Flowers of the Field

When I started seriously gardening over ten years ago, I was mostly interested in color schemes, height and placement of flowers, and having something blooming in all seasons.  That is still interesting to me, but since then my focus has moved to growing more food and planting as many native plants as I can.  So I still have non-natives in the yard, but I keep adding native plants, as they attract many more pollinators and provide habitat for a greater diversity of wildlife.  This time of year the abundance of flowers is really wonderful!

Purple coneflowers, monarda – wild bergamot in the background, and Ratibida pinnata, sometimes called prairie coneflower, yellow coneflower or gray-headed coneflower.

I bought this Ratibida – gray-headed coneflower – at the farmer’s market today and I hope it survives the heat these next few weeks, as I usually don’t plant anything this time of year.

View from the kitchen window.

For some reason I bought a lot of packets of sunflower seeds this year, so I planted them all over the backyard.

Monarch on sunflower.  The goldfinches love to eat the seeds.

Two tall varieties of sunflowers in the vegetable garden.  The two in the back are so tall that they have not even started to flower yet.  Can’t wait to see how big they get.

Besides the sunflowers we have a lot of Echinacea purpurea – purple coneflowers. They seem to be multiplying and the goldfinches love them, too.

Black swallowtail butterfly on purple coneflower – taken from the kitchen window.

The monarda – wild bergamot – really took off this year, and it has been swarming with bumblebees and all kinds of pollinators.

A hummingbird moth or clearwing moth of some sort has been visiting all the flowers.

Liatris, blazing star.  I now have two nice clumps growing in the garden.

Rudbeckia hirta, black-eyed susans.

Gateway, Joe Pye weed.  I like the look of the flower as it gets ready to open.

The pollinators like the Joe Pye weed when all the flowers are open and messy.  This is an ailanthus webworm moth.

The fennel plant is now taller than I am and blooming, attracting a wasp and an ant to the nectar.

The male house finch can be seen now and then snacking on the sedum, which has not started blooming yet.

Did the robin enjoy the bath?  Sparrows never miss a chance to join the fun.

But who is this visiting the garden at dawn?

Is this stealthy, fat neighbor cat looking for a bird, a rabbit, a squirrel, or a chipmunk?  Salvia blue hill flowers in the background.

I found two of these large bugs/beetles on the stalk of my new gray-headed coneflower after I planted it.  Do cats eat those kinds of bugs?  Or do birds eat them?

Common buckeye butterfly we saw on a walk last week.  I see monarchs just about every day in the summer in my yard, but there are many butterfly species I rarely see because they like a variety of host plants that I probably don’t have in my garden.  It is just a reminder that wild habitats need protection.

Acorns, Spiders and More

The acorns on our chinquapin oak tree are ripe and it is entertaining to watch the wildlife go for this food source.  And one foggy morning this week we noticed spiders everywhere, so I started looking around to capture a few pictures of them.

Chinquapin oak acorn.  There are a few caps on the ground but the acorns are already mostly eaten from this tree.

The extremely speedy chipmunk can reach to the edge of the branches for the hard to get acorns.

Chipmunk stuffing his cheeks with acorns.

The squirrels are climbing the oak for acorns, too.

A lot of the time both the squirrels and the chipmunks are running around looking for any acorns that might have fallen to the ground and stopping for a snack.

The blue jays arrive every morning and make a lot of noise.  Once I think there were six blue jays searching for acorns in the tree.

The chipmunk dashes about and then freezes when he or she sees me.  Here it is hiding in a messy patch of zucchini.

The chipmunk is trying to get from the zucchini on the right to a hole it dug in the middle of the lawn.

Here is the chipmunk hole in the lawn…

One weekend morning we saw the neighbor cat sit by this hole for a very long time.  I am not sure, but I think it finally gave up.

Pulling back you can see what the garden looks like from the kitchen window on September 15th.  The grass is so dry.  No need to mow it.  We have not had much rain this summer and hardly any for weeks.  The blooming flowers are still buzzing with pollinators this time of year, though.

Solidago rugosa ‘Fireworks’ goldenrod

The wasps seem to be particularly attracted to the goldenrod.

Bees are all over the sedum.

The sedum gets a lot less sun as the oak tree grows, leaving a less exciting sedum display.  The drought may be having an effect, too, so I have not noticed as many butterflies visiting.  We have also had unseasonably cool weather this past month, though the heat is back this week.

All those sedum leaves are a perfect place for hiding spiders, waiting to catch a fly lunch.  This week we noticed spiders everywhere in the garden.

Just outside our front door a spider had tied up a nice meal package.

An orb spider has been spinning her web below the clothes line every night just outside my office window.  In the morning the web is highlighted by the fog.

And I have to remember to always give the kale leaves a good shake to get rid of lurking spiders before bringing the kale in for soup.  Otherwise the spiders are running around the kitchen sink….

The bean pole structure has a colony of daddy longlegs spiders.  When I pick beans they move out of the way, so they are not too scary.  I have stopped picking beans for the year, though, and will just harvest the dried beans late in the autumn.

I picked up a prairie dropseed ornamental grass at the farmers’ market and planted it where some of the strawberries have been dying off.  I hope it will get established before winter.  The nasturtiums look tired out by the drought.  Maybe I will water the vegetable garden tomorrow morning…

Butterflies, Birds and Blooms

I am starting to see beautiful butterflies in the garden each day now.

