Gardens-In-The-Sand

Ragweed Daze

The danglepod (Sesbania herbacea) is blooming...

I discovered this native plant growing wild in a meadow [last year] in Macon.

The butterflies seem happy with this new fabaceae.

Elephants foot flower (Elephantopus tomentosus)

Hyssop Leaf Thoroughwort (Eupatorium hyssopifolium) with Red-banded Hairstreak (Calycopis cecrops)

American lady visits society garlic

The long tailed skipper wants to be a society butterfly too.

A coupla sulfurs drinking from the same cup.

Lespadeeza bloom.

This Eastern Towhee made a fuss about me walking through the garden...

Smart bird... difficult to photograph in the shadows.

Winged sumac (Rhus copallinum ) bloom

and fruit.

Red Chenille (acalypha reptans), a future lawn alternative, for shade.

The ragweed is blooming... Dreadful stuff... I'm pulling all I see.

Labels: acalypha, butterflies, elephants foot, eupatorium, ragweed, sesbania, sumac

Bird Netting Sux!

I rarely see my snakes. :(

I certainly don't want to see them this way!

I had the bird netting over my blueberry bush... I wanted to get some of those blueberries.... But not at the expense of my garden help!

I carried the netting, (snake n all) to the house, and got out the scissors... And carefully started cutting netting away from the king snake.
I whispered "Easy sweetie", to her from time to time... she seemed to understand that I was trying to help.

When I unwrapped her coils, she cooperated, wrapping her liberated back end around my hand as I worked to liberate her front end.
The scariest part was the fear of harming her with the scissors...
She seemed to understand the need to relax some of her muscles to make room for me to get the scissors between her body and the netting.

Free at last!

I set her free among the beans and watched as she crawled along the bed, and then out of sight under a brush pile.
Here's hoping we meet again under better circumstances!

A bit of food and a buncha flowers

My last posts have been mostly birds n bugs n hardly ne flowers or veggies... I'll try to make up for that with this post :)

Trail of tears beans

The monarda punctata has begun to bloom

Rebloom on the penstemon

Pears

The rudbeckia laciniata has also begun.

The agalinis are full of buckeye cats... no flowers yet, though.

Sea shore mallow, or Salt marsh mallow

(kosteletzkya virginica)

Bush morning glory (Ipomoea carnea)

This thing is 10 foot tall, and the blooms are above eye level!

The partridge peas (Chamaecrista fasciculata) are in bloom!

Of course, the coffee weeds (Senna obtusifolia) have been blooming...

(These early morning pictures are a funny blue colour... apologies.)

The sand hill ironweed (veronia angustafolia) is beautiful

I was going to wait until I had pics of the Vernonia altissima to compare with, but...

I've a feeling that this variety will be finished by then.

Sweet Autumn clematis (Clematis terniflora) always puts on a show... not especially attractive to the butterflies, though...

The Japanese anemone don't put on a show worth shux, a few blooms now, which close before other ones open. All those buds... misleading.

I'm not especially a fan of hydrangea, but someone I know did a bit of cutting back (this Spring), and a few branches accidentally came home with me in the back of my truck...

I plugged them into the ground, and blooms ever since.

Finally, How about another picture of the centrosema?

I collected seed last year of the partridge peas, and they came up fine. I tried to collect some of the centrosema, but... they got lost or something... Will definitely make a greater effort, as this beauty deserves a place of pride in the native garden...

Moar Kritterz

Clear wing Hummingbird moth (Hemaris thysbe)

Black widow...

I found this girl while pulling squash vines... bare-foot. Reckon she was dining on those nasty squash bugs?

I've seen this dude identified as a male velvet ant, or "cow-killer" (Dasymutilla occidentalis)

Check out the size spider... this wasp drug under my house!

These woodpeckers are a bit camera-shy.

I caught him!
This mocking bird sez that the poke berries are ready.

If yer gonna attract birdz to the garden... you gotta grow their faves...
I was weeding the daylilies last weekend, I left a coupla pokeweeds...
The poke is native, those daylilies... aren't... and they don't grow well here anyway.