Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May

Munched corn, with a big new hole
in the netting visible.

My garden, on the cusp of delivering on its bountiful promise of just a few days ago, has been decimated! My crop cage, string netting surrounding and covering my big wood bed where my corn and tomatoes are, has been shredded. I think deer may have breached it initially, but yesterday the squirrels made it their own and ravaged it completely. Pretty much every ear of corn has been munched to nothing. The tomatoes are all gone, and the plants are buckled and broken. 

Five years I’ve had the net, and finally it was breached. I think the heat and drought are driving the beasts to get more creative and forceful to eat lush moist vegetables.

Only the basil remains almost untouched. 

I’m so glad I harvested corn and tomatoes when I did. I’ll see what happens to the ravaged tomato plants- they may survive. 

I still have 4 tomato plants in pots, but they have been pruned back by munching deer and aren’t showing a lot of fruit. They are not well protected at all. But squirrels rarely go there. We’ll see how it goes.

I also have the greenstalk towers, with cherry tomatoes and tiny peppers, and basil. Something to take care of and pick from. I also have the zucchini, sequestered in its own bed. It’s protected from a casual browse, but not from a determined assault. 

Now I have to think through more sturdy pest control solutions. Sigh. 

Tomato Massacre

This morning, when I went out to water my plants in pots, I discovered one of them had been completely massacred! The huge pot had been overturned and emptied with the dirt spread all over the driveway. The large Early Girl tomato plant, previously covered with green tomatoes, was snapped off at the ground level, shredded and denuded of all fruit. Sigh. All gone, nothing to do about it. I assume a deer. I moved around my remaining pots to use my large lime tree (which has thorns) to protect the remaining pots. But they are not behind a big fence, so they remain vulnerable.

But it's far from only bad news in the garden. I decided to make a harvest today, partly because I figured I'd better grab some before the animals do!

I've got a small harvest of tomatoes, mostly salad-sized, mostly Early Girl variety. I picked some that are not yet fully ripe - there is a school of thought that says it relieves the plant of a burden so it can continue to make more tomatoes. Once tomatoes start to ripen, they will continue even if picked. And flavor is based on the variety of tomato, not on maturity when picked. (Modern tasteless supermarket tomatoes result from breeding varieties for good transport qualities while ignoring taste - it doesn't have to do with when they are picked.)

I planted a few pepper varieties, based on seeds I already had in the house. None of the peppers are full-sized bell peppers. I've got banana peppers, and small bells that will turn bright colors. I picked some yellow bananas and tiny green bells. I'll probably let the next tranche ripen to more vivid colors.

I went ahead and picked some of my corn! What I read was it's ready to be picked when the corn silk turns brown. But I saw ears with a lot of the silk just gone - and the ears had a lot of ants crawling on them. All of my gardening is only entertainment and experiments, so I figured let's just go see whats going on inside the husks. 

The ears are small and misshapen, and the kernels are irregular. But there are some regular-sized kernals, and I think I'll use a knife to cut off the good ones and cook them in a skillet as part of a veggie saute. (Apparently each thread of cornsilk is tied to a specific kernel - if it gets fertilized, it grows into a plump kernel.)

I've also made my zucchini more vulnerable to pests, but also open to being pollinated by insects. I had it completely under insect mesh, and I attempted some manual fertilization. But I haven't had great success with that. I was defending against a pest called the Squash Vine Borer, but supposedly it's an early season pest, so the odds are much less it will show up now. So now it's under a larger plastic mesh, which hopefully keeps deer and rabbits away, but allows the beneficial insects in.

Unintended Consequences?

I love my fence and how it’s enabled my garden to thrive in the absence of deer and greatly reduced rabbits. It’s even possibly reduced the number of cats visitors, which makes the birds happy. A lot of the fence’s effectiveness at its specified role of “deer-out; dogs in” comes from having closed up the gaps along the bottom. 

Bixby's first turtle

The very first time little Sadie came over after the fence was built, she squeezed under it and was off like a flash! The day Bixby came here to live, I spent a lot of time reviewing the bottom edge of the while fence, plugging gaps with rocks, logs and soil. The fence is built on my sloping yard, so there were sometimes sizable gaps, too small for clunky Rocky but plenty small enough for an eight-pound dog to fit through.

So maybe I was too effective? Bixby has found turtles, or possibly a turtle, on and off all year. He found a smallish one back by my shed—the closest corner to the park and creek below. It was gone in a few hours.  All summer, he has found one in my shady and damp front yard, excellent box turtle habitat. When he spots a turtle, he barks at it, jumps forward and back near it, but I never saw him try to touch it with either his paw or nose.