Black swallowtail butterfly on pink zinnia.  It looks like there is a bee under the zinnia, too.  Besides all the pollinators, the gold finches pull these flowers apart to get at the seeds in the middle.

I can see this zinnia patch from my office window during the day and notice when the butterflies arrive.

Monarch butterfly sipping nectar.  I saw a monarch once in the beginning of August, but now it looks like they are in the garden more often.

Such beautiful details on the monarch butterfly.

I snapped this grainy picture of the monarch on my red milkweed, a host plant for the caterpillars.  I have not seen any caterpillar eggs on the milkweed yet, but I will keep watching.

Speaking of caterpillars…each year I have at least one tomato hornworm on my tomato plants.  I love the designs on the hornworm, which will turn into a clearwing moth that looks a lot like a hummingbird.  These orange cherry tomatoes are the best I have ever had.  Week after week they are amazingly sweet.

I think there are some hummingbirds nesting in the mulberries near our house.  I see them flying around quite a bit, but this is the only picture I have gotten of one of them as it sipped on the Russian sage this morning.

This is the second year I have seen this kind of bird in the yard.  I am guessing that it is a female Baltimore oriole in our crabapple tree, but if anyone has a better idea please let me know.

A group of chickadees were in the crabapple this morning.  All I could get was this silhouette.

One morning I noticed the neighbor cat sitting very quietly looking at the area where both the bunny and the chipmunk often hide.  We left the gate open one night and have not seen the bunny since, thankfully.

The chipmunk is very active and has a hole in the ground right at this spot, so it can disappear and come out on the other side of the fence.

The nasturtiums are starting to thrive now.

Marigolds with basil flowering in the background.

We have a lot of peppers in the yard now.  I just picked this bell pepper today after it got a little more orange/yellow.

Dan was eager to remove these two Chicago Lustre viburnum bushes that were infested with viburnum leaf beetles.  Digging the stumps and roots out is a big job for another day.  I am not sure what to replace them with.

What Elephants Know, by Eric Dinerstein, is a really fun children’s book that I read recently.  It is fun for adults, too!  It takes you into the jungles of Nepal….

Have a great week and get out and enjoy the rest of summer!

Northern Cardinal, Snow and Last Garden Greens

We have had a pleasant autumn.  This past week we had some snow, but it did not stick on the sidewalk, so no shoveling.  It has melted now and we had a lovely walk in the woods this afternoon.

There seem to be quite a few northern cardinals in the yard these days.

Male northern cardinal trying out the crab apples outside our kitchen window.

Let’s see how the next one tastes…

Some years the crab apples go uneaten, so glad they seem edible this year.

Female northern cardinal working on a red yew berry.  I think the cardinals have found and eaten all the berries on the hicksii yews now.

House sparrows hang out in the bare branches of the American plum tree.

This shot was taken a few weeks ago from the kitchen window.  Can you see the neighbor cat who comes to visit?  Generally I don’t like the cat reducing the biodiversity in the yard, but I guess I don’t mind the help if it is getting rid of some of the house sparrows.

On Wednesday we had a pretty snowfall, but it quickly melted away.  The winter shadows are long now.

I just took this shot of the remains of our garden.  We continue to pick a few collard green each time we cook, and we got a few tiny Brussel sprouts today.  Mint, parsley, oregano, and thyme are still green if I want them.  Last Sunday a took some buckets, filled the trunk up with horse manure from the local stable, and spread it on the garden.  We also turned the compost pile yesterday and harvested about a foot of compost from the bottom of the pile and threw in the garden.  We can spread it around where needed in the spring.  I see the squirrel’s tail as it makes a get away on the back fence…

Winterbor kale is still growing.  Wonder if it will make it through the winter and start up again in the spring.

The little bluestem grass is wonderful this time of year.  It turns red with feathery seed heads.

When we went to the forest preserve today the woods were quiet and peaceful.

These scraggly roots are just a glimpse of the living matter under the ground holding this forest in place.  All the leaves are down now and the deciduous forest can rest until next spring.

Thanksgiving Wanderings

For Thanksgiving we took a trip to Minnesota to visit family.  There was some fresh snow on the ground so I walked out to the woods, but the birds were too elusive that morning, so I took some tree pictures.

Two grand trees.  Red Wing, Minnesota.  In the background you can see the snow on top of Barn Bluff.

Here you can see Barn Bluff again under another weathered tree, with a nice evergreen tree in the background.

The structure of this tree is silhouetted in snow.

Red (pine) squirrel.   These squirrels are about half the size of gray squirrels and this one was chattering quite loudly at me.

I managed to get one, not so great, nuthatch picture.  This past week I saw a nuthatch in our yard at home, too.

As we drove home I was trying to take some pictures through the car window.  The Mississippi river was mostly frozen and had a very geometric design on the snow and ice.

Across the road from the Mississippi river were the bluffs.  Highway 61 is a beautiful drive.

A few hay bales in the snow.  It was nice to be in the country for a little bit.

Wisconsin farm and corn field.

Back in our yard…  I caught the chickadee working on getting a little crabapple this week.

There seem to be at least two cats in the neighborhood this year.  Since we seem to have an over-abundance of sparrows this year, maybe it is not such a bad thing…  As long as they aren’t getting the native birds!

Winter:  Winter seemed to come early this year.  We have had many days below freezing already.  Today we got up over 50 degrees, though, so the snow is gone.  The compost pile is steaming hot.  We still eat a little kale from the yard.  But now it is time to relax, get cozy, ready some good books, and of course, shovel some snow!