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Garden journal - late season 2005

July 02, 2005. Got a new camera yesterday - a slight upgrade from my old Canon A70, an A95. So of course I went hunting for creatures willing to sit for a photo op. As luck would have it, I found a butterfly I hadn't previously encountered: a banded hairstreak. Still not sure the new camera outshines the old one, but you be the judge - from now on, new photos posted here will come from the new cam.
calm as can be, on its favorite shasta daisy

July 04, 2005. The garden's bounty is coming in. Strawberries and snow peas are done, the sour cherry is picked clean, but carrots, zucchini, and black raspberries have started to produce. And this year, at last, it looks like we'll have a crop of apricots (albeit somewhat bugridden ones). In previous years, the fruits had always succumbed to brown rot, but somehow they escaped this year. Keeping my fingers crossed...
Tomatoes are still at least a week away, beans, peppers, eggplants, and blackberries even longer.

July 11, 2005. The garden tour is fast arriving, and lots remains to be done to get at least the worst eyesores out of the way. My dad, visiting from the Netherlands, helped by de-weeding the patio. I don't remember it ever being so tidy!

July 17, 2005. Yesterday was the long-anticipated garden tour. About a hundred gardeners from around the Lehigh Valley and beyond paid a visit. They found plenty of interesting plants (the sea holly and acanthus generated the largest volume of inquiries), and by far the messiest, least orderly garden on the tour. Also the only one with prominent child-play features. So we credit our garden with increasing the overall diversity of the day's attractions. Thanks for visiting, and thanks to the Parkland Garden Club for organizing the event.

July 24, 2005. We've come to that part of summer where insect life sometimes upstages the flowers in the garden, which have taken a step back in exuberance since their peak in June. That was exemplified today by my first sighting of a monarch butterfly in our garden. And sure enough, it was heavily favoring the milkweeds around our pond. Although I'm hoping for offspring, I didn't spot any eggs.
the largest butterfly to visit our garden

July 31, 2005. Can your tongue do this? This Peck's skipper is just recoiling its proboscis after a good drink from a verbena flower. Just like last year, the skippers just appeared in droves one day in late July - they'll be with us for the rest of summer.

August 07, 2005. Time and again, Ma Nature proves to me that she's a better garden designer that I am - not that that's hard to do, mind you, but Ma has a knack for tucking just the right thing into the right crack, nook, or corner. Like here, where she's liberally sprinkled Dahlberg daisies in our patio's cracks. Makes me smile every time I walk by.

August 10, 2005. The 'Axminster Streaked' balloonflowers are in their third year, and are blooming for the second time. Last year just a few flowers, this year a bunch, on upright plants completely unlike the 'Sentimental Blue' variety that grows all around are garden. I'm still charmed by the randomly streaked flower patterns.

August 12, 2005. Mama, she stuck her tongue out at me!
Well, strictly speaking, it's not a tongue but osmeteria, the defensive organ that this caterpillar of the black swallowtail is deploying in hopes of living long enough to become as pretty as its mommy. That's fine by me, so I left her alone, sitting on a stalk of dill in our vegetable garden.
hiss!

August 18, 2005. We're smack dab in the middle of tomato season. I don't engage in all the efforts that coax tomatoes to bear fruit by the fourth of July, so we usually get our first near early August - and they keep on coming after that! We've settled on Early Girl (a medium-sized red tomato) as our variety of choice, but this year I started Garden Peach from seed I got in a trade. And wouldn't ya know, it really does look like a peach: soft orangish-yellow in color, with a slightly fuzzy feel. It's good to try something new once in a while.

September 03, 2005. While maneuvering my camera into position to take some pictures of this meadow katydid that was chirping away in the garden, he decided to scuttle right onto my thumb, and didn't mind a joint photo-op. When my wife commandeered him, he was none too pleased and bit her in the finger. So now I know that katydids can bite. Truly, something new every day.

September 14, 2005. The Parkland Garden Club surprised me this week with a thank-you gift for participating in the garden tour in July: a small hypertufa planter, with a dainty little plant that, until further identification efforts prove otherwise, I'm calling a small heronsbill. I'm charmed by the combination - thanks, PGC!

October 09, 2005. After weeks and weeks of barely any rain, and the development of a seriously drought-ridden garden state, Ma Nature finally delivered yesterday. And boy, did she deliver - with a record-shattering foot of rain. Parts of the garden were raging torrents, and all of the garden was a puddle. Unfortunately, the basement didn't stay dry either, so that my seed-starting area is in serious need of an overhaul. I guess one was overdue anyway...

October 23, 2005. After not paying much attention to the garden through a vacation to Florida and a business trip to the Netherlands, with most of the intervening time taken up by persistent rain, I finally ventured out today. Most of the garden is in a pre-autumnal state - not quite losing leaves and turning fall colors yet, but definitely winding down, without much to excite the eye. Notable exceptions: the fall crocuses showing their bright blue naked flowers, the lily-white Japanese anemones, and the 'Sheffield' Korean mums - which look positively summery!

November 05, 2005. I guess I should really be putting up a photo of colorful fall foliage given the time of year. But with today's warm and sunny weather, it seems like the garden really wanted to show off the last of its flowers. There are still plenty of them - anemones, rudbeckias, chrysanthemums, linarias, fall crocuses, geraniums, and campanulas are among the late-bloomers. But the most surprising entry in today's show was Clematis 'Ramona', in glorious bloom, with new buds even. Maybe that's my garden's way of telling me I've been hiding inside too much - come out and smell the flowers!

November 06, 2005. Okay, today I'll present you with the fiery foliage I so cruelly withheld yesterday. The leaves belong to a young specimen of Acer tataricum ssp. ginnala - I'm looking forward to seeing its autumn display when it grows to a more noticeable size.

this redbud's leaves dropped almost overnight November 12, 2005. What a difference a week makes! A few nights of freezing temperatures, a couple of blustery days, and bam! - trees that had most of their leaves last week are bare to the bark.

November 20, 2005. This past week, we had several nights of temperatures going down close to 20°F. Only the hardiest of flowering plants are still displaying their blooms; this stock is trying hard...

December 04, 2005. The story of a weekend: Saturday, even though it was a cold and windy day, we went out to clear expired plants from part of the garden (just the front yard, which we try to keep somewhat presentable; we prefer to leave the sticks in place for the birds in other areas). Hence the overflowing left bin of our composting area. Then overnight, we had a couple inches of snow, making the garden pretty in white. Even the compost bins...