Resting

Last weekend, I noticed that an optimistic gulf fritillary butterfly had deposited little cream-colored eggs all over my passion vine seedlings that I got by mail order a few weeks ago.  While the plants look quite healthy, they have not really grown since I got them – they barely have six leaves each, but each of those leaves is now host to at least one egg each.  Unless that plant has a growth spurt soon, it’s not going to be able to support all the caterpillars that are going to hatch in a few days.  As I was sitting on the deck steps pondering this dilemma, an ugly little fly landed on my jeans and captured my attention just long enough to snap a photo:

Chamomile Buds

This is one from a couple of weeks ago that I was meaning to post:

 

Red-Spotted Purple Butterfly

This Red-Spotted Purple butterfly was sunbathing along our driveway.

Red-spotted purples are closely related to admirals and viceroys.

Deck to Nowhere

Originally, before we bought our home, the back yard looked like this:

Yes, that is a rusty old above-ground swimming pool.  A pool that needed a LOT of work to become functional again.  We were thrilled that the seller graciously agreed to have the pool removed before settlement:

This left us with a roughly flat, grass-less plot right in the sunniest part of our yard – perfect for a garden.  Too bad what’s under the straw is all Georgia red clay.

It also left us with what I affectionately call “the deck to no-where” – the part of the deck that had been used for the pool, which juts out over the yard.  This is a better view of the deck to nowhere (before the pool was removed):

I had been reading about square foot gardening and decided to give it a try.  Eric and I made two 7×2 foot and one 7×1 foot garden boxes to fit just under the perimeter of the deck to nowhere:

My plan is to grow vines along the inside and shorter plants along the outside, creating a bit of a green wall (hopefully with some colorful flowers, veggies, and fruits mixed in) up to the deck platform.  If that works, maybe it will look more like an intentional garden element rather than the deck to nowhere.

All three boxes are now filled in with dirt, seeds, and a few plants.  We also put down weed-barrier fabric (made from recycled plastic soda bottles – pretty cool!) and mulch to cover the area directly under the deck:

Next project … a field of sunflowers under our kitchen windows (in the second photo, those are the three side-by-side windows).

Robin Eggs

We had a very windy, cool weekend.  Perfect weather for doing yard work.  In the course of mowing and walking around picking up sticks, we found three robin egg shells that were blown out of the nests.  It’s been a while since either of us lived somewhere that we found robin egg shells all over our yard.  Quite fun to think of so many baby robins up in our trees!

Pretty in Pink

I found a little praying mantis nymph in my carnations and could not resist a portrait (they are one of my favorite bugs after butterflies and spiders):

Red Admiral

Eric and I went for a walk at McDaniel Farm park after work today.  The blustery wind caused both of us to be pessimistic about the prospect of me photographing any butterflies, but I took my camera anyway.  It turns out that we were only partially right – it was not a good day to find butterflies nectaring.  However, it was fine weather for watching medium-sized butterflies flitting about and sunning themselves in the small pockets of filtered sunlight in the shelter of the woods.  We saw some painted ladies, buckeyes, and – my favorites from today – a pair of red admirals that were dancing in the path ahead of us.  One rested for a while, giving me plenty of time to sloooooowly inch closer for this photo.

Just a Name

Juliet:

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

The Race Is On

I recently purchased a Wild Blue Indigo seedling.  It is very small and scraggly – just about 8 inches tall and all of a dozen small leaves.  I selected it because it is a host plant to a handful of butterflies and I think it will do well in our climate here.  I will pamper it for a year or two in a container and by then I hope to have a permanent place for it in our butterfly garden in the back yard.

Despite this plant’s immature development and protected location under the deck (it is still hardening up), a butterfly found it and laid at least one egg.  I noticed evidence of this yesterday when some small tell-tale holes were visible in one of the leaves.  Today there are several little holes like that.  I only found this one caterpillar, however.  By the looks of the caterpillar, I believe it’s a sulphur (maybe a clouded one), but the caterpillar needs to grow a bit more before I can ID it.

So now the race is on: who will grow faster?  The caterpillar or the seedling?  I considered removing the caterpillar to make sure that my plant is not devoured before it has a chance to grow … but then I decided to just let nature take its course.  The odds are stacked against the caterpillar anyway … it’s likely that a wasp or spider or bird will find it before it grows to maturity.

When I was looking through the handful of photos I snapped, I noticed what looks like a trail of white silk at the tail end of the cat.  I wonder if it is preparing to molt?  Some caterpillars attach themselves to a leaf with silk when they are getting ready to molt.  So many curious questions….

Kudzu Bugs

The last weekend in March, Eric and I went back to the little townhouse we had rented to clean it up so that we could get our security deposit back.  As we were pulling into the little cul-de-sac where we used to live, I noticed a few purple blooms on a nearby wisteria plant. We remembered that shrub from last year, and last year it had more than just “a few” blooms. When we parked, we walked over to look more closely at it. When we walked up to it, it was immediately evident that something was wrong with the plant.

It looked scraggly, was lacking foliage, and the small bursts of color were rather pitiful and puny, as compared to the elegant draping flowers in full bloom elsewhere in the area.

When we looked more closely, we realized that most of the plant was covered in strange little beetle-like insects.

Upon even closer inspection, we realized that they were the Kudzu bugs we had been recently hearing about from others.  Here is a handful in my palm:

Kudzu bugs are related to stink bugs.  When alarmed or disturbed (or squished), they emit an unpleasant odor.  We got to experience this when I grabbed a handful for the close-up photo.

Kudzu bugs are natural consumers of the kudzu vine, an invasive plant which has spread throughout the south.  Kudzu bugs are also invasive and were accidentally brought to Georgia in 2009.  They are decimating the kudzu population (which seems to be okay with people), but they also have a voracious appetite for soybeans (which has some more serious agricultural repercussions).  They have no natural predators and have been very resistant to pesticides and other attempts at population control thus far.  Their population is exploding here and they are spreading to other states.

We have read and heard about some horror stories from homeowners here in Georgia, as well – people whose homes have been infested when huge swarms of kudzu bugs seek shelter in the late fall and winter.  One man, I believe in Georgia, counted the kudzu bugs he vacuumed out of his attic.  The number was in the 10′s of thousands.  A colleague told Eric how large swarms of the bugs sun themselves on the the white pillars on the front of his home.  Attempts to dislodge them have been unsuccessful (they stain things when squished, emit that unpleasant odor when disturbed – which gets into the house, and pesticide applications have little long-term impact).  They are so dense that they cover the pillars entirely – they appear to be a textured brown color instead of white.

It was very creepy to see this wisteria at our old home covered in kudzu bugs … this was really the first time we witnessed an infestation ourselves.  I just hope I don’t dream about these bugs – this is the stuff nightmares are made of!