Remember how I was recently hopeful that my large and ever-expanding colony of common milkweed would finally rear its first "crop" of monarch caterpillars?
I mentioned a while back that my plumeria seemed to be having trouble, the tiny new leaves turning black and falling off. I've since learned that was most likely due to "black tip fungus", and have been debating what I should do about it.
Last week on the morning I woke up with this cold I went for a morning walk, hoping some exercise would help me shake the sick feeling. On the way back I passed a neighbor's mailbox planting for the 20th time this summer and the little flowers caught my eye:
A bit how I feel this Monday morning, but more about noticing the fuzziness in the garden.
I have a relatively small garden for edibles, needing to fence it to keep out the trio of volunteer pruners that are daily visitors to my yard: deer, rabbits, and woodchucks.
Since we got that rain recently and temperatures have been well below normal, the garden has been awakening, changing. It's usually a bit sleepy during this part of summer (except for the heat lovers), but there's so much going on. (Maybe it's just my attitude that makes it feel different?)
Just some quick observations made in the garden yesterday, starting with tomatoes.
Remember the other day when I found a green caterpillar on one of my roses while looking at rose slugs? Well, this must be the year for caterpillars on roses, because I found another one.
It's the time of year when the roses are exciting: foliage is fresh and colorful, blooms are starting to appear. It's also the time of year when a pest makes my normally carefree roses need some help.
June is usually such a nice month in the garden in St. Louis. Sunny, warm but not too hot, low humidity, breezy. (Except this year, when we're getting midsummer-like days mixed in.) All of the plants are really hitting their strides at this time too.
Yesterday's post was titled "Sharing is best", and I talked about sharing my tomato plants with some tobacco hornworm caterpillars. Today it's all about the next level: caring. Last week as I was giving everything a good watering before leaving town for a few days, I noticed that the parsley that I planted specifically for attracting swallowtail butterflies was crawling with caterpillars!
Although it's still unseasonably warm in St. Louis today, it's going to get cold again in a couple of days. Back to normal temps or slightly below, but it's going to feel pretty frigid after this heatwave. So I decided to get another couple of loads of firewood, in case I want to keep extra cozy when the temperature drops. Since the woodpile had a tarp on it and was undisturbed for most of the summer and fall, some mice had created a nest in there. (I saw them scamper away the first time I got wood this winter.)
When winter starts getting to me, there are a few things I can do. 1) I can go to my growing table in the basement and get a fix of green. This often reminds me of work I need to do though, as some of the plants on the table need some attention. 2) I can browse my gardening books and seed catalogs, dreaming, planning, and counting the days until the last frost date. 3) I can go through my old garden photos, reminding myself what the yard will look like again in just a few months, when it warms. (It's surprising how quickly I forget each year!)
The other day when I was restacking some logs on my woodpile to make room for some more freshly-split maple, I found this hibernating caterpillar:
I'm going way back into the garden photo archives for today's post, which is something I don't normally do except when I want to show how things have changed in my yard, or how some plant did in previous years. Today it's all in the past though, and it's not going to be pretty. Did you read yesterday's post about the insect photos from last summer? Did you get to the photo of the ants on the big dead caterpillar? Did you find it to be creepy? If so, was it the ants that bothered you, or the death aspect? Or maybe the giant caterpillar? If it was the caterpillar that you didn't like, then you're really not going to enjoy today's post.
As mentioned yesterday, I found a few interesting photos of insects and spiders from last summer, and I want to share them with you now. I'll put the "cutest" ones first, saving the "creepiest" for later in the post.
At the end of June I got a few banana plants on sale. Let's take a look at how they're doing today, just under 2 months later. (It might help if you refer back to the original image.) First up is what was the smallest of the three plants, which is now the largest, depending on how you measure.
The last two days I've covered storm damage to some of my plants, heat damage to others, and now continuing the theme that I inadvertently started, another type of damage. Any guesses what it is? The storm and heat damage is pretty climate-specific, but this one all gardeners can relate to, regardless of climate.
I like caterpillars for the most part. I usually won't disturb them when I find them in my yard, and I'll even let them snack on my vegetable garden. There are two types of caterpillar that I do not like though. The first is really huge caterpillars -- I'm talking 5-6" monsters. The second is big "swarms" of them.
The other day when I transplanted some coreopsis seedlings, I saw that they all had heavy leaf damage:
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