Dogs just wanna have fun!

This week, he spotted one cruising the perimeter fence heading in the direction of the creek. But as I watched the handsome fellow, he seemed to be foiled by the fence. Finally I picked him up and cruised the whole edge. I never found a place I was sure he could fit through. So I went around to my neighbor and put him down just outside the part of the fence he had been cruising, facing in the same direction. I’ve read that turtles have a strong urge to go where they want to go, so if you rescue one crossing a road, for example, you need to put him down on the side he was heading to. Otherwise, if you put him back where he came from, he’ll just venture back across. Hopefully, this guy will get where he wants to be. 

What a handsome fellow!
But apparently stymied by the fence

 

Milkweeds Doing Their Job

Milkweeds, of course, are the food source for monarch butterfly caterpillars. The several species of milkweed are pretty weedy. I've planted one of the least ugly, Asclepias tuberosa, the orange "butterfly weed". I've never seen any monarch caterpillars on them, however. 

But I've also had the weedier common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca, crop up as a volunteer on my shady, steep bank along the road in front. It would prefer more sun than that location has, and so it is only on the edges, leaning over the road and the steps to my front door. It is quite unattractive, even in bloom. This year, it really went to town, and I was pleased to see an excellent crop of monarch caterpillars on the plants. The plants were completely stripped, and I hope there were enough of them to feed the caterpillars all the way through pupating - this is probably why it's recommended a butterfly garden have a sizeable patch, not just one or two plants. Encouraged, when the caterpillars were gone, I cut off some of the seed pods and tossed them further up the bank, hopefully to see more plants.

Hummingbird Magnet

By the back door, twined together

I planted cardinal climber and moonflower plants from seed. I planted the cardinal climber by the back door, the moon flowers by the back and front doors both, as well as in a pot on the side of the house. None of them bloomed until September. The cardinal climber is frequented by a hummingbird - I can see the vine as I go about my daily business, and have often stopped to admire the flitting tiny scrap of a bird. The moonflowers are supposed to attract giant luna moths, but I haven't seen any yet. 

I would consider this a highly successful venture!

I caught the first moonflower as I went out at night

I only planted the cardinal climber in one place
because it can really take over.
It's likely to seed and come back next year.

The Voice of the Cicada is Heard through the Land

It's cicada mania time! We are big fans of the little guys. I've got little holes all through my yard where they've tunneled up, and then they shed their skins and head for the tops of trees. At mid-day on warm days, there is a hum in the background - not actually loud enough to compete with a conversation, but clearly there. Bixby, the fraidy-dog, had to cautiously explore. But now, he's enjoying playing with them on the ground. So far, I haven't noticed him eating them.

Seventeen years ago, we celebrated big time. My sister got tshirts for the kids. We had a barbecue at my house and everybody tried a grilled cicada. My sister had in her head that she wanted to grab and grill some at an upcoming office picnic, and she thought she needed to rehearse, to see if it would actually work. So we all tried them. Charred, with hot sauce and salt, with a big beer chaser, I got one mostly down, but it wasn't an experience I am likely to repeat.

Never in a million years could we have pictured, in 2004, what we would be in 2021. We have such a big hole where my sister should be, and yet we are so blessed. And never could we have forecast how the kids turned out. Take a look at those three, and pick the most likely to be working for the Defense Department, for example!

So I had to do Tshirts, of course, and we had a smaller family celebration.

Where will we be in 2038? Will the cicadas adapt to the new, warmer and more volatile world we'll be living in?

Really Need Snow Melt Soon

First crocus seen today in my yard
as the snow retreated
My neighbor had some up yesterday

We’ve had a terrible stretch of ice here. It snowed, then it rained, then it got very cold, and the snow packed down into concentrated ice. It started to get above freezing during the days, but back below at night, softening the ice and making it run down into low spots during the day, then freezing into hard smooth skating rinks at night- and on into the next day, as layers of ice built up.

