Pollination Fascination

Posted on October 7, 2009 by Meredith

While taking a stroll near the butterfly garden, the sound of busy bees caught my attention, and I realized that my little pollinating friends had moved from the pumpkin flowers over to a nice big batch of native plants, and my gardener’s heart did a little pitter-patter.

But in observing them, I realized something I’d never noticed before. Gregg’s Mistflower produces white pollen.

My mind was boggled. In all my years watching wildlife, I never knew that pollen could be anything but yellow?

In the same patch of flowers, the honeybees on the Zexmenia had bright orange pollen baskets on their little legs.

This little bee has been to both Mistflower and Zexmenia. His pollen is pale orange.

I was fascinated. Today was a day where nature just had me reeling.

When I could tear my eyes away from the bees, I noticed a beautiful male Queen butterfly keeping me company.

And on the Fall Aster, newly blooming just on the other side of the Gregg’s Mistflower, little hoverflies enjoyed a feast without getting the attention of the bigger bees nearby.

Sure enough, these little flies can hover. Someone sure came up with a brilliant name for them! (Hey, guess what hoverflies eat? Aphids! Yay!)

Pollination inspiration, here’s my poem for the day:

Flyby

© Great Stems

Fly little fly

Fly little bee

Queen be flying

But not Queen Bee

One of Those Days

Posted on September 25, 2009 by Meredith

Didn’t sleep well last night, had to drop a kid off at school at 7am, car broke in the bus lane at school (fortunately I got moving before the buses arrived), $700 repair fee at the dealer, forgot to get my husband to move the heavy birdbath so I could grout it, my dogs are wreaking havoc on my garden, and aphids are wreaking havoc on my plants. BUT.. other than that it’s a fine day.

Look what I discovered this morning! Know what these are? I just learned what they are at a lecture by a local entomologist last night, and lo and behold I found some in my garden the very next day. Life works in funny ways, doesn’t it?

These are the eggs of green lacewings. As larvae, they are voracious aphid eaters. Yay, another ally in the garden! I need them because the aphids are worse than ever. I seem to have least three species now — I’ll call them green, yellow, and beige. The green I’m sure are corn leaf aphids. I have got to get out and tackle them TODAY. My veggies, my milkweed, and now my firebush plant are all having an aphid problem. The little pests took advantage of my time away from the garden during the rainy week and bred like rabbits. I’m starting to think that it’s the other way around, and rabbits breed like aphids. Today I’m seeing wings on some. Gah, more colonization!

So I’ve got new lacewings arriving soon, and of course I’ve got ladybugs. More spiders are arriving, as are earthworms. The bees are getting plentiful, and I don’t even have to do the veggie porn thing to pollinate my plants anymore. I truly love the way nature just naturally (ha) balances its ecosystems. Got organic wastes? Happy earthworms move in. Got flowers? Let’s pollinate. Overpopulation of something? Here come the predators. And here come the predators to eat the other predators. Oh look, birdie treats. And then snakes. And hawks. Whee, life is grand.

I call these my bees because I’m so fond of them, but of course they are wild. They get a little drunk-like in their flying when they are heavily loaded with pollen — it’s fun to watch. The pumpkin flowers were all abuzz this morning with bees about, and as I took pictures, I realized that there was some hostility going on. It seems at least one other colony has found our garden, and apparently different bee colonies don’t play nicely with others.

Know what else I learned from the entomologist? Feral honeybees in Texas and other states of the Southwest have all been Africanized in some way. Only beekeepers are able to keep sound European colonies because of their control of the queens.

