Modeling for the Camera

A Solitary Katydid's Home

One lone pink flower

with a golden throat

on the edge of

a barren strip mall

surrounded by dusty concrete 

and heat cracked  blacktop 

is a quiet home 

for a solitary  katydid. 

(I took this photo yesterday in front of a Burger King...the one lone daylily in the middle of heat strangled concrete caught my eye--then the little creature inside demanded a photo.)

Linked to Macro Monday and Mandarin Orange Monday. 

In the garden today...

Is this a grasshopper?



Discarded bluebird egg.



Yellow tiger lily.



In the Garden: The Good, the Bad, the Beautiful

The good--a swallowtail butterfly caterpillar munching on carrot leaves. Now this is the kind of bug I like to see in my garden.

The bad--hoards of Colorado Potato Beetle larva demolishing my potato crop. I've picked hundreds off my potato plants the past week and new ones appear each morning...

The beautiful--a thistle flower getting ready to open. Yes, I may be crazy, but I do encourage the thistles around my garden to feed  the butterflies and finches. 

And we might as well throw in the tasty--this summer I finally know what it like to have too many raspberries. I've picked over twenty quarts so far and have barely made a dent in the crop. It is a good problem to have, though quite time consuming!

What is happening in your garden right now?

Butterfly and Daisy

This butterfly posed nicely for me on the daisies which are just starting to bloom. Not sure of the identification, so if anyone knows what it is, please let me know!

Linked to Macro Monday.

Turkey Eggs and Trilliums

I was out in the woods this morning pulling the never ending garlic mustard (what else does a person do on her day off in the middle of May?) and nearly stepped on a nesting wild turkey. It gave us both a good scare as she flew off. I quickly snapped a few photos of her dozen speckled eggs then left the woods, hoping that I didn't scare her off for good. This is one place where the rest of the garlic mustard won't get pulled this spring!

I'm loving watching our trillium turn from white to pink--and once again thankful for the cool weather that is prolonging the blooms (and making it more comfortable to work outside!).

And this morning, a non-tattered red admiral sat still on a dried oak branch long enough for me to snap a few photos...

In other news, I have bluebirds nesting in the bluebird box (house sparrows have taken up residence the past two springs). Now if I can just keep the raccoons from discovering the nest and eating all the eggs...

Tattered Red Admiral

We have hundreds of red admiral butterflies this spring. On warmer days there are clouds of them in our yard. Apparently the warmer winter and early spring provided the perfect environment for the caterpillars and hibernating butterflies to survive.

Woods by Starlight

The forest is queenly in the night

she wears the crescent moon

upon her brow

Venus adorns her throat

a myriad of stars 

are tangled in her hair

one thousand frogs in chorus

serenade her beauty

majestically, protectively

she draws me into her shadows

woods by starlight,

where time stands still.

***

Linked to Real Toads.

(written using word sketching--my four words--well five really--are crescent moon, forest, Venus, and frogs.)

Giant Mystery Moth

These photos were taken by a friend last spring in the Garden Center of a Lowes' store. Neither of us have seen anything like this month before and I am hoping one of my readers will be able to identify it for us.

Linked to Macro Monday.

Thank you to Sandy and Farming Mama--This is a Columbia Silkmoth, and yes, it is native to Michigan (as well as many other parts of the US and Canada).

Remembering Summer

After yesterday's rather chilly photo and poem, I decided I needed some color to warm me up. What better place to look for color than last summer's yard and garden?

Basket, basil, and vegetables. I wove this grapevine basket to share as part of a blog giveaway last summer--it ended up in California with Heidi at My Simple Country Living.

One of the of my many mystery roses. I'm looking forward to seeing how my mystery roses do over the winter and to many more blooms this coming summer.

We got the hammock up a bit late last summer. This year it is going up as soon as the weather warms up and I'm going to put my feet up and read among the butterflies and chickadees every chance I get!

I didn't see many Monarchs last summer, and most of the ones that I did see didn't stick around for photos. However this Monarch stayed still for several minutes allowing me to get several photos. We encourage milkweed on our property for the Monarchs.

And what could say warmth and color better than a Baby Bear pumpkin? I'm still thrilled that was able to outwit the Squash vine borers last summer and harvest fully ripe pumpkins and squash for the first time since I have lived in Michigan.

The Easy Way to Plant Potatoes

When I was growing up, planting potatoes was my father's way of opening up new garden space. My dad would winter the cows in the plot he wanted to turn into garden. A thick layer of straw, hay, and manure would build up on the ground over the winter. Come spring the cows would be moved to pasture and the plot were they had over wintered would be staked out in straight rows for potatoes. Planting the potatoes was as simple as tucking the seed potatoes under the mulch every 12 inches or so. Harvest was just as simple. Come fall, all we had to was rake back the hay and straw and harvest the potatoes that were laying under the mulch, but on the top the ground.

Now I don't have cows, but I can still plant potatoes using the same principle. This weekend I prepared a row in the garden for the potatoes I will plant next spring. I cut down the corn stalks that had been growing there and removed the bigger weeds such as yellow dock and thistles. The smaller weeds I didn't worry about. Then I put down about six inches of partially decayed wood chip mulch.

