November in the Garden

When I lived in England, I was always accustomed to seeing butterflies floating about the garden in June, July and August.

In fact I remember earlier this year, being rather despondent at the lack of butterflies in the garden.

I should have remembered that our prime butterfly month is October, and often in to November and beyond.

The garden was ready for them too -- the Vitex, which has bloomed only sporadically all summer, now has quite a few lovely sprays of booms on it.  Just in time to feed this hungry visitor.

We still have some blooms on the tropical milkweed too, but in most cases, the leaves have been eaten by voracious caterpillars.

This photo was actually taken several days ago.  When I went back out to see how he was doing, there was no sign of him.  Then later in the day, I sat down on the patio and noticed this underneath the small table on the patio.

Is it him?  I'll never know, but I'm looking forward to keeping a close eye on it while it goes through its transformation.

And elsewhere around the garden, the milkweed is making preparations for next year.

The brush pile in the utility corner was getting out of hand, so I knew I first needed to tackle the compost bin, which has been more or less ignored most of the year, with the exception of the occasional "stir".

I wasn't sure how much, if any, good compost we would have but was very pleasantly surprised to find the bottom half of the bin filled with dark, moist, rich compost.

I dug out several inches worth and added it to the vegetable beds, in readiness for next year.  Then I got out the "Yard Butler" and mixed up what remained in there and encouraged it to move down ground level to replace what I had just removed.

This provided a few inches of space at the top, so I was able to spend a happy afternoon using our chipper/shredder to shred spent annuals, shrub and tree trimmings and leaves.

There is still some work to be done on the brush pile (while still leaving some to shelter the local wildlife) but it's been steadily raining all day today, so I won't be shredding anything until it dries out.


Maybe next week....


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

What a Difference Two Hours Makes

Here we are in December and, although we had some cold weather and even some frosts earlier in the fall, the recent weather has been very mild.

Even so, I've been surprised at the number of butterflies we still have floating around the garden.  We've got Sulphurs, Gulf Fritillaries, Buckeyes and Monarchs.

At the end of October I blogged that we had Monarch caterpillars and chrysalises.  Who knew then that I'd be able to report another chrysalis in DECEMBER?

Mum and dad (visiting from England for the Thanksgiving Holiday) were mildly amused as I kept watch over the most recent caterpillar and probably thought I was nuts to get excited over it.

When I went out this morning to feed the birds at 9:51 am, I got even more excited when I noticed the caterpillar had attached himself to the fence and was starting to curl up.

I was totally amazed when I went to check on him later to discover that, in a period of just two hours he had completely transformed into a chrysalis! The photo below is time stamped 11:51 am!

For some reason, I thought it would take longer than that.  What a difference two hours makes!


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

Monarch - The Next Generation, Part II

After my last depressing post, about the loss of our pine tree, I really didn't feel much like blogging about the garden, but there has been so much activity in the Monarch nursery that is our back yard, I had to share it!

The caterpillars had eaten our impressive stands of milkweed down to bare stalks. It was just as well they turned to chrysalises when they did - they were running out of food!

I did quite a bit of pruning on the milkweed and they're already responding by putting out more leaves. (Even more so than in this photo taken a couple of days ago of a chrysalis with water droplets)

We've had chrysalises in the oddest places -- the leg of a patio chair, along the eave of the house, on the garden fence, even the grill cover (can you see it?)

Today my husband got this wonderful closeup of the chrysalis on the grill cover.  It will be emerging tomorrow, I'm sure.

 

Below is a butterfly recently emerged from its chrysalis on a plant pot.

The three butterflies in the photos below emerged in the same afternoon, while I was at work.  

Luckily my husband is as fascinated by them as I am and snapped these photos for me!

And this isn't the end of them yet.  The chrysalises in the photos above haven't emerged yet, and there are more on the fence yet to emerge.  

 .  
 I even saw another caterpillar munching on milkweed yesterday.  I hope there's enough to sustain it!
 



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

More Monarch Progress!

One evening during the week, I headed out to the front garden with a view to pruning the milkweed, which have completely taken over the front border.  They're tall and straggly and I wanted to cut them back to encourage bushier growth, as the ones in the back garden have done.


However, as I bent over to prune, I came eye to eye with a fat juicy Monarch caterpillar.

 Moving on, I looked around some more and was delighted to count upwards of 15 caterpillars all steadily munching on the aforementioned out-of-control milkweed.


I made the decision then and there that the pruning could wait!  Since then I've been on caterpillar watch.