FYI, in case I’ve scared anyone, bees in your garden are not a threat — don’t rush out and kill them, please! They are not in stinging mode when they are out pollinating — that’s quite counter-productive to their hive’s needs. Africanized honeybees, or any bees really, are a danger only when you threaten their hive (allergies aside), and apparently they’ll give a warning by buzzing around your head or actually bonking you on the head, believe it or not. If you find yourself near a wild hive, RUN — don’t walk away. Like fire ants, the Africanized honeybees give word to others in their colony by pheromones, and you need to put immediate distance (at least 200 yards) between you and the hive. Other than their defensiveness in protecting their hive, Africanized bees are not really any different from other bees. And actually there have been positive changes in their aggressiveness, too, depending on factors of colony age and breeding with European bees. It’s all good. No worries. As with anything, just be aware, not necessarily beware. Ooh, I like that.

By the way, have you hugged a beekeeper today? Not only do they raise pollinators and help with honey production, they are helping tremendously by keeping domestic European bee colonies intact, as well as helping breed gentler stocks of Africanized bees by culling out aggressive queens. Hug!

Thanks to my bees, I have several pumpkins growing. One is approaching the size of a soccer ball now (it’s been a week since I discovered female buds in bloom). Another is growing in the dead tree. And more are scattered here and there — finding them is like going on an Easter Egg hunt. There’s one! There’s another one! Again, how I love nature.

With the rain this week, the yard is a big mudfest for the dogs, and they took advantage of it — digging where they shouldn’t, trampling through the butterfly garden, and taking turns leaping over the pumpkin vines. I’m out there yelling, “This is not your playground!” And then I realized my neighbor must think I’m nuts, because of course it IS their playground. If I can manage it, I’ll try to get a picture of the husky leaping in full gallop over the massive pumpkin plants (in between my yelling at him, of course). It really is a sight to behold.

Rockport Hummer-Bird Festival 2009

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Meredith

When the fall migration of hummingbirds begins, many people all over North America feel sad that their little friends will be absent from their gardens for a few months. But down south, the mass migration results in opposite, delighted feelings for the dedicated residents of Rockport and Fulton, Texas. To them, fall migration along the Central Flyway means that the little buzzing flyers will make one more major pitstop in the tiny coastal towns to rest and refuel before beginning their 500-mile flight nonstop across the Gulf of Mexico toward their winter habitats.

(A word about these photographs — try to find all the hummingbirds in each photo. Some of them are sneaky! Look for the vibrant throat colors to distinguish the males from the females.)

The town of Rockport is so enamoured with their feathered visitors that many years ago they began an annual event, the Rockport Hummer/Bird Festival, held each September unless a hurricane shows up and causes a cancellation (like Ike in 2008). This year was our first time attending the festival, and it was quite a relaxing, pleasant day (with an exception, noted farther down in this post). The event included many speakers and vendors, but the highlights were the hummingbirds themselves, and many kind Rockport residents opened their yards to festival visitors for hummingbird viewing. This year there were 25-homes on a self-guided tour, and for a fee, visitors could take a guided bus tour to many other private homes and grasslands areas.

A birdwatching festival is quite interesting and different from the perspective of one who’s been to all sorts of festivals, from family-filled celebrations of peaches to flowers, to Renaissance times, to chaotic state fairs. For one thing, it’s very quiet, as it should be if one hopes to observe the little birds without scaring them away. And another is that birdwatchers, while all ages, boast a higher percentage of an older crowd. My boys were two of the four children I saw at the festival, though to be honest we were there only on the last day of the event.

Rockport isn’t just about hummingbirds — hundreds of species of birds are year-round residents or migratory passers-through, and birdwatchers excitedly converge with binoculars in hand to enjoy the sheer numbers and to hopefully catch a glimpse of a rare species. At any given home on the hummingbird tours, there might be as many as 100 or more hummingbirds zooming about the feeders.

To help attract the birds, the town encourages residents to plant bushes and vines that are hummingbird favorites. There are a lot of Esperanza, for example. And there are other native plants, such as sunflowers and this pokeweed, that are enjoyed by other birds. If you look closely, you can see a remaining berry or two — the plants have been well-stripped by visiting birdies.

