After working in the garden all day in the heat yesterday, today I’ve spent most of the day laying in the hammock or sitting in one of my three garden-viewing perches, admiring the filled-in beds, photographing butterflies (and a hummingbird!), and watching monarchs and swallowtails lay eggs on the milkweed and rue. It’s a pretty awesome way to spend a Sunday.
Swallowtail laying eggs on rue
Echinacea and sedum are pretty togetherJoe Pye weed, rue, and sedum (and a swallowtail caterpillar on the rue in the bottom left 🙂 )Mexican sunflowerPainted Lady on butterfly bushHummingbird! I heard its wings thrum while I was trying to photograph a monarch on the zinnias (see lower right corner). This is the first time I’ve ever come close to photographing a hummingbird.
I saw a buckeye butterfly yesterday too, but I didn’t have my camera so I wasn’t able to photograph it. Buckeyes are gorgeous. I’m going to go back out again now with my book and see what else comes to the garden.
It’s been hot and dry here for weeks. Since I put in mostly natives and drought-tolerant plants, I haven’t watered. That’s been fine for a lot of the flowers out in the garden, but not all of them. The New England asters didn’t make it, and the black-eyed Susans started browning before their time. Now I know.
Big brown blob of dead asters in front of the switchgrass
I went straight out into the garden this morning to get to work before the sun got too high. It took about four hours to snip the brown flowers off the indigo salvia, black-eyed Susans, white coneflowers, roses, butterfly bush, zinnias, shasta daisies, and echinacea. I stopped a lot to take pictures of butterflies.
Painted Lady on Miss Ruby butterfly bushMonarch on zinniaSwallowtail on zinniaBlanketflower (Gaillardia)
Back bed before I ripped out the marigolds
I decided I hated the tall marigolds I planted from seed, so I ripped those out. Which meant, of course, that I had to replace them. One of my favorite things to watch in the garden is goldfinches bobbing on Echinacea cones in the fall, so I bought more Echinacea to replace the marigolds. I waited until the sun was low in the evening to put them in the ground to hopefully minimize the stress of planting them. I’ll need to remember to water them a lot over the next few days since there is still no rain in the forecast. The ground was rock and dust when I dug in. There was no moisture anywhere.
New Echinacea plants (Echinacea p. ‘Magnus’)Echinacea and wind dancer grass (Eragrostis elliottii ‘Wind Dancer’)
Now I want to move a bunch of stuff around, but I know I need to wait. I don’t want to kill everything moving it around in this heat. Plus, the caterpillars are on their way, and I don’t want to mess up their ability to eat and pupate.
I’m not seeing a lot of caterpillars (zero, actually), but the big swallowtails and the monarchs are finally here. I see hummingbirds every day, as well, though I’m never able to photograph them.
Tiger swallowtail on Miss Ruby butterfly bushTiger swallowtail on zinniaMonarch on milkweed
The wildflowers are finally hitting their stride. The blue forget-me-nots, pink cleome, and yellow calendula came up from seeds dropped last year by their predecessors.
Volunteer cleome (spider plant) and forget-me-notsI like the way this little wildflower bed is turning out
I wanted to get some pictures of the full beds rather than just closeups, too, so that in winter and spring when I can’t remember what it all looked like, I’ll have something to remember the garden by.
Reading under the dogwood tree
Front butterfly bed
Front prairie bed
Back butterfly / hummingbird bed from top of hillBack beds from deck, where I eat lunch or drink cocktails and watch the gardenThe remainder of the back butterfly and hummingbird garden
I haven’t seen any caterpillars or big butterflies in a few days (or weeks?). The flowers are pretty though.
Morning shastasYellow zinnia and forget-me-notsVolunteer cleome and echinaceaNew Sombrero Adobe Orange ConeflowerButterfly watch from the hammockFlight of the bumblebee 🐝The Joe Pye weed is blushingI love this Mexican feather grass so muchEchinaceaMy little prairieEchinacea is starting to come into bloomLots going on out back; still needs to fill inLate afternoon out frontOut front