 Next spring all I will have to do is is tuck a potato under the mulch every 12 inches or so. No digging, no weeding. I may have to add more mulch next spring depending on how much the wood chips have settled. But that will be it.

Growing potatoes couldn't be easier.

You can do the same thing using shredded leaves, straw, old hay, or other mulch.

It was another beautiful day today with highs in the high 50's. The honey bees were out in my garden working the remaining flowers.  (Yes, we still have some!) This bee is on  a bok choy flower.

Linked to Homestead Revival's Barn Hop.

Tree Frog

Linked to Macro Monday.

Little Yellow Polka Dotted Beetle

He was hiding under the folds of the cabbage I brought in from the garden for dinner tonight. After a little photo session, the little yellow polka dotted beetle was put back out into the garden.

Linked to Macro Monday.

Thanks to Victoria for identifying the beetle. It is a spotted cucumber beetle and in spite of being quite pretty is actually a garden pest.

Butterfly and Pebbles

An Eastern comma butterfly pauses for a a moment on our gravel driveway.

Linked to Macro Monday.

A Tiny Pink Spider

Giant Spangled Fritillary

I've only seen a few of these butterflies on our property so far. Again, please correct me if my identification is not correct. Giant Spangled Fritillary caterpillars hatch in the fall, overwinter on violet leaves, then in the Spring,  feed on the violets leaves. The adults feed on the nectar of thistles, butterfly weed, Gloriosa daisy, and verbena.

Jewel Frog

"Frogs have it easy, they get to eat what bugs them." --author unknown

Linking to Macro Monday.

Eastern Comma Butterfly

Another butterfly to add to the list of butterflies I know by name! This is a comma butterfly.  I've been trying for weeks to get a photo of one so I could identify it. Finally yesterday, one sat still long enough on the side of the house for me to take several photos.

The comma butterfly has a little white comma on the underside of its wings. I'm going with Eastern comma due to the little hooks that this one has on each side of of the comma. If someone knows differently, please let me know.

Comma butterflies overwinter, and because of this are one of the first butterflies to appear in the spring. They like to drink sap oozing from wounded trees. I will admit I haven't noticed these the past two Springs we have been here, but, I wasn't looking for them either. Now that I have a name to put with their faces (er, wings?) I will have to look for them next spring.

The caterpillars feed on the leaves of nettles, hops, hazels, and elms. Adults especially like nectar from dandelions and thistles. (The only plant we don't have on that list is elm trees. We love dandelions, don't mow the thistles, and have a woods full of stinging nettles and hazels. The former owners also planted a couple of hop plants.)

Silver Spotted Skipper

This is one of our more common butterflies. I've been trying all summer to get a photo, and finally a few days a managed to get photos of two different butterflies. We are pretty certain it is a is a silver spotted skipper. If anyone knows differently, please let me know. It has been quite exciting learning the names of our butterflies this summer. I still have more to learn, though.

The butterfly in the next two photos is the same kind, just older. The wings are getting tattered and the colors are starting to fade.

Apparently silver spotted skippers will only feed on pink, blue, purple, red, and sometimes white flowers. I do know they love our butterfly bush, and on a sunny day there are usually several on it at all times.

Of Frogs, Pumpkins, and Butterflies

It has been a busy week at work (it always is after a long holiday weekend) and I haven't spent much time in the garden, other than to go out and pick a few tomatoes. This little guy lives in my tomato patch and I finally managed to get a photo of him today before he scurried away to hide.

When I got home tonight I took a quick walk around the garden to see how much damage a week of neglect had done. Not much, for the weather has been very cool and has put a stop to rampant ripening. I will have to pick and freeze green beans this weekend and can some more tomatoes. If I get to it, there is some cabbage ready to be made into sauerkraut. But for the most part, things seem to have stalled a bit. The cool weather even caused the zucchini to slow production. 

What amazed me was the baby bear pumpkins. When I looked at them 4 or 5 days ago, they were all green, and I wondered if they would ripen before the vines died. Today I went out and counted 15 orange pumpkins. There may be more. My pumpkin patch is embarrassingly overgrown with fox tail grass.  Baby bear is a little pie pumpkin with semi hulless seeds. Maybe I will pick one this weekend and try it...

I finally saw what I think is my first Monarch this summer. I've been seeing butterflies that look similar, but learned recently that they are actually Viceroys. (Thanks to Anne at Gardening with Binoculars for identifying this viceroy).

The Monarch is hanging out on a fox tail grass head in my pumpkin patch. We do not mow the milkweed on our property in hopes of being a little oasis for the Monarch caterpillars in the sea of genetically modified soy and corn that surrounds us. (I do love living in farm country though, and would much rather see corn and soy fields, even if they are genetically modified, rather than subdivisions.)

This post is part of Garden Life over at No Ordinary Homestead.

If you haven't done so already, you can enter Dandelion Haven's first giveasy to win some organic garlic for planting or eating this fall and a wild crafted grapevine basket.