Along the self-guided tour, I felt drawn to those homes with wildscapes — native, flowering plants and small or large ponds helped draw in the wildlife. Of course, they had many a hummingbird feeder as well. At one home, my son counted 19 feeders, just in the backyard.

But there were a variety of landscapes on the tour, and there was even a school garden, planted and maintained by students and teachers.

Experienced birders would sometimes call out when they spotted a particular species or another type of bird, such as an oriole. And we saw a beautiful Great Blue Heron, a Great Egret, and a large duck family, among other birds, scouring residential ponds for food.

At the festival, we enjoyed learning about the art of feeding hummingbirds from expert Sheri Williamson, author of an excellent field guide called Hummingbirds of North America. Sheri also went with a few of us to select homes on the tour, and it was wonderful to have a hummingbird expert on site to describe features and behavior of the hummingbirds and to answer any questions, of which it’s just possible that I might have had one or two… or three.

It was thoroughly entertaining watching the antics of the territorial hummingbirds. Their behavior is different at migration time — because the birds need to build up their energy stores, there is more willingness for many, but not all, of the birds to share a feeder from time to time. Despite the many feeders about a yard, the hummingbirds might swarm a particular feeder, as if they think that because others are that feeder, it must be good food. But territoriality is hard to resist sometimes, especially for the males. The vibrant color of the throats of the male birds was impressive, though Sheri said that these feathers are post-mating season, and thus less vibrant than at other times. Pretty cool.

Sometimes the camera captured behavior my eye didn’t notice at the time. In the photo below, you can see two males squabbling, while another bird moves in to get some nectar.

The majority of the hummingbirds that pass through Rockport are ruby-throated hummingbirds, but several species have been sighted, and in all more than 500 species of birds have been documented.

There was another creature that threatened to bring downfall to the festival this year, the heat-seeking, blood-sucking, mass-attacking mosquito. It was unbelievable the numbers of mosquitoes everywhere, and they swarmed every person by the hundreds. The mosquitoes were so bad at the very first house we stopped at that, that our hummingbird viewing would have come to an end before it started if we hadn’t decided to just go ahead and use some loaned icky chemical spray that I would never touch at home. But we were having to do a ridiculous and constant “Mosquito-Slapping Dance” until we finally used the spray, and if a green person is going to that extreme, you know it’s bad.

After using the spray, we could actually focus on the hummingbirds, until we went tried to get back in the car. This act required particularly quick moves and skill to minimize the number of mosquitoes that joined us in the vehicle — they hovered around the nice warm car until we showed up and opened the door, thinking we wanted them to join us inside. At one house at least fifty mosquitoes flew into the car, and we couldn’t get them out until we were on the highway and could roll the windows down enough to send them out, if we didn’t manage to smush them first. Note to self — avoid coast just after the first fall rain, haha.

I have a much more disgusting picture of a mosquito, but I decided it wasn’t nice to share it on a garden blog, so I think I’ll gross out family members on the family blog instead.

Rockport itself is an interesting coastal village. Near the water, the strong ocean winds have shaped the oak trees into quite the odd shapes. You can tell that salt and drought have taken their toll on the health of those trees.

Outside of Moon Dog, where we had lunch, a lone pelican rested peacefully. It was quite the contrast to the zooming hummingbirds at the inland homes.

Back at the festival mall, we enjoyed visiting the vendor booths, but my grand plans to buy a couple of hummingbird feeders fell through — after looking around, I decided to stick with my favorite brand, HummZingers, but they didn’t have any there. I did get Sheri Williamson’s field guide, though. There were many jewelry, art, and other vendors, but we were looking for something that just “spoke to us,” as my husband put it. So we bought a buzzard, because that’s what one really goes to a hummingbird festival for, right? But even my husband wanted this buzzard — its head bobbles a bit in the wind.

We’ll stick it somewhere particularly ominous for visitors passing by.

