December critters and other pretties.

Eastern towhees in the brush pile

Mocking bird in same brush pile...

 Grey ratsnake

 

Close-up of colour.

Surprising to see one of these guys at Christmas...

Honey bees in camellia flower

Cat in redbud tree.... 

is this how she's catching the birds?

Goldfish... Hunting mosquito larvae, and apparently for frog eggs...

The frogs have been visiting my ponds, but there's never eggs left here... when I moved some over... they never had a chance to hatch.

Deciduous holly berries

Other holly berries.

New paths through the brush...

There's a winter rainbow through the middle of this picture... Usually rainbows at my house are in the garden in the west... this one was over my house in the north... Unfortunately it never got very bright, fading almost as quickly as it formed.

October

 Monarch butterfly!

Last year... no monarchs... Just viceroys...

 Got some new iris... and after the voles ate my previous ones... figured I'd try growing them in a pond... Lowes was running a close-out on this 45 ml "medium"... felt like a roll of inner tube...

Camphor weed (Heterotheca subaxillaris)

Was going to post on my golden asters, but Ellen Honneycutt beat me to it... (this year). 

Mums are blooming... I have some that threaded themselves through a tomato cage... and they're a spectacular 4 foot high! 

ageratina altissima 

Another golden aster (Chrysopsis mariana)

As many natural golden asters as I have out here.... I wild collected this one from a pasture in town...

turnips

Helianthus angustifolius

Aster (Symphyotrichum sp.) This baby is like 5 ft in height! Had to put a tomato cage around it so that I could walk past...

Bugs n stuff

Seems like everybody enjoys the agalinis...

Honeybee

Bumble bee

Sulphur yellow butterfly

Long tailed skipper

 Could be necessary to click the pic to see the buckeye caterpillar...

2 more buckeye caterpillars...

Gulf fritillary visiting golden aster

 Looks like an army worm...

 another armyworm eating the crotalaria

 Sulfur caterpillar

Caterpillar on conyza (horseweed)

Vitex caterpillar (Rustic Sphinx)

Blue curls

Ok, I had to include this picture of the bean vines that pulled the limbs off the tree... I visit a garden forum where there is a discussion going about growing beans up cornstalks... Kinda ridiculous... I've had beans kill decent sized oaks...

 The blue stems are blooming...

white flowers

Peak wildflower bloom is coming... Soon every patch of weeds is going to be ablaze of colour...
It seems that the lead up is offering a high percentage of whites....

Some sites refer to this plant as Clinopodium georgianum, others use Clinopodium carolinianum...
Which ever you want to call it, this sand mint... Georgia savory... seems like it has a ton of potential.

dalea pinnata is a neat plant that I want to propagate so bad that I can taste it... Unfortunately, the seeds do not come up for me... I even tried shaking them up in a can of sand when someone suggested the seeds might need stratifying...
Nor have I been successful in transplanting dalea.... for a short lived perennial... this neat plant seems to live on the verge of disappearing...

Not sure where this rain lily came from...

 Hog peanut (Amphicarpaea bracteata)... Seems to grow wild over much of Macon... And seems to have taken to the dry sand well enough too... of course, the weather this year has been the best that I can remember in the 20+ years that I've been in the area...

eupatorium serotinum... this plant has the sweetest smelling bloom!

 

Verbesina  virginica 

 Here's another tall eupatorium, flowers look and smell the same as the E. serotinum, but look at the leaf! Earlier in the year... it looks like mugwort!
If I don't find the name with google real soon... Ima post it to 'all things plants' and let them id...
Edit: The best guess so far seems to be (Eupatorium ×pinnatifidum)

Eupatorium hyssopifolium

Here's another one that's throwing me off... Possibly Eupatorium glaucescens or eupatorium mohrii... and truth to tell... I may have both...

Ok... this one is easy... Sugar snap peas from the autumn garden...

Hardy cyclamen... not sure why they're white... 

Flowering ginger... Really a poor choice for the sandhills... I planted the ginger under the overhang from the house... gets all the rain from the roof... and still... barely blooms!

pseudognaphalium obtusifolium Supposed to be host plant for the American Lady butterfly... Never actually see caterpillars... but have plenty of them flying in the garden... so... a keeper...

Liatris elegans

Moonflower (ipomoea alba)