Three monarch butterflies have been hanging around our gardens this past couple of weeks (two seem to be a couple, flitting around everywhere together), and one of them laid some eggs on the underside of one of the leaves of this plant above. Those eggs quickly developed into ravenous caterpillars that proceeded to defoliate the plant, before moving on elsewhere. Some ended up on another type of milkweed three feet away, but so far none yet on still another type some ten feet away, where I half expected them to be, given multiple plants. Elsewhere near our home, there is no sign yet of any monarchs or eggs on a profusion of milkweed plants at the boat landing; they were inundated with them last year.
Addendum on 8/12: they finally found the milkweed ten feet away.
Addendum on 8/17: the eggs/caterpillars were actually those of milkweed tussock moths, otherwise known as milkweed tiger moths. See next post.
I returned here a few days after taking this photo, at about the same time of the day, and the backlight on the smoke bush was again spectacular.
A man was standing where I had been, clutching a large drawing pad and furiously sketching the scene before it shifted. His concentration was such that I felt a little bad even saying hello, and apologizing for walking into the scene briefly to ID the yellow flowers in the foreground. “Oh I can work around you..”
Turns out they’re coreopsis, surrounded by milkweed and white columbine.
There’s some beautiful columbine that just showed up in our back yard this year, “volunteers” in gardening world parlance. Here’s the darkest one, with mostly a deep purple coloration, but there’s also a lavender one, and a cream one.
They’ve been part of a second wave of blossoms this spring, arriving along with the rhododendrons and Virginia spiderwort; after the apple tree, lilacs, bleeding heart and bridal wreath spirea, and just before the cascading weigela at the edge of the woodpile.
Three years ago, we picked up this young 4-1 apple tree (four types of apples grafted on a single root stock), and have had perhaps 15-20 apple starts each year, though the harvest was much less. In each of those years, there didn’t seem to be many bees around when the tree was blossoming.
This year, I thought I might help out with the pollination, but shortly after I went out with a q-tip, this bumblebee came by, and put me to shame. (S)he probably visited about thirty blossoms in the first couple of minutes, and didn’t linger on any one for much longer than five seconds. In looking at close-ups later, I saw the evolutionary wisdom of the natural world: pollen scattered over nearly every part of her body. So … as long as there are bees …