Goodbye Cantaloupe Thing

Posted on September 18, 2009 by Meredith

Due to some exciting goings on, my next few posts will be bird-related, so I thought I best put out a veggie garden update. But first I want to share some thrilling butterfly news — the Monarchs, Queens, Swallowtails, and Gulf Fritillaries, among others, have finally returned to the garden! You can believe I’ll be out there with my camera. I did manage to capture a picture of my first Gray Hairstreak butterfly. I was happy to see her on the Blackfoot Daisies — those flowers are often ignored by the bigger butterflies, who go straight for the Lantana or Mistflower. I read that Gray Hairstreak caterpillars will eat bean plants. Oh well, guess I’ll share.

But back to the “farm.”

The cantaloupe experiment has finally come to an end, and it’s report time. It’s kind of sad, really. My beautiful cantaloupe plants finally succumbed to the aphids, which had become so abundant (despite the ladybugs) that their sticky “honeydew” residue, combined with the rains from last week, had led to a nasty sooty mold problem.

After several days of wondering whether to let my cantaloupes keep trying to ripen, I decided to go ahead and pull the plug. My big one just kept growing but never sweetening, and the shapes of the other two medium-ones led me to believe that I was, in fact, growing a hybrid. I suspected as much, but I decided to enjoy the process anyway.

The big cantaloupe, cut open, actually did look like a cantaloupe. I opted not to take a bite, but I did lick a piece. Yuck… as I suspected. Though I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed, I do consider the experiment a success. Growing the cantaloupes got me excited about my first veggie garden, led to my first raised beds with trellises, and really helped me get a headstart on the veggie learning curve. I did learn a lot, and I got hooked on growing edibles. Plus, one can’t beat the excitement of finding out that your plant is actually growing fruit (even if it’s weird hybrid fruit). I don’t consider the cantaloupes my first official harvest, mind you. They were an experiment, especially after I found out that seeds from store-bought cantaloupes should not be used, no matter how much fun it might be.

So I began the process of cutting up the fruit for the compost bin. By the way, ever wonder what the inside of a young cantaloupe looks like? Pretty cool.

Removing the icky plants from the trellis was NO fun. During the process I realized why many garden bloggers opt only to show their beautiful harvests instead of what might be a failure — it’s depressing. I was out there quite grateful that my camera was nowhere near the sooty mold, and while I felt partially obligated to show the whole miserable trellis, I just wanted to get that cantaloupe and all the thousands of aphids into the trash and as far away from my sugar pumpkin plants ASAP. I didn’t even want the plants to go into the compost, they were so gross.

A closer inspection of the sugar pumpkin plants showed that the aphids are starting to move over, and I plan to attack them better. I was happy to find several ladybug nymphs — hurray for my aphid-fighting allies!

But all is well, and I’m looking forward. The sugar pumpkins are the biggest things I’ve ever seen. They are growing up and over and out from the raised garden bed.

I FINALLY had a blooming female bud on a sugar pumpkin, and hopefully I helped it pollinate in time. Cross your fingers! There will be more, and I must be on the lookout. There were two blooming females on the jack-o-lantern pumpkins, but I doubt they’ll be big enough for carving by Halloween. At least they opened, and I did the pumpkin porn thing to help things along — I didn’t have time to watch to see whether the bees were doing their job!

The jack-o-lantern pumpkins have begun their spread into the perennial garden, so I have to monitor them. One is even taking advantage of the dead Mexican redbud. It’s nice to see green on the redbud again, poor thing. 😉 It’s scheduled for fall replacement.

The corn is growing, though I’ve found a couple of worms hiding out in the leaf niches. I’m trying to watch for more, but they seem to sneak in when the gardener’s not looking. I’ve also got young beans, zucchini, and snap peas growing, as well as tiny kohlrabi, carrots, lettuce and spinach seedlings.

This morning I found some strawberry plants at Natural Gardener. These are “Seascape” strawberries, and when more varieties arrive, I’ll try to get some for comparison. I’m eager for strawberry success!

