Waste Not, Want Not ... Recycling in the Garden

One of my mother's popular sayings from my childhood, "Waste Not, Want Not", came back to me a recently as we were left with a circle of landscape stones around a pile of sawdust where our tree used to be.

I had been unhappy with the way our island bed was looking this summer. It was surrounded by a single course of landscape stone and I was forever having to pull up the St. Augustine that was poking up between the stones that the edger couldn't get to.  In addition, because we had originally laid the stones directly on the grass when creating the bed using a sort of modified "lasagna" method, as the grass underneath had died off, so the stones had sunk.

Evenutally, the stones almost seemed buried in the grass, and didn't present the nice edging that I envisioned for the bed.

So a couple of weeks ago, as I cast a disapproving eye over the mess the back garden had become, somewhere in the gloomy recesses of my mind, a lightbulb went on and I had an idea.
Why not recycle those stones and use them to start adding a second course of stone on to the island bed?

So that's what I did.  I'm thrilled with the result.  Even though it's not finished (need to make a trip or two to Lowe's to pick up more stones) it just makes the bed look complete.  I'm still dealing with bermuda grass coming up all over, but at least the St. Augustine isn't sticking up between all the stones like it was before.  Also, even when the lawn needs mowing, you can still see the stone border, instead of it being buried in the grass.

I keep finding myself walking around it, looking at it from all angles and admiring my work, lol.

 

Why I didn't think of making it two rows high in the first place, I have no idea. Now I just need to get more landscape stones to finish it off. 

I love it when my "bright ideas" work out right :-)

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

Like Father, Like Son

I had some days off work this week and was able to spend some time just sitting on the patio and watching the butterflies and birds coming and going in the garden. (OK- I did some gardening too, but I'll blog about that later!)

I've been watching at least three hummingbirds zipping about the garden this week, from the Vitex to the Flame Acanthus to the Crepe Myrtle and  to the feeders.

I assumed I had a male and a couple of females, but it wasn't until I looked at the photos that I realized I was wrong.

Yes, we have at least one female, and we certainly have a male -- as this one spent at least five minutes flashing his beautiful ruby throat for me to photograph today. 

(As always, you can click on the photos to see a larger version.)

But it wasn't until I saw the photo below enlarged on my computer screen that I realized this wasn't the female I thought it was.

See that little red dot on his throat?  I Googled "hummingbird with red dot on throat" and discovered on www.hummingbirds.net that while young males and female both look like adult females, the juvenile males can get a red dot on the gorget in late August/early September.

This is the first time I've ever seen a juvenile hummingbird, or at least the first time I have ever known I was looking at a young one. 

I wonder if I'll find a nest next year?

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

Mother Nature Knows Best

I've been sort of grumbling to myself all summer about our overgrown front border and how the New Gold and White Gold Lantana really weren't doing much.  They looked vigorous, and they looked green, but there weren't many blooms.  Not as many as I remembered from last year.

I should have realized that Mother Nature knows best.  I had been expecting blooms at the wrong time!  Just recently, both the New Gold and White Gold started blooming again.  

 
And today, right on time, the annual Dance of the Butterflies seemed to start in earnest.

I love this time of year! This is when I start seeing Gulf Fritillary butterflies, seen here, as well as Buckeyes and Painted Lady butterflies.

This morning I stood in the front garden, in the shade of our young Live Oak tree, and zoomed in on the flowerbed, snapping photos left and right!

The tropical milkweed is coming back into bloom again too, having been trimmed back a couple of weeks ago.   This Monarch seems to be enjoying it. 

 Is it one that hatched in our garden?  I guess we'll never know, but I like to think it is.

What butterflies are you seeing in your garden this summer?

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.

R.I.P. Pine Tree -- A Sad Tale

I think I've mentioned many times before on this blog that the reason we selected this particular lot to have our home built on was the mature pine tree in the back yard, as well as the little "forest" on the outside of the wall.

The builder did the "ribbon survey" and the tree was comfortably outside the line and could therefore be kept.  Or that was the plan, anyway.

But from that moment on, things started going downhill for that tree.

Before we even chose the lot, the developers put the wall in.  On the homeowner's side of the wall, about 5 feet from it, a trench was dug for utilities -- phone, cable etc. -- right through the tree roots.

And then once our lot was selected, the builder took over and bulldozers drove back and forth,  digging out the foundation and then grading the lot. I don't know whether some builders are more careful in preserving trees than others but ours apparently didn't give them a thought.

We didn't realize it at the time, but the bulldozers were crushing all the tree roots and even by the time they had installed the sprinklers and laid the sod, the tree had a death sentence pinned on it.

Within a few months we realized the tree just didn't look as nice as it once had.  It had millions of pine cones and not so many needles as it had.

Things didn't go well for our little forest outside the wall either.  They too had been stressed by the building of the wall and the laying of utilities right through their root zones.  Then Hurricane Ike further weakened them so that, one by one, they succumbed to pine bark beetles or some other disease and died. 

We consulted an arborist to find out why our tree wasn't thriving and what could be done about it.  That's when we learned that the tree appeared to be suffering from stress caused by damage to the roots from the bulldozers. They said they saw it a lot in wooded areas that had recently been built on.

At first they were guardedly optimistic and offered lots of practical ways in which we could try and improve matters.  They did some deep root fertilization and a deep core aeration to try and loosen up the compacted soil around the roots. They did annual treatments for pine bark beetle and showed my husband how to use an auger to drill holes around the drip zone, drop fertilizer in and then back fill with mulch and water well.