I go on about this, because from a gardening point of view it shows in detail where the water flows (easier to see when the water is in its solid state), but mostly because it has been hell for Rocky, the aging Very Hungry Labrador. Knowing the cold was coming, I was right out there after the snow and before the deep cold to clean off my front steps and walk. They have stayed dry and safe. But the back yard became a treacherous skating rink for my poor old dog. The first cold morning, I opened the door to let him out and he went SPLAT. He couldn’t get up (this also happens in the house on hardwood floors) and I dashed out in my bedroom slippers and jammies to rescue him. I narrowly avoided a SPLAT myself by grabbing onto the fence. It wasn’t safe for me to try to lift his 75 pounds without leverage. Fortunately, I own some nanospike-shoe adapters - basically they fit on the outside of any shoes, and spike down into most ice. So I spiked up, went back out, and got the old man up and moving. Poor baby- but no broken bones, which given his overall condition might have proved fatal. Over the past few days he has fallen again more than once. I keep his harness on him (for a handhold) and have had my spikes on when I go out with him. But he has grown fearful of the suddenly treacherous back yard. Who could blame him, partially blind and arthritic, weak legged, but determined to eliminate outside because he is a VERY GOOD DOG. He takes my guidance on where to walk, but not completely. And he leans against me when he bends to poop.

The witch hazel is out right on time,
A cheerful burst of color

Bixby, by the way, just skittered across the top of the ice and snow, delighted to be out and patrolling the yard in any weather except rain.

So I am even more thrilled than usual to see grass and other plants poking up through the snow as it melts. Of course, much of the yard is a mud pit, but spring will be here very soon!

Wildlife in the Garden

 Besides the usual deer and rabbits, there have been a host of interesting small critters in the garden.

This is a June Bug

The honeycomb left by my yellowjackets

Skipper 

Eastern Swallowtail Butterfly

A katydid. I thought it was just a “common” but then
some expert brandishing his credentials including a shiny new PhD
said it was something much more obscure.

The dark form of the Eastern Swallowtail

Pollinators, including bees, totally adore this verbesina.
I weeded a bunch of it out today, and bees rode it down into the 
Trash bag and came out later, startling me. 

Apples!

I have an apple tree (I used to have two but I got rid of one this winter because it was too big too close to the house) and I've never eaten an apple from it. I've watched it bloom, I've watched tiny apples form, I've watched them grow,  and slowly, slowly, I've watched small amounts of red creep across them. Just when I've thought it's time to try picking, they all disappear. I've known it's deer and squirrels - the highest apples are well above the reach of deer. But I've always timed it wrong. This year, I've been able to watch it much more closely than in other years, and the apples are growing bigger, slowly. Few have any red - interestingly, the reddest ones are the smallest.

Earlier this week, Rocky and I came back from our stroll around the block to find a deer grazing on the tree. Grrr! She was very bold and hard to shoo away. (I should note that Rocky's only interest in deer is their poop they leave behind - yummy!) "Shoo!" made no difference to her. "Woof woof!" (from me) made no difference to her. She seemed very big when we got close. She sidled a few feet away, and she kept an eye on Rocky, but she decided to sample the dahlias and mums that were closer. I grabbed my deer-chaser I keep on my front porch: a metal coffee can with a few nuts and bolts inside. I shook it at her, and finally she wandered across the street to eat Betty's flowers. Hat-tip to my neighbor Bill for suggesting that was a noise that was likely to work - I've used it several times this year, to good affect.

A couple of nights ago, I was down in my basement gym (yay me!), flat on my back, and I looked up and out the huge window well there, and I saw a squirrel on the tree. What he seemed to be doing was sampling every apple by taking a single bite! Grrrr! I finished up the workout briskly instead of lingering over my stretches, and went out there. The squirrel was not in sight, and I took the moment to harvest a few apples even though they are still green. I carefully positioned them for the photo with best side forward, because they all have flaws (but no actual squirrel bites). The largest one is about the size of a peach, small for an apple.

I'm contemplating my next move.  Will the picked green apples ripen or rot? Harvesting a lot more apples requires hauling out the ladder. I want to delay that as long as possible, in the hope they will continue to grow and eventually ripen. But will they all be gone by then? Yesterday, I saw a squirrel perched atop my fence enjoying one.

In other news, the yellow jackets are not gone. They have opened a new nest entrance about six inches from the old one. The specialist says he'll be back Saturday. Grrrr!

ATTACKED!! 2020: This Time, It's Personal!

On Sunday, one of the hottest days of the year (so far), I was moving hoses around, preparing to water my garden. Suddenly, an intense sharp pain on my knee made me aware of several buzzing yellow jackets! The back of the other knee got nailed! My shin! I started to flee, and I noticed the dog had gone full Eeyore on me: head down, ears down, tail down, feet firmly rooted in one spot, at least a half dozen yellow jackets buzzing him.

Doomed! The white dust is from the exterminator.
The lower nest is blocked, and the entrance is full of poison.