And another exciting find at Natural Gardener — I finally got a gargoyle. They arrived this morning, and the staff seemed as excited as I was. Apparently they don’t usually have gargoyles. He’s a little guy, but his protective watch over our garden is sure to drive away all pests. Right?

Maybe he can tell me what to do about this Green June Beetle. I found it on one of my pumpkin plants. I see beetle grubs in the soil all the time. I believe they qualify as a minor pest, but I’m not sure. The beetle is pretty, as far as beetles go. Underneath is a pretty, shiny coppery surface. It’s still alive, but in a jar, until I decide whether it should stay or go. I don’t care about damage to turf, as I have none worth saving, but I don’t want damage to other plants and fruit.

I did learn an interesting way to identify the Green June Beetle white grubs from other white grubs — the ones of the Green June Beetle will “crawl” on their back via undulating movements. Somehow I think Shrek would appreciate that.

The Indiscriminate Hunter

Posted on September 17, 2009 by Meredith

Meet the Green Lynx Spider (Peucetia viridans), a common spider in Texas and Mexico. It surprised me when I was out inspecting my sugar pumpkin vines. I’m amazed I saw it — its lime-green coloring makes it perfectly camouflaged against the vines, and though it was on a bloom and holding a bee, I’m pretty sure what drew my eyes to it were those hairy legs.

I’m sad that it chose for its meal one of my precious honeybees, but I’m glad this beneficial spider has found my garden. It might pounce on bees, but it also feasts on wasps (which had been getting out of control during the summer) and pest moths and caterpillars (they’re arriving). This beautiful spider is a female, and like most spiders, she’s much larger than the typical male. The female Green Lynx spiders are fierce protectors of their egg sacs — I’m pleased, because I’d like to see more of them around the garden.

The spines on the spider’s legs seem to match little hairs on the pumpkin blooms, stems, and foliage. With her perfect camouflage, it’s easy for this spider to hide and lurk, and then leap onto her prey, which is how lynx spiders got their name.

Blooming! GBBD September 2009

Posted on September 15, 2009 by Meredith

The extended rains last week did Central Texas much good. While we are still in a major drought, the rains brought much needed relief to the scorched earth and cooler temperatures for wonderfully pleasant days.

And the plants responded right away — greenness abounds, and among the green are the most vibrant blooms of all colors. I think fall just might be my new favorite season. I forgot how beautiful it is. Although technically, I guess it’s still summer! Here are just a few of what’s blooming in my yard today, for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day.

Amazingly, of my three surviving Endurance Sunflowers, I still have three, and all are blooming. Although I’ve loved sunflowers all my life, this is my first time growing them, and I finally understand why bees love them so. Even my young sunflowers are really putting out the pollen, and they are only going to grow bigger and bigger. I’m thrilled! My sunflowers have a few specks of dirt on them — because they are still babies and low to the ground, they got splashed during the rain.

I’m finally starting to see color combinations in the yard again. In the main butterfly garden, the Gregg’s Mistflower is starting to bloom once more, with Blackfoot Daisy and Zexmenia nearby. The butterflies are already fluttering about again. I missed them when all my plants gave up their blooms in the heat.

The Pigeonberry plants are blooming like crazy. They berry, too, but the birds pick them off so fast.

Here, I found a berry.

Speaking of berrying plants — I was woken up in the middle of the night with one of the dogs trying to break through the window screen to get to something outside. While I hope it wasn’t a prowler, I did get up to discover my American Beautyberry plants were missing berry clusters. I went outside to see if I could see anything — seriously hoping at that point that it wasn’t a prowler! No creature found. Bolted. Who wouldn’t when that massive husky is trying to lunge for them though a mere window screen? Thank goodness it held tight.

This Red Yucca’s is technically on my neighbor’s property, but it’s right where our yards meet, and I think I’m the only one who pays attention to it. But oh I could photograph those blooms all day. Love, love, love. Someday mine will bloom!

