So.. here’s a fun little story. As you guys know, I love all creatures great and small. And I really love frogs and toads. And I really, really love tree frogs. There’s just something about those little suction cup toes… so magical!
But tree frogs are not something I’ve ever had a lot of personal experience with. I have vague recollections from childhood of finding one in a pine tree, or possibly on our front window. The recollection is so vague – I’m not sure if it’s two incidents, or one that I’ve conflated details about.
Anyway… after that, there was nary a tree frog in my life. Until back in 2013 when Mom and I travelled to Virginia for a Circular Sock Machine convention. It was after dinner when we were walking with a bunch of ladies from from convention building to another (outside), and I made a comment on how Virginia had some very noisy bugs, because the night was just alive with insect music. One of the ladies (who lived in Virginia) said “Oh, honey, those aren’t bugs… those are tree frogs.”
Well…I got so excited, but neither Mom or the convention ladies would let me run off into the forest in the dark to hunt for tree frogs.
Fast forward to this year, and back in July, I discovered a wee tree frog in my beans…
I assumed it was because the boys just cut down several trees on the property line, and he got displaced.
Then, about a month later, there was the one I found on our gas meter out front.
He actually hung around for several days. Even though I’d put him in the butterfly bush beside, I came back out several days in a row to find him back on the top of the gas meter. I named him Gary.
Then after the third day, Gary just up and disappeared.
But then last week…
Gary’s replacement showed up! I named this one Gus and he was a lot more active than Gary. I found him on the asters…
And on the siding…
Now he’s since moved on as well, but I’m wondering when the fourth tree frog is going to hop on into my life?
If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you’ll know that one of the things I try to do it incorporate native plants in the garden whenever/however I can.
I’ve never intended to have a purely native garden – there are just too many other plants that I love to exclude them – but it helps to do a little extra for our native pollinators and other creatures.
Like these little bees napping in the tickseed in the evening.
I’d say the most successful native I’ve planted is of course, the milkweed
On the left is Swamp Milkweed, and the right is the Common Milkweed. I actually only planted the Swamp Milkweed – the Common Milkweed just showed up on it’s own, and I’ve let it do it’s own thing.
And the proof of its success, is of course…
Helping promote the lifecycle of the Monarchs.
The Cardinal Flower, and the Blue Lobelia (both are native Lobelias), have done well now that I’ve got them in the right spot. They both help support the hummingbirds.
The problem arrives with a few of the others.. namely, the smooth/new England asters, the sneezeweed, the prairie coneflower, and the false sunflowers.
These are all beautiful plants… but they are meant to grow in grass lands – areas where they have a fair bit of competition to keep them in check. Here in the garden… well… they get a little out of hand. The biggest problem has to do with their height – all of them get so tall and heavy… they just flop.
I actually have this false sunflower supported and staked up… the actual plant is only in in the area behind the big zucchini leaves… but you can see it flops to the left and right – shading out everything else undernearth is.
Same with the one out front – though it’s staked, up, it leaves heavily to the right in a big waterfall of flowers, completely blocking the pot on the milk can behind it.
I have two big bunches of sneezeweed and the one by Edible Alley I actually got staked up and looking nice and tidy.
And it’s just a mass off happy yellow flowers that the pollinators of all kinds are loving!
But the bunch by the woodland garden…
They are just a flopping disaster.
Same with the prairie coneflowers…
They just want to fall right out into the yard – despite massive staking. (I also need to split this bunch up – they are waaaay too dense!)
The asters aren’t in bloom yet, but the ones in the catio are just all over the place as usual… and the ones in the front garden…
I cut back most of the flopping stems, so they are tidier but they completely block the poor butterfly bush behind.
And as you can see, all these flowers bloom absolutely amazingly! They bring huge benefits to the garden and it’s residents, so I don’t want to take them out… but I need to find a better solution.
I need some better supports – stakes and string just aren’t cutting it – I’m going to have to invest in some half moon metal supports. I have some small ones, but I can’t find any that are tall enough. There’s a metalsmith/welder down the street from us, so I’m going to go have a talk with him one day and see if could make some.
Next year…. I’m going to try the Chelsea Chop! It’s something l learned about on my British Gardening shows.. The Chelsea chop (so called because it is usually carried out, coinciding with the RHS Chelsea Flower Show) is a pruning method by which you limit the size and control the flowering season of many herbaceous plants. Basically, you chop them back about one third, and it helps to keep their size under control.
