Wordless Wednesday

Colorado

California

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Wordless Wednesday

East Coast

Mourning Cloak Butterfly

Garter Snake

West Coast

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Can’t Stop!

Barbara: Yesterday my Master Gardener class went to the amazing Tree of Life Nursery in San Juan Capistrano. Growers of an incredible collection of California native plants and located on 30 acres at the edge of Caspers Regional Park, this magnificent piece of land is filled with California native gardens, growing fields, straw bale houses and, of course, many, many gorgeous plants. Owner Mike Evans took us for a behind-the-scenes tour of the operation. It was fascinating. And, boy, do they do it right — from the mycorrihzae that they produce themselves and add to their planting mix, to the Sonoran Desert plant collection they’ve added to help keep the pollinators happy enough to stick around in the summer when our native plants aren’t blossoming.

I tried. I really, really tried not to buy any plants. I found one book I just had to have. That was IT I told myself. But then I saw this beauty beaming a million watts of color straight into my lizard brain. “Must have this plant!” it said. And I obeyed.

Blood Flower Milkweed

Besides, it’s highly attractive to Monarch butterflies and it’ll take part shade, which is pretty much all I’ve got. So I took two!

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Butterfly!

Mary Beth: Is there anything more amazing than a butterfly, especially a monarch? From its very beginning as a tiny larva, to the chrysalis, to the magnificent winged creature migrating thousands of miles to begin the cycle anew, there isn’t a moment of its life cycle that isn’t breathtakingly beautiful.

Swamp Milkweed grows wild on the back slope of my garden and for the past three years I’ve been encouraging it to expand. It provides food for my honeybees and for the monarch butterflies that call Block Island home. Both of them love it and, although it threatens to take over the back half of my garden, I’ll keep letting it seed itself because it is a valuable food source for these pollinators (monarchs are second only to bees in that category) and a critical link in the life cycle of the monarch.

Milkweed blossoms in early July

So I provide food and water for the butterflies, and they give back endless hours of fascination and joy — there’s nothing that lifts my heart more than company of the monarchs as I work in my garden.

In a good butterfly year, the elm trees that separate the garden from the rest of the property will be draped in monarchs, though we haven’t seen this phenomenon for some years now. Wondering why they always come back to that spot, I did a little research and found out that some scientists have speculated that the monarchs might leave a scent on the trees that attracts the next generation.

All summer I watched for signs of the monarchs. First there were the little larvae.

Then they fattened up and became plump caterpillars hungrily munching great chunks of milkweed. (Honestly, between watching the bees and the butterflies, it’s amazing I got any work done.)

Hungry caterpillars

Soon milkweed city grew quiet and I started to search for the chrysalis. And I searched and searched. I’d almost given up on that mid-September day when I was sitting in the garden eating grapes. Suddenly a small green capsule caught my eye.

The chrysalis was hard to spot

I kept a close watch on the chrysalis for the next couple of weeks.

Almost ready to hatch

Gradually it turned dark and I could more clearly see the butterfly folded up inside. I knew it would hatch very soon, so I made sure I always had my camera with me at all times so I wouldn’t miss the big event.

The next day the sky opened up. As it had all summer, it rained buckets.  Suddenly, in between downpours, the sun burst through the clouds. I grabbed my camera and ran for the garden. Surely the butterfly wouldn’t hatch in this foul weather.

Minus its inhabitant, but still beautiful

The female monarch — newly hatched and drying her wings

A magnificent creature — her wing webbing is thicker and she lacks the black spot on each of her hind wings that mark the male butterfly

I missed the hatching, but got beautiful pictures of the minutes-old butterfly. This gorgeous creature, the fourth and longest-lived generation of this season’s monarchs, is on her way to Mexico now. She’ll spend the winter there, reproduce, and finally die.

Soon she'll be off on her long journey

Vaya con Dios little butterfly. Send your babies back to my garden!

P.S. See our Resources page for links to lots of monarch butterfly information, including how you can make your garden more monarch-friendly.

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Benefits of Organic Gardening, Continued

Mary Beth: As promised, here are more pictures of the lovely creatures that will take up residence in your garden when you stop using pesticides. I’ve really enjoyed the variety of bugs that have shared my garden this summer.

What a magnificent creature! The mantis is the stuff of nightmares — fierce and merciless.

And then there's this funny-looking guy. The spotted cucumber beetle is a pollinator, but it carries bacterial wilt in its gut and can cause a lot of damage in your garden.

Dragonfly

Another one – the color amazes me.

A sweat bee, I think.

A syrphid fly.

I really hit the jackpot a few days ago, though. I found a monarch butterfly chrysalis and I was lucky enough to have my camera on hand when the butterfly emerged! I’ll post the photos this weekend.

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