The Salvias are blooming like mad. They are such an interesting flowering perennial — it can be challenging to photograph them, as they tend to look straggly even when they really aren’t, but they look wonderful backdropped by other blooming yellows, blues, or even just trees.

Though most of my Turk’s Caps are the traditional red, I do have a pink bloomer in the front. It’s quite special. Makes me feel like a little girl, loving that pink.

I have a new plant in the yard — actually all over the yard, as I placed them in many spots. It’s the native Texas Poinsettia, also known as Wild Poinsettia, or Fire on the Mountain (Euphorbia cyathophora). These were given to several class members of the Habitat Steward Training I’m in — we got to pull them directly from the gorgeous wildlife garden of Cathy Nordstrom. Thank you, Cathy! The reddish-orange you see is part of the leaves, just like the red of the Christmas pointsettias. I think it’s amazing. It’s a spreader, so at some point I’ll probably be giving some away. It’s so easy to pull and replant, too. I planted them all over because I have so much land to fill.

And I have a surprise bloomer — blooms on my newest Key Lime tree? Of course, they are all at the level where the husky lifts his leg. I don’t even want to think about why the tree is blooming only there. Nor do I want to think about what I’ll do if limes actually show up and get peed on.

Speaking of the husky… Camouflage FAIL, Loki.

And stop laying on my Lindheimer Muhly! And get out of the butterfly garden! And stop peeing on my plants!

The Formal Corn

Posted on September 1, 2009 by Meredith

The formal corn wears tassels and silk

to an elegant affair. Would you care to have this dance? A pollination waltz, perhaps?

Four honeybees partake in the jitterbug, flitting about from cantaloupe flower to cantaloupe flower. Their heavy pollen sacs don’t slow them down.

Just a few feet away, male sugar pumpkin flowers have finally opened up in the cooler temperatures, but their pollen grains have yet to entice the busy little bees.

Perhaps when the females start to open, the bees will move over to help the pumpkins along.

The cantaloupe grows big, and a ladybug kindly pauses to give a size comparison.

It won’t be much longer before the melon is ripe, and there are more cantaloupes waiting their turn.

Meanwhile, other ladybugs are busy… (gasp) Avert your eyes!

The assassin bug nymph doesn’t notice. He’s too busy waiting for a tasty dinner companion.

Would that it might be this black bug, the larger version of the unknown little red bug…

Their numbers are dwindling, thanks to the ever-watchful predators and (perhaps more so) quick little fingers.

The trellised garden nears the top.

With the promise of a harvest, one hopes that the squirrels that ate their way into the birdseed container won’t turn their little black eyes toward the veggies and fruit.

The jack-o-lantern pumpkin plants get bigger and bigger. The male flowers come and go, but the cooler temperatures bring promises that females will bloom soon.

A checkered garter snake leads the way to another discovery…

that a pumpkin plant is trying to do the great escape…

behind the air conditioner, which broke just last night, thankfully timed with the cooler temperatures.

The “dwarf” papyrus continues on its world conquest, one pond at a time. Its sheer size and weight helped it shift off its support and into deeper waters. Its plan to quickly send out new growth and roots was soon foiled, however. It’s been raised back out of the water depths and is marked for major division very, very soon.

Is that a ghost haunting the house?

It’s too early for Halloween, so it must be tricksy little pole bean seedlings.

An easy move to a planter,

and then nestled in bed…

for another busy day in the garden.

Feeding the Hummingbirds

Posted on August 30, 2009 by Meredith

When I started my garden last year, I focused primarily on choosing native butterfly/caterpillar and hummingbird plants, and I kept telling my husband about how different our yard would look next year (which is now this year). But I knew that he wouldn’t really get into it until he saw his first hummingbird. For my husband, hummingbirds remind him of visiting his grandparents in Uvalde, and so the little birds are quite special to him. Now that our garden is growing and we get hummingbirds regularly, it’s fun to watch my husband get such enjoyment out of our garden.

