Garden update

Saturday, my neighbor and I bought some fall vegetable plants that were on clearance because the planting season is over.  I was a little leery of buying the plants, which were either pot bound or else too tender because they were still in the greenhouse and not hardened off.  I was also leery about planting them so late, but it's been unseasonably warm, so they may have a chance after all.  Of course, I enjoyed getting out and about and looking at the beauty of the nursery with mums and pumpkins and roses and hydrangeas.  My neighbor suggested if I had done a garden update when I planted my collards she would have known when to plant hers.  Perhaps I've been a little remiss in my updates, so let me rectify that.



The Oriental persimmons are ripening.  I'll have to fight the birds for them.
 
An opossum or the birds pretty much demolished the muscadines.

Here are the 5 collards I planted on August 22.  They don't look that big, but when compared to the one left in the pack that I didn't have room to plant, it's easy to see they have, in fact, grown some.

 

I'm still getting some peppers, though the plants are looking a bit wilted.

 

 

You can see the nice, thick walls of the green pepper I picked last week, part of which went into an omelet Sunday night.  I haven't been getting tomatoes since the fusarium wilt took over, but I did find a small one that is starting to ripen.  I found the potatoes when I planted the cauliflower plants I bought Saturday.  I had missed just a few when I dug them.

 

I planted the 6 Russian kale plants that I bought Saturday.  You can see 2 potato plants growing where I missed digging up a couple of tubers back in the summer.

 

I have a few turnips planted.

 

That's what's happening in the garden.





 

 



 

 

A lot of cock

After having lunch with a friend the other day, darling son and I took a little detour so we could get a picture of this mega-sized rooster.  (Caleb's pic)

Yellow-billed cuckoo

Usually beginning sometime in August, we have an infestation of sycamore tussock moth caterpillars in our sycamore tree.  We also have fall webworms--some in the sycamore, some in the Oriental persimmon, and quite a lot in the neighbor's birch tree.  Fortunately, nature has a balance, and the caterpillars attract some predators.  I'm pretty sure I saw a wren eating one of the sycamore tussock moth caterpillars, and the yellow-billed cuckoo has been around as well.  According to Cornell's All About Birds website, "Yellow-billed Cuckoos are among the few bird species able to eat hairy caterpillars."
I have seen the cuckoo in the sycamore but had never been able to get a picture until this afternoon.  I was able to take the picture through the window.  The lighting was low and the picture is not good, but it is evidence that the cuckoo was there.

 

This is the bird some folks call the rain crow.  I did a post about the rain crow last year.

Does a spider go fishing?

A few mornings ago, I stepped out onto the porch to this sight.  I had removed the web the day before, but it was back, and my first impression was that the spider had caught a fish!  (It was a katydid.) 

Cut privet on "a dark night in September"

My folks didn't put much stock in superstitions, as far as I could tell, and "planting by the signs" seemed to fall under that category.  However, Mom did say that her father said that to keep privet from coming back, cut it on a dark night in September.  Of course a "dark night" would be one that is near the new moon, when the night is literally dark for lack of moonlight.  Sometimes folk wisdom is just superstition, but sometimes it might be based on the relation of plant growth to the time of year (and possibly root growth cycles with gravitational pulls of the earth and moon).  Anyway, the new moon was night before last, so if you have privet to cut down, get with it!

Hardy cyclamen

It's always a pleasure to see these little blooms in September.  (Thanks to Caleb for the pics.)

 

 

Aunt Lizzie's rose (part II)

Here are a couple of follow up pics.  The bud opens, quickly going from red to pink.
These 2 pics are from Friday morning and Friday evening.

 

 

Here is a pic from today.



Aunt Lizzie's rose

Day by day here in September, I'm watching a rosebud open.  This is a rose Mom gave me, which she rooted from a plant my Aunt Lizzie gave her.  My Aunt Lizzie and Uncle Glenn lived in the old homeplace after Grandpa and Grandma passed on.  I have so many fond memories of visiting there.  Porch sitting was a frequent past time at the old homeplace, and often when I'm on my own porch my mind goes back there.  I might imagine the bucket of drinking water sitting on the shelf or the way the sun reflected from the water to make a moving pattern on the ceiling.  I might think of Grandpa's shaving mirror hanging on the wall or my uncle reading a Louis L'amour novel.
I like having this rose as a tangible connection to that old homeplace and my Aunt Lizzie.