It’s too late for both those things this year… but next year, I’ll hopefully have a garden that looks a little less… floppy!
Saturday, Dave and I took Mom antiquing, and the rest of the time, she and I spent stitching and chatting. She bound a quilt she’s been working on, and I worked on my poor neglected moth.
I managed to get a good amount filled in on the wings. And maybe by next weekend (which is a long one here!) I’ll have the wings finished completely! But with the way things have been going lately, I probably shouldn’t get ahead of myself…
Mom came by for the weekend, so I didn’t devote the weekend to sewing like I had planned. (It’s hot and gross here – AGAIN). But after she left Sunday morning, Burton and I headed up to the studio.
There’s still time in Aug-tober to complete one more spooky Halloween top together if we put our minds to it. Burton drew up the plan, and I set about putting those plans into action.
It involved making a lot of HSTs.
I don’t mind making HSTs, but even making them in bulk (8 at a time, in this case) they always take longer than I expect. I needed 80 of them, and it took the bulk of the afternoon. The rest of the day was spent putting them together into friendship stars.
But I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until next week to see what we do with them.
Burton insisted I stop at dinnertime, so top assembly will just have to wait.
There’s not a lot to show for the garden that you haven’t already seen. The peas are done, the cucumbers are winding down, and I picked the last of the carrots the other week.
I was very pleased with them, and Dave moreso. There’s only a couple left in the fridge and I’ll probably cook them up this week.
The cucamelons have also been a hit with him.
I get a handful every few days or so. And for those wondering – the look like wee watermelons, but they are basically mini cucumbers.
We get some raspberries in early summer, but the real crop is just starting to take off.
I have red as well, but these golden raspberries are by far my favourite. They are plump, and juicy, with just a slightly milder flavour than the red ones. Our neighbour gave them too me the first year we were here, and I’m so glad he did. It looks like we are going to get a bumper crop this year.
We’re getting over run with cherry tomatoes again, but I’ve got lots of people in town who are happy to take them off my hands.
Other than that, it’s just waiting for the squash, pumpkins and gourds to come in. And to start thinking about what I will do next year!
I’ve spoken to a few other gardeners, and even found a news report that confirmed it… Butterfly populations are definitely down this summer.
Normally by this time in the year, I can come out on any summer afternoon and the white butterfly bush has at least four or five butterflies flitting about it. And there are almost always several more to be found elsewhere in the garden. But mostly it’s the big, black-bummed carpenter bees.
And there’s not even as many of them as their usually are.
The only butterfly that hasn’t seem to taken a hit on numbers is the ubiquitous Cabbage white.
There are always a dozen or so flitting about the garden on any given day. I’m pretty sure I helped their numbers by planting broccoli this year… I know I didn’t get all of the caterpillars that were munching away on the plants.
Despite lots of caterpillars, adult monarchs have been fairly scarce.
There was of course, the lovely little girl that came into the world from the catio.
I’ve seen a couple very ragged looks ones (and Lemmy has eaten one or two). These are the monarch that laid the eggs that became the caterpillars that I watched grow this summer. Once a butterfly becomes an adult, it’s only purpose is to mate and lay eggs. Once it does, its days are numbered. And they literally just fly until their wings shred and they can fly no more.
And as sad as it is, their children start their life in my garden, or at least, use my garden as a way point on their way south.
And speaking of tattered… I never get many Tiger Swallowtails in the garden but when I do – they ALWAYS visit the Dark Knight Butterfly bush… and they are always tattered.
And it’s a shame – I think they are one of the most beautiful butterflies we have here, but I never get to see them in their full glory.
The Red Spotted Purple is a butterfly that’s pretty common in this garden. Their numbers are definitely down, but on top of that, they’ve proved extremely hard to get pictures of. I got really excited and thought I had my chance when I spotted one deep inside the white butterfly bush…
But then I realized, not only was that an odd place for it to be… it also didn’t seem to be moving. I reached in, pulled it out gently, and discovered why…
It seems it fell victim to this VERY TINY crab spider. Oh well… I guess a spider has to eat too!
I did manage to get a picture of a live one a few days later…
Though I haven’t seen one since. They are certainly pretty from both sides!
