Gardening

  • Gardening,  Outdoors

    Banded Hairstreak | Satyrium calanus

    This is a video. Give it a few seconds to load…read and come back. Yesterday morning I finished doing the major weeding to one of our beds. It was the last bed that needed to be done and now everything is really on a maintenance mode—which means, continue going through and picking out the cherry laurel, elm, and pine seedlings that will germinate over the course of the next month or two. It’s never ending! As I was removing little strands of basket grass I noticed something drop down and land on the Carolina ruellia. I looked over and it was a tiny butterfly and incredibly docile. I stopped pulling…

  • Gardening

    Tomato Season Begins

    And by that, I mean I started tomato seeds yesterday afternoon. I had intended to move some mulch to the flower beds after Chris picked up a load for me yesterday morning but then he began doing some maintenance on his truck that took longer than he thought. Instead I opted to get the tomato seeds done or else there was a good chance I would never get them done. This year I opted to plant only fresh seeds that I had ordered from Sow True Seed. In previous years I’ve planted a mix of new seeds and older seeds, either ones we had saved in Florida or ones we…

  • Gardening

    A Visit to Fern Plantation

    Arachnoides standishii L to R: Jean, Cindy, Laurin, Andrea, Darla Fern Plantation’s owner, and me. A few weeks ago I was invited to join some other garden bloggers for a little mid-week meetup at a local nursery. No one had been to it before but I had seen it on Google Maps as it is in our neck of the woods. Fern Plantation nursery had piqued our interest but because it seemed to be by appointment only (and it is) we didn’t really know if we could go and visit. Was it wholesale only? After the invitation from Andrea to join the group I knew that I wanted to go…

  • Gardening

    First Citrus Harvest

    Finally, after all of these years of trying to grow citrus we are being rewarded with fruit! The oranges are from a tree I bought Chris when we were still living in our tiny rental here in Houston circa 2011/2012. The tree finally went in the ground when we moved in to the house and we added to the little grove over the years. The lemon tree we added as as a sacrificial tree for the giant swallowtail caterpillars that were chowing on our smaller trees out back, only we didn’t realize at the time of purchase that they were treated with a systemic pesticide and our act of goodwill…

  • Gardening

    Post Early Freeze In The Garden

    Eastern Carpenter Bee, Xylocopa virginica Last week we had our first freeze, about a month earlier than is typical. Last year we had a mid-November freeze, which was also early and then we warmed right on up again through December and didn’t freeze again until January, I believe. Some years here we freeze in December, one year I remember not freezing until January. I liked that year. But this year we got it early which meant Chris shuffled his orchids and bromeliads in and I moved a few plants from the potting bench to the back porch. I didn’t bother covering some things in the edible garden and it looks…

  • Gardening,  Memes,  Outdoors,  Wildlife Wednesday

    Horned Passalus Beetle (Odontotaenius disjunctus) | Wildlife Wednesday

    Last week I was out watering the plants on the potting bench when I spotted a beetle coming out of the compost pile. I had a hunch it was a horned passalus beetle and so I took a few photos and threw it into iNaturalist just to verify—I was right! I’d come across one at Lake Livingston State Park a year or two ago so I was already familiar with the insect, which gave me my initial hunch. Horned passalus beetles feed on decaying wood so I suspect this one was actually ingesting the pieces of wood that used to form the perimeter of the compost bins. Those perimeter pieces…

  • Gardening

    July Garden Tidbits

    I think this late blooming foxglove covered in mold sums up what the garden overall looked like in July. I was finally able to spend some time on the flower garden over this last weekend, weeding two of the beds and tidying up a bit. I started working on the garden path again after having gone through it back in May. The grass issue in the path is aggravating and honestly I think we need to get one of those flame torches for weeding to keep this path in shape. Frostweed, Verbesina virginica. I threw out some seeds from the frostweed that grows in the ROW around here because it…

  • Gardening

    Oleander Aphids | Wildlife Wednesday

    I’ve come to enjoy seeing the oleander aphids in the garden when they colonize the milkweeds and their allies. Of course they also feast on oleanders themselves but I don’t have oleanders so I’ve never seen them colonize on an oleander but then next time I am near one planted in a landscape I’ll give it a look. Oleander aphids are parthenogenic, which means the females basically clone themselves (I’m simplifying here but if you want to delve deeper you can read more here. I did a few papers on parthenogenesis in college on tardigrades and parthenogenesis and found it fascinating!) and can be winged or wingless. It looks like…

  • Gardening

    Foxglove Season

    Foxglove season has come and gone, late April and early May was peak blooming around our garden. In those early days of the spring garden the tall flower spikes of the foxgloves were a welcome sight to see as all of the other plants were growing and working their way into filling in. It helps that the deer steer quite clear of the foxglove so we never have to worry about an impending bloom being eaten and coming home to a disappointing scene. The only downside to foxglove is their biennial nature but such is the way the garden goes—sometimes you have to be patient to wait for a tiny…

  • Gardening

    Celebrating Pollinators for National Pollinator Week 2019

    I thought I’d dig through some photo archives to showcase some fabulous lepidopteran pollinators this week for National Pollinator Week. I originally had a couple of non-moth and butterfly pollinator friends but then realized that I’ve not had a great track record of taking photos of them over the years so there aren’t nearly as many. So, we’ll make it all about Order Lepidoptera today! Someone with more time on their hands would spend time giving a little information about them all but I’m doing good just getting this out! Here’s a small assortment of beautiful moths and butterflies! Eastern Tent Caterpillar Moth, Malacosoma americana – my yard here in…