In an incredible act of courage, I hobbled over to Rocky, and grabbed his collar. The back of my hand got nailed by a stinger. I shrieked at the sad dog, terrified of the numerous persistent pursuing insects, and Rocky planted his feet more solidly and refused to move. I dragged him by the collar, out the gate and halfway around the house, brushing yellow jackets off him and then me as we went. Poor Rocky was stumbling and almost falling, perhaps as terrified by me as by the stingers.

I got us inside, verified we had left all pursuers outside, and assessed the damage. I had at least six stings on arms and legs, and they were already incredibly painful and swelling up fast. Rocky was still in Eeyore mode, but didn't flinch when I patted him.

I've never been particularly bothered by bees. When I've been stung before, it hurts, it swells, and in an hour or two it looks and feels itchy like most people's mosquito bites. (I am even more indifferent to mosquitoes, usually.)  But I am aware that many stings can bring on anaphylactic shock, and I'd never felt anything as painful as this. I raided the medicine cabinet, first for Rocky, then for me - antihistamines and painkillers all round. I texted my BIL to keep checking back with me for the next couple of hours, to make sure I hadn't started gasping for breath.

Of course then I took to the internet to figure out what these infernal pests were, studying the nest through the window. Clearly territorial yellow jackets, not bees. There were DIY solutions for getting rid of ground nests on the internet, but neighbors strongly recommended a local one-man specialty service. With my left hand already swollen so it was hardly functional, I decided to wimp out and go with the expert.

The stings continued to swell, reaching a good six inches in angry painful diameter each. Monday was worse than Sunday, but then they started to recede and now, five days later, they are roughly mosquito-bite itchy, not painful, but still large and red. I have a new healthy respect for all things stinging.

The "Bee-Be-Gone" guy has just left, noting the nest had taken advantage of tunneling mammals - probably voles - so the nest was very deep and long. He had to go with poison, not just mechanical means, to get rid of them. So now the front yard is filled with extremely perturbed angry flying things with nasty pointy ends that pack a poison of their own. It will take up to three days for the activity to die down, and if there is any residual flying activity in a week my guy will come back and do it again.

Bad Nature! Bad bad nature!

BTW, this is only a few feet from where I had a welcome distanced outdoor chat with Liz last week. Luckily, we didn't inadvertently bother the nest, and they didn't bother us then. What a debacle that would have been!

No Baby Robins Here

After the robins built their nest by the front door, I looked up robin behavior, and I learned they mate for a season and come back to the same territories. The male and female look the same, but they behave differently. Both contribute to building the nest. After the nest is done, one egg a day is laid until there are three or four. Then, the female begins brooding, for 50 minutes of every hour, and the eggs all hatch at the same time. The male is generally gone by then, hanging out with other guys. The female provides food until the hatchlings are fledged and finding their own food.

Once it was clear the robins were committed to the nest, I made a real effort to avoid the front door, except for the daily nest check. I put my camera on a long selfie stick and took a picture down into the nest. I was excited to see an egg a day appear, as if the robins had read the book.

But then, on the fourth day, tragedy struck. In fact, it struck in multiple ways. When I looked out first thing in the morning, a new cat (not seen around before) scatted off the porch. I felt bad, but then an hour later a crow was also there on the porch. So I don’t know exactly who the culprit was, but eggs were smashed and only one left.

The aftermath of tragedy

The nest is still there, and one egg is there. I’m pretty sure the nest has been abandoned, but I’ll leave it there for a while.

Hosting the Next Generation

It appears a robin (robin couple?) have built a nest right next to my front door.

I’ll try to minimize my front door usage (Rocky has a hard time with the steps anyway) but I can’t avoid it entirely. The ledge is about five feet above the porch floor - high enough for this short person to need something to stand on to see inside. When I noticed yesterday afternoon the nest seemed complete, I did peek. No eggs yet. I’m in a dilemma - much curiosity, but I don’t want to disturb them.

I think I’ll do some research to learn more about robin nesting habits. How shy are the birds about my presence? Could I have scared them off already? (There was a robin hanging about when I went out the front door this morning - I had forgotten the nest.) How long do robin eggs need to incubate? Should I disable the automatic porch light so they don’t get confused? It gets dark so late, even the FedEx is done before dark. It seems that might be ok for the next few months.

My Deer Fence Works!

I got this shot as I came out of my neighbor's house, where I was feeding her cat while she was gone. I have seen from inside my house the deer looking longingly through the fence, but this was also good to see. The babies are cute, but voracious! And they try everything, they don't know what tastes good yet.

