Start of Autumn

Garter snake... I see this guy a lot....

Buckeye and gulf fritillary visit mexican clover (richardia sp.)

Tri-foliate orange... Contrary to popular belief, I'm finding this orange very edible.
One orange to a half-gallon of water... makes decent orange-ade... One orange juiced into a batch of potato salad... pretty good...
I tried adding an orange to a coupla stewed pears, and adding all the peel was too much... the peel tasted good, but the pears were overwhelmed.

Viceroy enjoying a bit of pokeberry fruit.

Ellen from Using Georgia Natives sent me some pink turk's cap hibiscus seedlings... and they didn't exactly come true... Pink ones & white ones from the 2 I kept... too bad that the ones I gave away ran into the tidy garden syndrome and got weeded out before they bloomed... :(

 Monarda punctata...

eupatorium serotinum

The voles ate the roots of this wildflower over the winter, but it came back in abundance from last years dropped seed.

wild, wild life

I've discovered a new Aureolaria... Unfortunately, I can't find a name to assign it...

Aureolarias like Agalinas... are hosts for the buckeye butterfly.

EDIT: Apparently the above plant is a seymeria  (Seymeria cassioides)... rather than aureolaria...

The two plants are growing together, look alike, are both host to the buckeye butterfly, AND are parasitic... Hence my belief they were related...

 Here's the southern oak leech (aureolaria pectinata) that I've been enjoying every summer for a number of years....

 The poke is having a good year.

 And the mocking birds practically live in the pokeweed.

The towhees seem to be around a lot... whether he's eating poke, or something else... is an unanswered question.

 The blue curls are in bloom...

 Look at these bee killing spiders!

 Wasp sex on the verbesina

Which is a towering 9 foot tall!

Another wasp who appreciates the verbesina...

 I kept this lespadeeza when I first cleared for the vegetable garden, in 2007.

I keep trying to get a decent picture of the sesbania... without having much luck... at 11 feet tall, it has a lot of presence.

September Garden

Viceroy with cherry tomatoes

Ironweed with sand wasp

Spider on tibouchina

Corn ear worm in the tassel

Tiger swallowtail on cleome

Manduca sexta caterpillars finishing off the nightshade

sesbania herbacea 

 tephrosia hispidula

Mexican clover

Snake cotton

kosteletzkya virginica and gulf fritillary

Pests, Weeds, and Wildflowers

I've written before about how difficult it is to garden here...

I keep trying, though.

My echinacea patch is disappearing down these holes in the sand...

Nice big melons on dying vines, watermelons don't grow very good with no roots...

And these guys aren't much fun to have in the garden either...

Corn ear worms are eating my sandwich tomatoes... 

I guess I should stick to growing cherry tomatoes...

Everglades tomatoes... Supposed to be "invasive"... Let's hope...

 I'll just teach the bugs to eat weeds, and leave the crops alone... 

 Cucumber bug eating pigweed

the caterpillar from my last post...

manduca sexta caterpillar eating american nightshade (Solanum americanum)

goatweed leafwing caterpillar

 

Croton capitatum 

host plant for the above caterpillar (Anaea andria Scudder)

Sand wasp visiting croton flower

 

Partridge pea

Centrosema

snake cotton

If you can't grow veggies... Makes sense to learn to like the weeds.