2019 in review

By Crystal | March 16, 2020

Sharing memories of 2019’s garden, with hopes that this reminds us all that happy days will come again.

Best new addition

Meadow blazing star…

…which really is a monarch magnet.

Other new plants

Swamp milkweed was successful in my yard for the first time!

I planted this thimbleweed from seed several years ago, and it finally appeared.

This is narrow-leaved coneflower, the native version of the popular purple coneflower found nearly everywhere. I bought just one of these plants and it seemed pretty lonely in its new spot in the garden. Hopefully it will spread quickly.

I also purchased two other blazingstars (rough and prairie), a bottle gentian, two blueflag iris, and aromatic aster. (The other pots are plants that are, ahem, still hanging around from 2018.)

Successes

All of the milkweeds and the blazingstars did well — possibly because we fenced them in and the rabbits didn’t get to eat them this year. (This one is whorled milkweed.)

The false indigo produced one flower spike in 2018. The following year: about 60!

It had a relatively short blooming period, but it was much loved by bees when the flowers were around.

Wild ginger is doing spectacularly, especially in the more shaded backyard garden.

Fails

The bishop’s cap gave up after two years, possibly crowded out by violets.

The butterflyweed up front, which was a huge two-colored beauty for years and was a host of many monarch caterpillar eggs in years past, and survived the sewer reconstruction of 2018, petered out in 2019. These buds did bloom, but that was the extent of the plant.

Oopsie

When pulling grass from my backyard garden, I suddenly realized I had gone too far and hit the spiderwort.

Fortunately, it was early enough in the year, and it grew anyway, blooming for the first time.

This wild columbine survived being eaten by deer (twice) and a transplant during the blooming season. What a strong plant!

Unwanted

This pretty vine…

…turned into the pretty but invasive crown vetch. Out it came.

And I gasped when I saw this one: garlic mustard! I spend hours helping parks get rid of this terrible invader! And I probably carried seeds back home with me on my shoes from one of those events. I pulled it out long before it could create seeds.

Best unexpected find

Bird’s nest fungus! It’s obvious how this one got its name. Notice the (small) clovers for perspective on just how tiny these treasures are.

New bugs

This chrysalis was hiding under a common milkweed leaf. Could be a red admiral; I’m not sure. I watched it for a couple weeks but it disappeared — likely eaten, since the chrysalis “shell” was gone.

I believe this is a red admiral caterpillar. It’s so blurry because it was almost dark and my phone did the best it could to compensate. I was looking for caterpillars on the pennsylvania pellitory plants in my front yard, since I’ve heard they are a host plant, and I lucked out! Good reminder that what we may consider a weed (in this case, a mildly aggressive sticky weed) may be vitally important for our insect friends.

Previous recaps

Sleeping bumblebees

By Crystal | September 16, 2019

I can’t resist spying on sleeping bumblebees.

Their sleeping positions are sometimes peculiar.

A few rest on the top of flowers — like this bee that looks like it’s sleeping on a pink cloud.

But most of them hang upside-down from blossoms or under leaves.

Joe-pye weed was a particular favorite this year.

This has to be the funniest flower choice I’ve seen. The bees are bigger than the flowers!

I try not to spend too much time looking at them, though, because they seem to get stressed out if I’m too close.

It’s better to take a quick picture and then admire digitally.

Where the bees are

By Crystal | August 23, 2019

With the late and wet start to the summer this year, there were lots of people wondering what happened to the bumblebees.

I was one of them, but I knew that they don’t usually show up until the bee balm starts blooming, so I wasn’t too worried. Only a few showed up then, though.

It wasn’t until the joe-pye weed, purple giant hyssop, and cup plant reached full bloom that the bumblebees arrived en masse.

And now, whenever it’s sunny, the front yard is in constant motion.

Bumblebees on cup plant, with a monarch flyby at the end:

Bumblebees on purple giant hyssop:

Not just bumblebees, but other bees too.

The only thing I haven’t seen much of this year is honeybees.

Where are the bees? In my yard. Plant native flowers, and you’ll see bees, too.

The milkweed is multiplying

By Crystal | June 28, 2019

Milkweed is such an important plant. Its leaves are the only thing monarch caterpillars will eat, and its flowers attract all kinds of pollinators. So it’s exciting to see several kinds of milkweeds taking off in my yard this year.

The whorled milkweed is the big winner. For several years I couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t grow, even though I bought six-packs of plugs in two different years. And then we put up a rabbit fence, which has made all the difference. There are so many individual plants now that I lose track when counting.