We have many varieties of hummingbird plants now, but the plants are still more or less small, so the main visits are to the feeders, though I’ve seen visits to the Salvia and Flame Acanthus. We had just one feeder up for many months, and then a few days ago, I found a second hummingbird feeder in the back of our garage, and we set it out. I don’t know whether it was the combination of two feeders or the fact that migration is underway, but that very day we had five hummingbirds zooming around. We sat out on chairs and enjoyed trying to identify them. I couldn’t get pictures of them all at once — they were all flitting about trying to push the others away from feeders while trying to sneak in some sugar themselves.

Of the two feeders, I much prefer the UFO-shaped HummZinger feeder over the taller, more traditional feeder. There are a few reasons for this, but primarily the Hummzinger is much, much, much easier to clean, and it has a built in “moat” to keep the ants out. It’s all plastic, which is a bummer, but the design is sound and it feeds da birdies, so I forgive it. It helps keep the wasps out, too. It’s also more affordable than the blown-glass feeders, which my dogs would break anyway. It’s very noticeable how quickly the liquid goes down in the tall one, so I’m not sure if it means the tall one is the first choice for the hummingbirds. This is worth investigating!

We had to visit one of the big building stores yesterday for house repair stuff, and as I wandered through the garden center just to see what was there, I passed by a couple buying hummingbird feeders and food. I decided to offer them some friendly advice, that making your own sugar water is better than buying commercial syrup because red food coloring is reported to be dangerous for hummingbirds, plus making your own saves money. But this couple just looked at me quite annoyed, and the husband stated that hummingbirds won’t come to the feeders unless it has the red liquid, and I could tell by his tone that he considered me to be foolish and ignorant and that I needed to mind my own business. So I said very pleasantly that yes they do come to the feeders without red liquid, and I moved on, hoping that because the wife also said that they would, that maybe she’d actually someday stop buying the red liquid. But I’m not so sure the husband will. Tried to help. Denied. Move on. Clearly this guy is not a friendly garden blogger or garden blog reader!

But I thank him for the inspiration behind today’s post — tips for attracting hummingbirds to your yard, with details on feeders and making the syrup.

Do plant nectar-filled native plants (tubular ones are particularly attractive to the birdies). Here in Austin, some favorites are Turk’s Cap, Flame Acanthus, Red Yucca, Crossvine, Coral Honeysuckle, among others.
Set out hummingbird feeders as well (edit: unless you live in an area with bears — eep! thanks, RoseyPollen). Hummingbirds consume plant nectar and tiny insects for vitamins and protein, and they use a feeder’s sugar water to fuel their crazy energy needs. Hummingbird feeders with perches give tired birds a chance to rest a moment while they feed.

Make your own sugar syrup for the feeders. Don’t buy red commercial products. Use one part white cane sugar to 4 parts water. According to hummingbirds.net, you don’t have to boil the water first, but you do need to replace the feeder’s syrup every three days and replace stored, refrigerated syrup every two weeks. They also state that turbinado sugar and beet sugar are NOT good choices, so stick to the white cane sugar (I laugh because I’m trying to steer my family away from white sugar but I feed it to the birdies? ha). And absolutely NO honey or gelatin or food coloring. I mix:
1 cup white sugar
4 cups water
Clean the feeders regularly (give a good hot rinse each time you replace the syrup; every 3 or so weeks for a major cleaning), but NOT with bleach or soap or detergent or anything toxic. Some sites say to use bleach, but bleach is extremely bad for the environment and potentially reacts with the plastic as well, so I don’t use or recommend it. Vinegar is a great alternative to bleach, but no matter what you use, rinse extremely well.

