It's been a busy week, but now it's a quiet Friday with just the bird feeders to replenish here in the garden. Here we see how the time of day changes the things we can see. There is always something to enjoy in a garden. [...]
There are two groups of plants that are always spoken of as "THE" obligatory species to grow in a wildlife garden - Asters and Golden Rod. Very hot and sunny this afternoon in the garden and ten minutes baking in front of a single Golden Rod produced these eight species. There were more [...]
J, my irreplaceable and invaluable spotter of good things, directed me to these two Clouded Sulphur butterflies in the garden who were making merry, or even hay while the sun shines, on the New England Asters. Clearly they were intent on trying to make more butterflies. The rear butterfly is the male and [...]
Ruby-throated Hummingbird approaches the snack-bar
Great Black Digger Wasp (Sphex pensylvanicus) J drew this to my attention. Normally I would pass this insect by, having tipped a hat to it as one does, as being just another mud-wasp which we often see beside the garden pond. But ... it was enormous, longer than my standard top-joint-of-the-thumb definition of [...]
Although they are not native plants we have a well behaved group of Japanese Anemones in the garden that I always look forward to flowering. One of the native bumble bees was assiduously working the flowers and had pollen sacks full to bursting.
Obedience (Physostegia virginiana) Back-lit in the morning light. A native flower that gets its name from the fact that you can, apparently, twist and turn the flower stems and they stay where you put them.
There is something about the garden's very early morning light at this time of year, as summer starts to fade and autumn waves enticingly from the wings, that really starts a day off well. All the more so with a mug of tea. It doesn't get much better than this. Verse [...]
Most of the plants in the garden have shot up this summer, but especially this group growing in the mead where we no longer mow. The yellow ones are Rudbeckia laciniata, and the purple ones are New England Aster while the "model provided for scale" is standing right next to the asters [...]
Back in the spring we admitted a measure of defeat in the garden over the ability of small rodents, cute chipmunks, to get past our defensive barriers and dig up and kill/eat lily bulbs in pots. Something would have to be done! A few weeks later four huge and heavy boxes were [...]