Speaking of…
Red Admirals are another really common butterfly here. I saw more in the spring – they are usually one of the earliest butterflies I see, showing up as soon as we get a warm day in April or early may. But I have trouble getting not just picture of them (they don’t tend to sit still) but pictures of their wings open. I was thrilled when this one on the lavender butterfly bush was so accommodating!
Comma’s are also fairly regular visitors, though this is the only one I’ve seen this year, and it was looking pretty ragged. It’s open wing colours are usually a fairly vibrant rusty orange, but this one was pretty dull. Still.. I love it when I get a picture with their little tongue curled up on the end!
Last year and the year before, I had dozens of skippers throughout the garden, but this year I’ve only seen the wee Peck’s Skipper (right) and Silver Spotted Skipper (Left)
There have been a handful of Northern Crescents, but not one Meadow Fritillary (which looks similar but is larger). These two are normally all over the False Sunflowers this time of year.
And this wee guy is NEVER a common sight. It’s a summer Azure. I’m lucky if I see one once a year. That’s partly because they are tiny!!!! It’s a little smaller than a dime. And if you do catch sight of one, they are hard to keep track of as they fly. I was super thrilled when this one landed on the gourds at the exact right time!
And it seems the garden has one or two more surprises for me. I pulled the last of the ready carrots the other week and hanging out on the ones I seeded late…
A caterpillar of the Black Eastern Swallowtail! Funny thing – I never one saw a Black Eastern in the garden, but there must have been and she laid some eggs in my carrots! (They live off of plants in the carrot and parsley family). Long time readers will remember when I had one make a chrysalis in the garden at the townhouse. It ended badly, but I was hoping I might get a second chance. This guy was a good size, so I put several sticks in around him, hoping he’d chose one to make his chrysalis on when he was ready. Sadly, he did not… I came out a few days later and he was gone. I’ve searched the area for a chrysalis, but no luck,
But we may still get another chance with the monarchs…
There’s once again several fat juicy ones on the catio milkweed, getting ready to head out into the big, bad world. I’ll let you know if I find any more little green jewels.
Aug-tober is slipping away, and I felt like I’d barely gotten anything done for it. So on the weekend, Burton and I sat down with some graph paper and figured out how we were going to use those pumpkin and cat blocks
First, we had to put all those blocks together with some sashing and corner stones.
That was the easy part! But Burton decided we also needed a pieced border. I love how pieced borders look – but I HATE making them. There’s so much room for error and stretch – I have a heck of a time getting them to fit right.
And…. I let Burton do the math – and Burton sucks at math, so there was a little ripping and recalculating. But, eventually…
We got the borders assembled. Then we held our breath as we sewed them on…
And happily it worked with very minimal fudging. We added another plain border to bring this one out to a respectable 56″ square and called it a day.
Well… I wanted to call it a day, but Burton wasn’t done yet. The colours in this layer cake are a little muted, and very tricky to match – I had nothing in my stash that would work for binding. So Burton has the brilliant idea to do pieced binding with the leftover of the layer cake. (Because a pieced border wasn’t enough…). Well for those that don’t know… a layer cake piece is on;y 10″ long… which mean to get enough to go around the quilt, I needed to cut and sew, 32 more strips.
But – what Burton wants, Burton gets.
Over 300 inches of binding, cut, sewn, and ironed – ready to be put on the quilt whenever I get a chance to get to Mom’s and quilt it… Underneath it is a grey marbled flannel I got for the back.
Now – I’ve got two weekends left, and I want to make at least one more Halloween quilt top – Burton and I better get back to that graph paper.
Bonus content: It’s not only Aug-tober in the sewing studio – the stores are starting to flood with Halloween goodies.
Dave and I went out to run some errands on Monday night and may have lost our minds a little…
Looks like we’re taking the Garden of Bones up a notch this year…
I know.. I know… ANOTHER weekend with no cross stitching, but it just hasn’t been in the cards this month. So I hope to make it up to you with this wee offering…
Yup – ANOTHER tree frog! I found this one sleeping on my gas meter on the front of the house on the weekend. This one is a little darker than the first one. He’s also a fair bit smaller.
How small?
Here he is on the tips of my fingers… so maybe two inches long at most! I moved him from the gas meter to the butterfly bush.
it just seemed like a much nicer place to hang out.
Wandering Cat Studio 