I was a little concerned yesterday evening as I was looking around and there seemed to be less caterpillars.  In addition, a mockingbird was keeping a wary eye on me and giving regular "chucks" of annoyance.  

Her behavior was strange and I thought that perhaps she had been eating the caterpillars and was annoyed at my presence.  However I have read that monarch caterpillars are unappealing to birds and are not eaten due to the presence of cardenolide aglycones in their bodies, which they ingest as they feed on milkweed.

Her strange behavior was suddenly explained a few minutes later when I went into my husband's den, which is at the front of the house.  I was standing by the window talking to my husband when a flurry of movement outside caught my eye.  I looked out and was thrilled to see a fledgling mockingbird clinging precariously to a milkweed stem.  "Mom" swooped down and gave a chuck of encouragement and flew up to the gable of the roof.  The little one fluttered to the next milkweed stem.

By the time I got outside with my camera, they were in the trees next door.  I couldn't see them, but I could hear mom still encouraging her offspring.

 So -- back to the Monarch caterpillars -- where were they all?  What had happened to them?

That's when I looked up to the gabled roofline of the house.  Oh what a wonderful sight!  There were several caterpillars, now hanging from the roof, obviously beginning the miracle of metamorphosis.

I took lots of photos of them, but unfortunately, when I went to take more photos this morning, I realized I've completely misplaced the Sandisk out of my camera!!!  We looked all over and couldn't find it. Hopefully it will turn up, but for now I don't have the photos I took of the caterpillars yesterday.

I did get this photo of a caterpillar picking out his spot this morning.

 He's not the first, as you can see from this longer shot.  The caterpillar is on the right.  Next to him are two new green chrysalises and further up to the left are some chrysalis shells from earlier this year.

 This one is right by the front porch and will be nice and easy to keep tabs on.

These three are on the west side of the house by the downspout.

This one didn't show much ambition -- where the others are all at least  8 feet off the ground, this one attached itself to the stonework a mere foot above ground level.  I hope it doesn't cook there - the area gets full sun.

So the total count is 7 right now (that I can find, anyway). If the caterpillar in the first photo makes it (it was still munching on milkweed this morning) it will be 8.  And if the caterpillar in the second photo makes it, the total will be 9.

I just hope they all make it -- I have read awful things about nasty bugs that suck the juices out of chrysalises and kill them.  We've done what we can, not sure what else we can do at this point.

Rather than get all melancholy about the unfairness of Mother Nature, I'm just going to Think Positive and hopefully we will have contributed to more Monarch Butterflies in the world.

 

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

The Magical Month of May

Earlier this week I noticed a mockingbird that seemed to be coming and going a lot. At one point I saw it on the fence with a beak full of nesting materials.  As I sat on the patio, I began to realize that it was probably nesting in the false cypress we have against the fence on the west side of our garden.

 As you can see from the photo, this was where we had put up the nesting shelf for the cardinals.  As of yet, the cardinals have ignored it, but if you look closer, you'll see that Mrs. Mockingbird was kind enough to build her nest right where I can get good photos without having to teeter on top of a step ladder!

When I took a peek this morning, I was thrilled to discover a beautiful speckled blue egg. Hopefully there will be more to follow.

The nest is very sturdily constructed, having been started last year, but never actually used.  I'm so thrilled that someone is nesting in it this year.  With the loss of habitat either side of us, I'm particularly happy to see that we still get birds in our garden and that they choose to nest in the habitat we are building.

I was going back through my iPhoto library because somewhere I have a photo of this particular nest when it was just a few sticks.  I couldn't find it, but I did find some other photos that reminded how magical May can be.

For example -- it was one year ago today that we had some unusual visitors to our garden.  I don't think I showed this video before, but we had a visit from a family of these little guys, drawn to our garden by the soggy ground under our hose reel.

They stayed with us for two days and I was fascinated, but a little relieved when they moved on -- my flowerbeds were starting to show signs of wear!

More magical moments in the garden last May when a Carolina wren nested on our patio.  I just happened to have a day off from work and be sitting on the patio on the day the young ones left the nest.

In last week's post, I celebrated the fact that we were finally hosting some Monarch caterpillars on the milkweed in the front garden.  More recently, I spotted a couple of tiny caterpillars no more than half an inch long on the milkweed in the back garden.

As I was heading out the garden gate to turn on the water so I could refresh the bird bath, I saw something I have never seen before in my life -- a Monarch chrysalis!!

As we head further in to May, I'm looking forward to more magical wonders in the garden.  I'll keep you updated on Mrs. Mockingbird and her family and let you know how things develop.


Happy gardening everyone!

 


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