For a while there, we even thought it might be working.  We saw some new growth in the spring of last year, but of course that was before the drought.

We had thought that it was hanging in there and that it might have a chance, especially with the rains we've had this year.

But all of a sudden this year, it started going downhill fast.  It's like it just gave up.

We called the arborist out one more time and this time, instead of talking about things we could do to save it, he was talking about how soon they could be back to remove it.

I was still in denial for a few days and then one day I was coming home from work and the setting sun was shining on it and it looked like it was completely dead already.

My husband called them the next day and they made an appointment to come and remove it. It was a sad day and I'm glad I wasn't there to see it.

I suppose the moral to this tale is that if you are buying a house in a wooded area, you'd be well advised to consult an arborist before building begins and have him consult with the builder on steps that need to be taken to preserve the tree(s).

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

Monarchs - The Next Generation and a Bird Rescue

I had been looking forward to getting out in the garden and tidying up the milkweed.  It's looking scraggly and it's covered in aphids and other unidentified blobs.

I thought I was all done with caterpillars now and could trim off the yucky bits and have time for some new growth and blooms in time for the fall migration.

Shows you what I know.

Earlier in the week, when I was putting out birdseed, I noticed a tiny little caterpillar, not even half an inch long.  As I looked around, I noticed more of them.  I couldn't get photos at the time because it was early morning and the light was bad.

But I was able to get some photos today.  They've doubled in size already and are looking quite healthy.  They don't seem at all worried by the amount of "crud" all over the leaves they are steadily munching on. 

The earlier caterpillars were all in the front garden, but these are in the back.  We may have more out front, I didn't check yet.

This particular milkweed (below) is a different variety to most of the others in the garden.  It has yellow flowers when it's blooming, while the others all have red/orange flowers.   Can you see how many caterpillars there are on this one plant?

I circled some, but I may have missed some.

I have a HERD of caterpillars grazing in my back yard! 

*********

Remember my recent post, Serendipity?  Well yesterday evening, Serendipity struck again.  While I was refilling the bird baths in the back corner of the garden, I kept hearing fluttering behind the Savannah holly.  It sounded like there was an injured bird back there.

I squeezed in as far as I could and didn't see anything, so I went back to filling up the bird baths.  Then I heard it again.  Definitely an injured bird, I thought.

I so squeezed in there again and, ignoring the prickly holly, moved some branches out of the way and suddenly I saw what was making the noise.  A bird was stuck!

At first I thought it was stuck in the cleft of two branches. But then I realized there was a little metal plant stand back there I'd forgotten about and the bird  had apparently got caught in the leg of the stand where it narrowed. 

Without thinking, I slipped my hand underneath the bird and lifted gently till I was able to cup it in my hands and carry it to safety.

It was a juvenile female cardinal, her beak not yet turned orange. I don't know why I happened to be wearing my gardening gloves to fill the bird baths but I'm glad I was because this frightened young lady showed her gratitude by chomping down on my thumb and forefinger. The gloves saved me from some painful bites!

I was concerned she might have injured a wing and was considering my options as she settled down and just sat in my hands while I talked to her.  My husband came out to see her too and would have got the camera for a photo but just at that moment, she decided it was time to move on.

She started fluttering in my hands and I didn't want to hurt her by holding on too tight, so I opened my hands and she took off and flew to the Vitex tree.  At the same moment, an adult female flew in from the left and joined her in the Vitex -- obviously a worried Mom.

The little one sat in the Vitex for a few minutes, preening her feathers and then they both took off and headed to the hedgerow in the fields behind our house.

I'm so glad that, once again, I had been in the right place at the right time. 


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

An Unexpected Gem - Minack Theatre, Cornwall

On our recent trip to England to visit my family, my husband and I also took the train down to the "West Country" to visit two friends I have known since childhood and with whom I have kept in touch over the years.

One of them now lives near Penzance in Cornwall, and as she was showing us around the area she loves so much now, she took us to Minack Theatre near Porthcurno, Cornwall.

As she drove us on the winding country roads through villages and farmland, my friend explained that Minack Theatre is a world famous outdoor theatre, built right into the side of the cliffs.  

Audiences watch daytime performances with a beautiful backdrop of the sea and nighttime performances under a canopy of stars in the night sky.  

It's literally a Theater Under the Stars.

What she didn't mention was that it is also very well known for its sub-tropical gardens. As you walk from the car park down to the theatre, you walk through the most incredible rock garden, right on the side of the cliffs, filled with a stunning array of succulents and other sub-tropicals.

I wouldn't have thought they would do well on the southern coast of England, but they were definitely thriving.

There were quite a few people visiting and just strolling around the gardens. They probably get just as many people coming to see the gardens as they do to see performances.

Lots of the plants were labelled, such as the Euphorbia resinifera in the photo above.  

But many weren't and I have no idea what this lovely white flower with deep red marks in the center is -- can anyone help? The bloom is reminiscent of my Rose of Sharon, but the actual plant was completely different.

This beautful pink flower with dark centers and veining is another one I don't know.  It had a low creeping habit and certainly seemed to like its spot there.

If you plan to visit Minack Theatre (and I recommend it if you are ever in that area of the country), you do need to be fairly mobile.  

After you've spent a pleasant afternoon strolling down through the gardens to the theatre, and possibly even acted goofy on the stage for the benefit of the webcams that operate during the day, don't forget you have to go back UP again!!

That's a LOT of stairs!!

 

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