Other than that, be patient. This time of year, many hummingbirds are in migration. Next month, my family is going to the Gulf of Mexico to hopefully see migrating hummingbirds en masse, so I hope I’ll get a few good pictures to share.

FYI, I looked into making my own hummingbird feeders with recycled bottles. But upon investigation, I learned that the long tubes used for the typical upside-down feeders, homemade or store-bought, tend to leak, causing all sorts of problems. I decided to save the money and avoided purchasing the tubes. I still hope to make my own someday, but I won’t be using an upside-down version.

Bee Happy and Skip Along

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Meredith

Look what I discovered was visiting the cantaloupe today.

I feel like I’ve reached a major gardening milestone — I’ve officially attracted a (major) bee to pollinate my flowers. He was quite a busy bee, too. My pictures aren’t great — the sun was high, and I was hot, but I snapped a few and got myself out of there.

Is he actually a honeybee? That would make me extra happy.

There was also this little butterfly around, with a nice long proboscis. I believe it’s a skipper, but I don’t know which kind yet.

So it’s a happy day. Plus my kids are back in school as of today. Brain power!

Texas Heat Wave and Planting

Posted on June 23, 2009 by Meredith

What’s the first rule about planting in the Texas summer, especially during a heat wave?

DON’T.

But here’s my dilemma. The boys and I wanted to get a little plant for the bees because it’s Pollinator Week. So we went down to Natural Gardener and selected a little pincushion flower. Why? Because it had a happy little bee already on it! (We didn’t take the bee home.) Is it native? No, I don’t think so. Is it drought hardy? I really hope so. Basically I broke all sorts of rules yesterday (it was the gardener mom in me — the kids were excited about a plant, and then so was I). Because after choosing the pincushion (and a rudbeckia), I headed back toward the cashier, turned the corner, and found…

Dutchman’s Pipevine! This beautiful little vine is not available that often in the nurseries, and not only had Natural Gardener just gotten some in for the first time this year, the vines were big, beautiful, blooming, and covered in little eggs. Dutchman’s Pipevine (Aristolochia fimbriata) is the host plant for a gorgeous butterfly called the Pipevine Swallowtail. Natural Gardener is known for having tons of these plants in their butterfly garden — they are usually covered with munching little caterpillars, and Pipevine chrysalises can be discovered in unusual places all over their garden. Many Austinites covet these plants, and I am no exception. Just look at this gorgeous flower. No, it’s not native. See, another rule broken.

And the plants already have many little swallowtail eggs on them.

Here’s a caterpillar picture I took last year.

I bought one last fall, and it has survived some of the worst my household and environment can do to anything. The dogs dragged it all over the yard from the start, and in tears I re-planted the little remaining root in the front, and I babied it over the winter and amazingly it survived. During that time it got completely smothered by falling leaves off my roof. I gingerly removed them. Then in March we got hit with a terrible hail storm with golf-ball sized hail. It survived. I thought it was done for when the roofers dropped tons of roofing material onto that bed. smooshing the plant. When I got all the debris off, all the leaves were gone. But I left the root in, and lo and behold, that little baby sprouted new leaves and looks better than ever. Small, but alive.

Back to the heat wave. We are having one of the worst Junes ever — 100-104 degrees Fahrenheit — usually we are mid-90s about now. Is this the time to plant? Absolutely not.

But at my house, if you want a plant to survive, you either:

1) Don’t buy it.

2) Get it in the ground fast with a good dose of water, and then some more. Otherwise, the dogs will drag it across the yard or eat it, or the sun will bake it on the porch.

So, yes I bought the plants because they are so hard to get and were stunning. Yes, I planted them (with lots of mulch). And yes, I’m prepared to baby them like you wouldn’t believe. I’ll set up a tent for extra afternoon shade if I have to. I will love them, and pet them, and name them George!

Austinites, if you have been wanting Dutchman’s Pipevine, too, I suggest you get down to Natural Gardener today!

Here are my other two flowers — the pincushion and the rudbeckia.