really difficult getting the lighting correct with the indoor plant lights, plus I seem to have more bad days than good, and a green thumb that is becoming quite black.

Dinner is Calabria Brick Oven Pizza Supreme with black olives and spinach punting to kingdom come the green peppers, per Vic’s choice; and a Pepsi.  I know… it’s a treat, so enough about healthy.  I’m tired of never eating things I miss from younger times.

Until I feel like writing another day, I’m off to enjoy a sinfully delicious feast.

Above - Joe Pye Weed in bud

Below - Joe Pye Weed in bloom

Eastern Rosemallow, Hibiscus moscheutos

Three new plants to join the older ones in pots.

We get a lot of bee activity with this plant that prefers damp soil.

Rosemallow seed pods,

One is green and still ripening,

and the other has dried and opened up. 

European Honeybee, not a native species.

We have many this year.  While they are beautiful creatures, 

they eat food that should be for the native bees.

on Joe Pye Weed

The lavender flowers are

Ruellia humilis, Fringeleaf Wild Petunia

Eastern Gray Squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis

Common Sage, Salvia officinalis

Grown on the back deck, and used in cooking.

Clematis viorna, Leatherflower Clematis

I think this is Leaf-cutter Bee damage.

Green unripened berries are on the Winterberry Shrub.

~ August 1

While this date is the one I have envisioned these writings will be posted, I have been slowed down by a fall in my living room.  Come to think of it, all my falls are in my living room.

I’m in love with my stuffed hassock that broke my fall bruising my butt big time.  I needed my cane and became frustrated at not knowing where I last left it while in the process of shutting everything down for the evening.  I became slightly faint and however I stepped, I took a tumble.

I’ve cut the blood pressure pills in half, per doctor’s orders; and a chiropractor visit put my neck, shoulders and knees back to feeling good.  The egg-like bruise on my right forearm, the bruise covering my left elbow, and the one across my hindside are hindering comfort, but this too shall pass.

This morning as I sit in the coolness of air conditioning, cuddled by an overstuffed armchair, with television remote in hand; I am distracted by a group of young squirrels fighting over the ownership of the sunflower chips in my bird feeder.  The one holding its ground while eating in the feeder, is quite feisty at keeping the others at bay.    It will leave the feeder, hanging onto the pole while chasing any who dare to climb that pole.

I could hardly believe my eyes as one dropped from a branch four feet above and landed on the dome, instantly sliding downwards towards the edge and doom.  Somehow it actually managed to grab the feeder but dropped to the ground when attacked by feisty one.  Although this branch is quite high, it does bend with squirrel weight.  This was repeated many times by those hungry tykes, some succeeding in grabbing the feeder, but most sliding right off that dome, down, down, down to that rocky hard ground.

This spectacle lasted through a cup of hot English Breakfast Tea, and as the entertainment dwindled to nothing, a Downy Woodpecker came in to hang off the side of the feeder to feed, and as it left, a Red Bellied Woodpecker came in for a few nibbles.

I’m off to photograph bees on the wild bergamot plants along the side of the front porch bed, as Vic says they are covered in bees.  Bye!

Silver-Spotted Skipper Butterfly, Epargyreus clarus

on Joe Pye Weed.

Most likely the Fiery Skipper Butterfly, Hylephila phyleus

Horace's Duskywing Butterfly, Erynnis horatius

The white dots are where the wings are clear.

Poison Ivy

Euonymus americanus unripened fruit capsules

Rudbeckia triloba, Brown-eyed Susan

Under the Beautyberry Shrub and its unripened berries.

~ August 2, 2024

I took so many photos before dusk yesterday, that I had to give up the idea of publishing any of them on this post.  They must wait until a later date.

Next Tuesday our huge White Ash Tree will be cut down, and I’m sure the aftermath will be a total shock for me and the garden.  It will certainly leave an enormous void in the center of the backyard, and a sadness in my heart.

No doubt the added light will coax wild seeds out of dormancy that have waited for years to once again feel the warmth of sunshine.

Perhaps they will be beautiful wildflowers,

Or…

Perhaps just ugly weeds.

Do I feel lucky?

Not really.

I’ve been crying here and there this week as memories of loved ones of my past rise to the surface of my thoughts and take over my emotions.  Happens once, twice, or three times a year, and lasts a few days.  It's about regrets formed when I lose someone.  A flaw, I think,  in the way I process it all.  I know it would be to my advantage to think differently, but the doing never happens.  

I’ve been typing, then erasing so many times, I think it’s my que to give up and say goodnight.

    Much love,

        Yvonne 

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