First ginger lily blooms

I've had a ginger lily plant for years.  It was given to me by a dear sweet lady who has since passed away.  I think it must like a moist location, which I do not have.  Besides that, where I have it planted, it is probably getting competition from tree roots.  However, we've had above normal precipitation here this year, and I have my first ever ginger lily bloom.  It is quite fragrant as well as lovely in form.

Sights and sounds of September

Yesterday I heard a loud buzzing sound as a cicada (or July fly, as we call them around here) flew into the briars near me.  I eyeballed it, wondering if I could get a good picture of it if I went for my camera.  After looking at it for a while, I realized there was also a katydid in plain sight right above it.  I say plain site, but it was rather camouflaged, being the same color as the leaf it was on.  Those are 2 noisy insects.  I rather enjoy the noises they make, probably because they remind me of hearing them in my childhood.  The other night when it was cool enough to leave the windows open, I tried to pick out the chirp of the crickets, the trill of the toads, and the sawing sound of multiple katydids. 
Anyway, when I came back with my camera, the cicada flew away, but the katydid only hopped a short distance, then allowed me to get a few pictures.

 

In the right light, the katydid was the same color as the leaf.

 

As far as sights, here are a couple of sights I was glad to see yesterday--

new shiitake mushrooms on my log,

 

and a lovely red bloom on the spider lily.

 

September is a lovely time of year.





Abrupt end of monarch saga

Yesterday when I went to check on the monarch chrysalis, I saw nothing there.  I don't know what kind of predator got it.  Those are the ways of nature.  I was disappointed not to be able to watch it develop into an adult butterfly.  It's possible that some of the other 4 caterpillars have pupated and are hanging as chrysalides somewhere in my flower border, but I don't know where they are located if they did indeed survive.
Maybe next year...

Monarchs on my favorite videos

Not long ago I started watching some of Art and Bri's videos.  They are a young family living in the mountains of NC.  I envy their lifestyle, and their family is so loving.  (Coincidentally, they are taking a vlogging break right now, but there are plenty of videos on their channel to go back and watch if you haven't seen them.)  The reason I'm linking here is because they have some awesome time-lapse videos of monarchs, which I've been posting about lately.  The videography is great.

caterpillar to chrysalis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd-_beu2QR8&t=1s

chrysalis to butterfly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2nH0fMyQ54

butterflies released (near end of video "If You Give a Mom a Garden")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdyQSMUw2ts

Apparently it isn't easy to time it right to catch the monarch emerging, so it's nice to be able to view someone else's video.  Enjoy.

From larva to chrysalis

I've been trying to keep an eye on the monarch larvae that have been on the butterfly weed.  Unfortunately, when they crawl away to go pupate, one never knows where they will go.  I was lucky enough to spot one of them nearby on the spiraea bush.
Friday and Saturday it was a larva.  This is what it looked like Saturday evening.

 

 

Sometime between 6:35 p.m. on Saturday and 9:20 a.m. on Sunday, this happened.

 

Amazing!



White M hairstreak butterfly

A couple of nights ago I was looking at a book of wildlife and noted to myself that I hadn't seen the brilliant blue butterfly called the white M hairstreak.  The very next day I was walking along the edge of the yard next to the road when something blue in the grass caught my eye.  I thought it was a piece of debris and stooped to pick it up.  Actually it was a dead butterfly, perhaps hit by a car.
These butterflies usually feed with their wings closed, so it would be possible to only see their grayish or brownish undersides.  I would love for this to have been a picture of a live specimen, but at least you get the idea of how vivid the blue is. 

 





"Heavy Traffic Ahead"

Whenever I go around the Beltline in Raleigh and see a line of brake lights come on in front of me, this song goes through my head:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky8qMe_w-U0

 

I feel for people that have to be in this every day.  Avoiding heavy traffic ranks on up there on my list of "quality of life" priorities.

I managed to get a crack in my windshield from a gravel yesterday, too.  (That was yesterday morning; the picture above was yesterday evening.)  The odd thing about the gravel to the windshield was that it happened when there was a gap in the traffic on my side the road, so either the gravel traveled a lot farther than I thought it could or else it came from the lanes on the other side.  We were in a 65 mph zone at the time, so you can imagine how quickly it happened.