Butterflies and Bees

One of my favorite pastimes is watching the bees and butterflies enjoying the bounty of our island beds.  This year seems to be shaping up to be a good year for them.

This lovely pink flower is much beloved by the pollinators of all types that visit our garden.  But I have no idea what it is!! 

In fact, at it's base, I have a sign which states "I don't remember planting this"!  The very fact that it has taken hold and is thriving so well leads me to believe that it is, in fact, a weed.

If anyone knows what it is, I would really appreciate if you could let me know in the comments.   here's another photo, showing the forming seed heads.

The bumblebees also love the Salvia Greggi., there are usually at least five of them bumbling from bloom to bloom at any given time.  They make me smile.

Another visitor this week has been this Black Swallowtail on the Dallas Red Lantana (at least I think think it's a Black Swallowtail).  I haven't had much luck getting a good photo of it's wings to ID it with.  I tried again earlier today with no luck at all!

I have better luck taking photos of Gulf Fritillaries.  They seem to like landing on blooms to eat, rather than fluttering around like the Swallowtails do.  Makes the photos much easier.  Here's one on the Violet Queen zinnia. 

Here's another one enjoying the Profusion zinnia.  You can also see the sign I mentioned earlier in the post.

I'm also seeing Monarch butterflies in the garden. This looks like a female, so it's not one of the ones I released a couple of days ago from my Monarch Nursery, which were both male.  

Speaking of the Monarch Nursery, I still have 4 chrysalides in the enclosure in the bathroom.  Here's a photo of some of the caterpillars before they changed.

And here's one who has left the milkweed and climbed to the top of the enclosure to make his chrysalis.  

I'll probably get a lot more caterpillars and chrysalides later in the year, as the Monarchs prepare for their migration.  Last year I had a total of 30.  I'll see if I can match that this year :-)  Wish me luck!

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

Wildlife Wednesday - Butterflies and Bees

I'm struggling to get over an upper respiratory infection that has had me wheezing all day and coughing all night for the past few days :-(  I finally managed to get in to see the doctor and am now hoping the medications kick in soon and I can get back to feeling normal again.

So today's post is just a quickie.  

If you saw my post last week, you may remember I showed you two Monarch chrysalises - one on the back of a chair on the patio and one on the eave of the house. You can see the post here, if you'd like.

I'm happy to report that both chrysalises hatched during the week. Although we didn't actually manage to catch the hatching in progress, as I was able to do last year,  we did get photos of the newly emerged butterflies drying out their wings.

 My car was in the shop last week and my husband had to drive me to the Park and Ride bus one day in the week.  When he got home, he saw this newly emerged Monarch on the eave of the house and, since he knew I probably would complain if he didn't, he ran in and got the camera!!

The following day I went out to check on the other chrysalis on the back patio and, sure enough, it has emerged too :-)

I took a bunch of photos, but I was battling with the humidity which caused the lens, which had been inside the nice cool house, to fog up almost quicker than I could clear it.  This was about the clearest I could get. 

Continuing the Wildlife Wednesday theme, the bumble bees certainly like this Globe Amaranth (Gomphrena globosa) that I planted in one of the containers by the birdbath not long ago. This is the first time I have planted these.  I love the color and think I'm definitely going to plant more in the future.  That should make the bees happy :-)

 


Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

Happy Belated Pollinator Week

OK, so I'm a few weeks late in officially recognizing National Pollinator Week, which this year was celebrated from June 16th - 22nd.  But I saw a post of Facebook yesterday asking, "Where are the bees?"   The poster lamented the fact that they had no bees in their garden and they were worried about the consequences.

My iPhoto library helps me keep a record of when I see things in the garden and last year, I seemed to have a lot of carpenter bees and bumble bees in the garden at the end of August and into September.  Not so much in July.

So as I was taking a stroll around the garden this morning, I was pleased to see there were a few bees out there. 

The cucumber vines are covered in flowers and we've already harvested some good sized cukes. This little honey bee seems to be making sure that we get some more cucumbers later in the summer.

 This is better than last year, when we had lots of flowers and not one single cucumber.

Further along on my garden stroll, I noticed some bumble bees on the zinnia - nothing like the numbers we had last August, but it's early days yet :-)  

After a five minute stroll with my camera, the sweat was pouring off me. and that was the end of my foray into the garden for today! I'm glad I was able to find some bees, and hopefully our garden is suiting them and they stick around for the rest of the season.

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

Bugs and Blooms in the Garden

It seems like I haven't blogged in a while. I don't know where my time is going, but I just haven't found time this week to sit down to resize photos and blog until I decided I had to make it a priority this evening.

I don't have a specific subject in mind tonight, so I'm just going to take my cues from the photos I have taken in the past 10 days or so.

First, let me re-introduce you to an old friend.  If you read my post Wild America, you will remember the three-legged stick insect I found in the garden.

Well, guess who I saw again, by the front door this past weekend?  And guess what?  She has a boyfriend!

It has to be the same insect.  I can't imagine that two of them in close proximity to my garden would be missing the same three legs.  It certainly doesn't seem to have affected her adversely and apparently her boyfriend doesn't mind either.

Here's a photo of another fascinating insect that I took recently.

I don't know what type of dragonfly it is, but it's quite lovely and for some reason, it reminds me of an old World War II bomber, somewhat like the one that flew over our house, out of Hooks Airport recently...

(I think it's the "undercarriage" that makes it look like a bomber)

But I digress, this is supposed to be a Garden Blog, so what else has been going on in my garden?

Well the Phillipine Lily, that I mentioned in my blog last week, finally got around to blooming. I actually had three blooming at once, but I tried to take photos on a humid morning and the camera lens kept fogging up.  This was the best I could get...

In the front garden, the Lantana "White Gold" is blooming. I've got several of them dotted around the front and back gardens, but the one in the front is doing best so far.

I love this detail shot of the blooms.

I have somewhat of a love-hate relationship with Crepe Myrtles.  I have three of them in this garden, and I love the bright colors that last all summer long.  What I don't like is the mildew they seem to get afflicted with every year.  I think (and this is my unscientific opinion just from personal observations at previous residences) that the mildew is worse on young plants and once they have got a few summers under their belts, so to speak, the mildew won't be such a problem any more. At least I hope not.

This particular photo was taken on July 7, but a week later it was covered in mildew.  I treated it with a fungicide this past weekend, so I'll wait and see how it does.

Last week in my blog, I included some photos of butterflies on the milkweed, Asclepias curassavica. I think it's now safe to say that other than the daylilies, I have more milkweed growing than I have anything else.

The two original plants (one in the back and one in the front) reseeded so freely, they are everywhere :-)

It's just as well we rarely use our front door, using instead the interior door from the garage to the house, because you almost need a machete to get through these milkweed to the door!

Ditto the garage.  "Fideaux", my husband's venerable Toyota, has to plough through a jungle to park.

And they keep popping up!

So I potted some up to share with my neighbors :-)

To conclude my blog post tonight, here's my favorite photo that I took this week -- a bumble bee on the Vitex. As with all the photos, if you click on it, you can see it full size.

Have a great week!

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Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.