I’m still contemplating my new year’s resolutions but before looking forward, I want to take a quick look back. Here’s a short list of what happened in my garden in 2016:
Failures
Pasque flower simply didn’t come back, after a couple years of doing well. This was a cultivar, and I bought a native to replace it.
Purple prairie clover started fine but was eaten by rabbits.
I scattered swamp milkweed seeds in the fall of 2015, but nothing sprouted.
Successes
Wild columbine thrived in its first year in the yard, after being transplanted late the year before
Strawberries not only survived their first winter, they produced several berries. The plants spread far in late summer, so we’re hoping for a real crop next year.
Our first-ever grapes, after years of relatively healthy grapevines! (Though not surprisingly, something ate them before we could.)
Some kind of super-tall (8-foot) aster.
Unintentional beauty of onion flowers, which were leftovers from 2015 and continued growing on their own.
New creatures
More and more insects (and other creatures) are finding a home, or at least dinner, in our garden. These are some of the things spotted for the first time:
mourning cloak
swallowtail caterpillar
hairstreak butterfly
summer azure butterfly (I think)
a similar, but I don’t think the same, butterfly
another kind of wasp (I think)
some kind of orange dragonfly
swamp milkweed leaf beetles
candy-stripe spider fighting a Japanese beetle (more to come on this encounter)
whatever this little orange bug is
hibernating wooly bear caterpillar, accidentally uncovered when doing late-season planting
Overall
I always have several blog posts in my head and an even longer list of potential ideas, but it’s hard to get them written. So there were not nearly enough blog posts in 2016, but I posted almost daily during the growing season on Instagram.
My biggest personal success was becoming a master naturalist. I anticipate this will become a bigger and bigger part of my life going forward.