Pollinators

My yard has been a bonanza for all sorts of wildlife. With the increased sun in front, there has been a corresponding increase in flying, buzzing, activity of all types. In June, this St. John's Wort was a favorite:

Then in late summer it has been the mostly tough prairie plants where the tree used to be. One day, I saw this unusual guy - I think it's a "hummingbird hawk-moth", a strange chimera I was aware existed, but I don't think I've seen before:

And my volunteer verbesina (all over the neighborhood this year, but not noted by me previously) is the bees knees!

In other news, I'm learning how to play with youtube.

Bird Brains

I put up a new crop cage over my vegetable bed this year. It is a plastic structure with netting over it, including a closed top. At the bottom, it is tied down, but apparently not tightly enough. Repeatedly, birds have gotten inside and stuck. The birds are mostly cardinals, and because I can't imagine I have so many cardinals, it's got to be the same ones getting stuck. Apparently they are not capable of learning.

I set up an extra barrier along the bottom, and for a while it seemed to stop the problem, but then they showed up again. It's a simple matter to unzip one of the doors and shoo them out, but I worry about not spotting them and having birds trapped all day in the sunshine inside. So far, no dead bodies inside!

High Summer

It feels like high summer came a bit early. It's been hot and dry. Today, a little less hot (hooray!) but even drier. Yesterday morning, I watered for three hours, in front, inside and outside the fence. The birds loved it! I am thinking of a water feature for in the back, at least a bird bath. I've been watering the vegetables, and the pots, as well.

I did another substantial cutback / rootout of the sweetshrub yesterday, maybe a quarter of its mass. I think I've decided to remove it entirely from that location:  the best, sunshiny spot in front. It is too aggressive, and insufficiently interesting. In that front clump of bushes outside the fence but by the frontdoor and my bedroom window, I have the sweetshrub, several blueberries, a shadbush, a dogwood, an oakleaf hydrangea that is also way too big, an arrowwood and a cranberry viburnum. When the sweetshrub comes out, there will be more room for the better behaved blueberries. I may think about yet another shrub. The birds love the berries and they flit around inside the thicket.

I may transplant pieces of the sweetshrub to a a shadier site outside the fence, where it is not so likely to be aggressive. I had the shrub for nearly 20 years, and it's only been a problem recently. I was surprised to see the oakleaf hydrangea is also sprouting suckers. I'll transplant some of them to the shade outside the fence as well.

I've been studying the patterns of shade and light. After 8 in the morning, it's uncomfortable to work in the sun, so I have to plan my work carefully. Today, I mowed the side yard. It was mostly shady when I started, but the sun quickly came around and it was half sun before I was done. I was struck by how the grass is so different at the sunny end, sparse and scratchy, versus lush and green and soft at the shadier, driveway, end. The shade at that end is partially from the apple tree that I plan to get rid of (when the crop is done), so things will change.

I found both a dead mouse and a dead baby bunny in the yard today. I didn't examine the mouse, but the bunny had (minor from the outside) injuries, but hadn't been snacked on. Luckily, I got there before Rocky did!  It may have been the baby from the Great Bunny Rescue last week, but no way to tell.  The neighborhood is crawling (hopping) with bunnies - I see them on every walk, crossing roads. I wonder how big their territories are?

Vegetables

I got very few veggies last year, but deer were not the problem. I had a deer enclosure built some years ago, and it lasted far beyond my expectations. But it had become an eyesore, so I pulled it down in the early spring. I ordered a crop cage from Gardener's Supply, which arrived promptly and sat in its box.

I turned over the bed, added three bags of LeafGro, and finally, finally, planted the vegetables on June 1. I have three tomato plants, two eggplants, and one pepper. Plus basil.

Bambi came by a week ago, and I hadn't built the new cage yet. It's not total devastation, but it is definitely a setback. Each plant (except the basil) was sampled.

I got motivated and put up the cage a couple days later. It looks good. I'm sure it's Bambi proof.

I don't think it'll keep Thumper out, but I don't think she'll be motivated enough to do a lot of damage.

What's Blooming

Catching up on the explosion of blooms!

Blue woodland phlox

Azalea by front door. This one's a keeper.

Yellow rose has started early. Had to give it support.

Another trillium.

A few columbines

This is unexpected - along the back fence.
Thought it was dead.

Uvularia. Think it's from long ago.

This cheerful plant is on the steep bank by the street, spreading nicely and retarding erosion.

The spring beauties really took off!

Anenomes, also known as
"obscure white spring ephemerals".

Not actually a flower, but hung out in the yard for a couple of days at least. Welcome, old guy!

Reptiles

First was may have been a baby Northern Brown Snake, hanging out in the corner stone wall. Then a baby turtle, for the third year in a row.