I could tell, right when it first started coming up, that there would be more this year — notice the old stems next to the new shoots.

Closeup of several small green plants next to three tall brown stems.

Now it seems like there are more and more whorled stems every day.

Dozens of plants with narrow leaves, in varying heights.

Poke milkweed is such a fun variety. This year it nearly quadrupled.

Three brown stems, each with multiple one-inch plants nearby.

Bright-green hairless plant with large leaves and many green bud clusters.

Swamp milkweed doubled…

Two old stems in the background, four short new shoots in front.

…and it’s looking really good.

Three tall green plants with wet leaves. The fourth plant is not visible.

The common milkweed always shows up by the dozens, so I can’t honestly say that there are more than ever. But there are a lot, and that is good enough.

The edge of a garden, with a half dozen one-foot milkweeds in front of other types of native plants.

The prairie milkweed has never done much, but the two plants are back, so I’m happy.

One milkweed plant with leaves standing nearly straight up.

So far, I’ve seen less butterfly weed than before. But it is always a late bloomer compared to the others, so maybe there’s still time for more to pop up.

Added together, there are hundreds of milkweeds in the front and back garden, which makes for great habitat for monarchs.

Now it’s caterpillar season. My garden has been fortunate to host possibly two dozen (or more) from this first generation of 2019. Even the whorled milkweed, with its skinny leaves, has four residents.

Medium-sized monarch caterpillar resting while eating a milkweed leaf.

Newly hatched caterpillar on the underside of a milkweed leaf.

Medium-sized caterpillar resting on top of a milkweed leaf.

Medium-sized caterpillar eating the top of a butterfly weed leaf.

Large caterpillar curled over a tiny common milkweed that has bent over from the weight.

Medium-sized caterpillar hanging underneath a poke milkweed bud cluster.

Large caterpillar on a milkweed leaf, eating another leaf.

Medium-sized caterpillar upside-down on a skinny leaf.

A hand turning over a milkweed leaf to show a medium-sized monarch caterpillar.

2018 garden in review

By Crystal | April 22, 2019

Spring is right around the corner, so I’d better quickly document what happened in the garden last year.

The jack-in-the-pulpit is becoming established! Many are growing now:

Whorled milkweed wasn’t new to my garden this year, but it really took off after we put up chicken-wire fence to keep out the snacking rabbits. A few of the dozens of plants even bloomed!

The teeny-tiny whorled milkweed flowers turned into teeny-tiny seedpods:

Similarly, poke milkweed isn’t new, but this was the first year it flowered. Such interesting, claw-like blooms! This flower didn’t produce any seeds.

Common milkweed covered in ants (this was the only time I saw this behavior, and it was only on this one flower cluster):

A candy-stripe spider with its prey, a Japanese beetle, in a shelter created from a milkweed leaf:

Our two-toned butterfly weed changed this year, due to street maintenance that dug a big hole in the front yard. When the soil was returned, the plant came back, but rotated! Previously, the dark orange half was on the left, and the light orange half was on the right.

I didn’t know that native false indigo is a shrub until I added one to my yard in 2017. The plant is several feet across and has woody stems. One flower spike appeared in 2018:

This tiger lily was a surprise. I didn’t even know the plant was there until it looked like this. I must have planted bulbs, but that would have been years ago.

New critters

Long-horned bees sleeping under a black-eyed susan:

This little hitchhiker ended up on my capris after I strolled through the garden one evening. I decided to upload it to iNaturalist to see if anyone could help identify it — and I didn’t even have to wait for a live person because iNaturalist automagically suggested a name, genista broom moth. Sure enough, a host plant is baptisia, which I would have passed on my walk through the flowers.

That was the only one I saw for awhile, but soon there were dozens, spinning webs and eating the leaves and, well, pooping a lot, as caterpillars do.

Later I found these two cocoons — one on the plant (I accidentally snapped off this leaf but then carefully tucked it back in) and one in a towel that was drying after wiping condensation from car windows. Not sure if either is from these caterpillars.

a leaf that is graying and wrapped tightly like an oblong package

a web of white fibers, with a small white oblong shape in the middle

It took awhile to find what was eating the joe-pye weed leaves, since the culprit blends in so well. It’s a plume moth caterpillar, and the joe-pye weed bloomed just fine despite the holey leaves.

“Yellow woolly bear” caterpillar, larva of the Virginia tiger moth:

We’ve had goldenrods for a few years, but this was the first time I noticed a gall where an insect, cleverly named a goldenrod gall fly, created shelter. There were about a dozen of these in our garden: