Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Friday, May 29, 2009
Things I Never Saw Before
Lately, I've been thinking this blog might be getting a bit stale. You know... repetitive, undifferentiated ........ boring.
Then, out of nowhere, nature conspires to shake me out of my doldrums. I was walking toward the vegetable garden with tools in my hands when I saw something not quite right. There seemed to be a lump of dirt...moving. Gee, that looks like a big turtle. Back I ran to the house to drop the garden tools and pick up the camera. It is a big turtle. I would guess the shell was 10 to 12 inches long.
Apparently an Eastern Snapping Turtle. That's the closest match I could find on the Turtles of Virginia page at the Virginia Herpetological Society website. I had never seen one before and was surprised because I assumed they were exclusively pond dwellers. Last I saw it, it was headed for our tiny little stream.
The next day I heard, then saw an Eastern Meadowlark.
A beautifully patterned bird, with a pretty (loud) song. And I had never seen one before.
Earlier, I found this moth with an odd bat-faced look.
Moth Update, June 5: It's been raining steadily since I got up this morning, so I had time to try to identify the moth today. I think it's a Harnessed Tiger Moth (Apantesis phalerata). There are several species of Tiger Moths, but the black spots which appear to be eyes (and are not) are a distinguishing mark of Apantesis phalerata.
And watched a Tufted Titmouse extracting larval bald-faced hornets from this nest.
Then while out photographing some of the meadow wildflowers (next post!), I found a new-to-me butterfly: the Carolina Satyr.
So that's five things I never saw before that magically materialized before my eyes in just a few days last weekend. Got to get back outside and keep looking...need new material for the blog.
Labels: birds, butterflies, critters, moths, turtles
Saturday, December 06, 2008
That's a Wrap
I think it's pretty much over until spring.
The vegetable garden, that is. I went out this morning and found that the kale and sorrel had been eaten. The radish foliage has been eaten several times. The carrot foliage is nibbled on. The ground was frozen hard. Wonder if the carrots are still any good? Dunno, because I'm not in the mood to chisel them out of the soil. The weather got so cold so fast this year. I just wasn't prepared.
But, hey, that should be good for the persimmons, right?
Weeellll.....I plucked the one in the lower right hand corner. The pulp was a mushy sticky mess - very sweet, but still had that puckery astringency near the seeds. Maybe I should plant a cultivated variety for myself and leave the wild ones to the wild critters. Speaking of, a rabbit and I startled each other while I was looking at the persimmons, and I blame it and its family for eating the kale and sorrel. The work was too neat and dainty for a deer to have done it.
So, what's left to talk about until spring? Birdwatching, stargazing, garden catalogs, and frosty moss-scapes.
Oh yeah, and complaining about the weather.
Labels: critters, mosses, persimmon, vegetables
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Flowery Interlude
Are you tired of reading about vegetables here? How about flowers and butterflies for a change?
The meadow below the vegetable garden has turned gold with these exuberant Tickseeds (Bidens sp.). What you can't see from that photo is the huge number of tiny skippers flitting about them.
The flowers have an attractive honey-sweet fragrance too, but you'll just have to trust me or find some and do your own sniff test.
One of my favorite fall wildflowers is Ironweed (Vernonia sp.). I don't have many of these and I wish I did. It takes a lot of them to make an impression.
The one above is past its prime, but the flowers are pretty close up. The photo below shows the individual fringe-y florets, but if you want a good look, click through and magnify the image (button will be above the photo, right corner).
Near the Ironweed, you can clearly see the path the deer made through the meadow between the woods and the vegetable garden. But I'm not going to talk about vegetables today.
My mystery wildflower continues to bloom. I've looked through several wildflower books and websites and I'm still stumped. It's about 8 inches tall with thin opposite leaves. There were 3 plants scattered in various places at the edge of the woods, but 2 of them vanished during the August drought. The survivor was the largest of the 3. I don't remember seeing this flower last summer.
This Cloudless Sulphur butterfly is a big one, much larger than the more common Clouded Sulphur. I've seen them a few times this summer and always on these pale orchid-purple petunias, where their color is complemented perfectly. According to Butterflies through Binoculars, they have the unusual habit of migrating north in the autumn.
And just like caterpillars into butterflies, pepper flowers turn into fruit! More later about my cooking experiments with Ají Dulce and associates.
Labels: butterflies, critters, peppers, petunias, wildflowers
Saturday, July 19, 2008
A Crittery Day
I was tempted to title this post All Creatures Great and Small, but resisted.
There seemed to be an unusual amount of wildlife activity yesterday. Early in the morning I walked up to the vegetable garden to find that something had tasted my first semi-ripe tomato. Time to get out the plastic netting, darn it. And Japanese Beetles were everywhere, including on the basil. While I was in the garden, the Pileated Woodpeckers were making a fuss in the woods - calling and drumming and chasing each other.
I came back to the house for a second cup of tea, and found a young buck deer wandering through the woods in back - munching as he went. This was the best picture I got.
I count 3 points on each antler, so that makes him a 6-point buck? I obviously don't know enough about deer and need to do some opposition research. For instance, territoriality - does seeing one buck of that size mean there aren't any others nearby? Does he have a lady friend? Relatives? Does anybody know of a good resource for learning about deer?
The birds were very active yesterday and not just the woodpeckers. While I had the camera out I noticed a small grayish bird foraging, warbler-like, in the trees. It turned out to be a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher.
Later in the afternoon I gave a recently-planted Viburnum a deep soaking with the hose. While I was moving the hose around, some tiny critter jumped out of the way. I first thought it was an insect, but looking closer I found the tiniest frog I've ever seen.
I left a bit of a plant label in the photo when I cropped it, so you can get an idea of just how small it is. My best guess is either a Leopard Frog or a Pickerel Frog. Any frog experts out there reading this?
We ended the day sitting on the front porch listening to the late summer sounds. The Cicadas have been singing for a couple weeks, but last night the Katydids joined the chorus. The fireflies provided the light show.
Labels: critters, deer, frogs, insects
Thursday, March 06, 2008
&%@# Squirrels
Just saw this annoying frustrating amusing sight at my bird feeder.
Notice the rat-like tail beneath all the fluff.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
What Squirrels Think About
How to get into so-called squirrel-proof feeders.
Most of the time it isn't necessary to actually get into the feeder, but this little overachiever managed just that, as shown here in a classic shot from this blog in April of 2004. That particular feeder has been retired.
Currently, I have 2 feeders in the backyard in northern Virginia. The squirrels know at least a couple of ways to get seed out of both of them. Both feeders are suspended from tree branches using long hooks. The easiest way for the squirrels to get a small amount of seed out of them is to climb down the hook and then jump to the nearest tree trunk. This gets the feeder swinging and generally spills some seed out onto the ground.
Here's another technique they recently developed. This is one of those feeders where the perch is attached to a spring which closes a door over the seed if there's too much weight on the perch. Ah, but what if we ignore the perch?
Just climb down the hook and suspend yourself from the roof.
Oops, stay away from the perch, remember?
Now we can get down to serious eating.
They've determined that the spring on the side of the feeder has something to do with the door, and occasionally they pull it out. They did it again yesterday afternoon, causing me to go out, cursing, to put it back together.
Below, we have something I saw today for the first time. The suet feeder was added last week, replacing a different style of suet feeder. I thought the roof on the suet feeder would be slippery enough to keep the squirrels from getting a toehold. Wrong! I watched as this squirrel jumped from the nearest tree trunk onto the suet feeder and then grabbed hold of the seed feeder. Chow time! The dome over this seed feeder had been one of my most effective squirrel-deterrents.
Oh, there are birds too. More pictures later.
Thanks Frances, for planting the idea for this topic.
Friday, November 09, 2007
Miscellany and Oddities
I should amend the title of the previous post to "I Was Half-Right". The subfreezing temperatures were enough to kill off the least cold-hardy plants, but the tough ones are left standing. This introduces oddity #1: A 90% frozen Alternanthera with one perfectly fine branch. The only thing I can think of is that the unfrozen branch was protected by some nearby zinnias, which then collapsed in a heap the morning after the freeze? Either that or there is some very strange microclimate stuff going on.
Today's pictures are from central Virginia, where I found the lettuce and spinach green and happy under a double layer of Agribon-19. On the way to the undercover greenery, I spotted oddity #2: one of my supposedly deer repellent plants - a nice little rosemary - was broken and chewed. Just last weekend I was admiring how nicely the 4 rosemarys anchored the corners of the potager. 
All spring and summer I fretted about how I was going to keep the deer away from the edibles, and all spring and summer they didn't bother much of anything. And now, when the tomatoes and peppers are frozen dead and gone, the critters come back to eat the "critter-proof" plants. I tell you, there's never a dull moment in gardening. Some of bronze fennel had the tops chewed off too. Apparently whoever did this was just tasting because the chewed-off pieces were left on the ground. BTW, something also chewed off the top of an Illicium earlier in the year - another reputed deer-proof plant.
There are foot-(hoof?)-prints all over the newly planted garlic beds too, but I can't see that anything was dug up. The soil is so sandy there that the prints are indistinct.
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| Maple leaves from the November album |
We've been busy lately and I've been neglecting my blog reading. I opened Google Reader this morning and found 150+ unread gardening posts. I'm almost hoping for a rainy weekend so I can sit around and drink tea and read blogs....
But then again, I need clear skies to look for Comet Holmes. Have you seen it? I didn't even know about it until this morning when I was blog surfing and found it on a birding blog, of all things. I started at A DC Birding Blog, where I learned that this year may bring large numbers of winter finches to feeders in the US. More on this later. From there, I read his Friday roundup, and went to check out the Harris's Sparrow on Mike's Birding and Digiscoping Blog. I noticed there a recent post on Comet 17P/Holmes. I think I need to set a timer to limit my internet time.
Anyhow, the reason I was interested in the winter finches was because yesterday I think I saw a small group of pine siskins in the tulip tree in front of the house. I've never seen a pine siskin before, so I'm not 100% sure, but they were streaky all over with wing bars and very pointy beaks. I didn't get a real good look. This site claims that they eat tulip tree seeds, and I think that's what they were doing, so it makes sense.
So in keeping with the season, my gardening activity is moving indoors to books, catalogs and the internet, and my outdoor activities have more to do with the sky than with the earth.
Labels: astronomy, birds, critters, frost, seasons
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Tame Your Passion (vines)
Get more bunnies.
After they've finished the sweet peas, morning glories, dill, rudbeckia, and asters (a favorite), they'll turn their attention to the passion vines. But they're so cute when they're little.
Labels: critters, NoVA, passiflora, rabbits
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Spring or Winter?
Every time I declare spring, it snows. I was just thinking of declaring spring after last weekend in the country, so snow is in the forecast.
Last weekend in Central Virginia, the weather was warm enough to open the windows and air out the house. The sound of spring peepers (or something) drifted in on the breeze (more like a gale, actually). I wandered around the woods looking for wildflowers or fiddleheads, but it was still too early. The maple trees are starting to bud out. The birds were singing noticeably more than the previous weekend. Our well-fed suburban birds have been singing for weeks, but I think the rural birds were still just trying to stay alive. Now the bugs are starting to come out and they can think of other activities. I didn't see any deer, but did find their tracks in the mud, however those were nowhere near the recently planted woodies. So far, so good.
Back to those spring peepers for a moment. According to what I've read on the internet, spring peepers are nocturnal. So then, what was I hearing during the daylight? They started about 10:30 in the morning and went until late afternoon. The sound was coming from the brushy side of the stream. I tried to look for the critters, but could see nothing. I found a site with sounds of a dozen frogs and toads, but none of these sound like what I remember. So the identity of the croaking creatures remains to be discovered.
In Northern Virginia, a few more crocus flowers popped open yesterday. I do mean popped open. Sunday I swear there was nothing there - hardly even any leaves; Monday - flowers. And some of the very early narcissus are open. Pictures soon.
A rare bird stopped by this afternoon - a pine warbler. I guess they really aren't all that rare, but this is only the second time I've seen one in the backyard. Not rare at all, but very welcome, a large flock of robins was rummaging through the leaves in the woods late in the afternoon.
Did I mention there's a snow advisory for tomorrow?
Labels: birds, critters, crocus, narcissus, snow
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Herbal Essence
About this time of year I start to crave green/resinous/herbal fragrances. In the drawing-in season of autumn, I like the warm spicy scents of pumpkin pie, cinnamon rolls and molasses cookies, but now I'm ready for a wake-up call. Especially today, when all the outdoors looks like a black and white photograph, I want to be surrounded by rosemary, lavender, mint, citrus, juniper... Does this sound like the old original 1970s Clairol Herbal Essence shampoo to you? The remembrance of that scent has been driving me crazy all day. If they brought it back, I'd buy a lifetime supply.
Parallel to this, and thinking about spring plant shopping, I've been reading that strongly aromatic plants may be an effective deer deterrence strategy. I thought I had come up with this idea on my own, but now I've read it in at least two different places (1,2). This is good news, because I happen to admire most herbs anyway and would be very happy to have an excuse to plant more.
Cruising the Internet for new ideas, I found a page on the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's web site about fragrant plants - it mentions one of my favorites (Corsican Mint), and gave me some ideas for new things to try (Costmary, Patchouli). I didn't know Patchouli could be grown as an annual. Reminds me of 1970s incense (there's the 70s again).
Anne Raver visited the New York Botanical Garden last fall and her article about it described an Agastache (Black Adder) with a very minty fragrance:
The blossoms were pleasant enough, but the crystal-clear menthol that filled my nose and throat was astounding.
I was suddenly wide awake. I noticed the shape of clouds, the fuzziness of my sweater. I made a note: must have this plant.
It’s legal. It’s also drought-tolerant and deer-resistant.
Now, if only I could find a recipe for that Clairol Herbal Essence fragrance. I seem to remember the commercials saying something about balsam and melissa?
P.S. You'd be surprised at how many people recall the scents of the 70s. I hadn't thought about some of these in a long time.
Labels: critters, fragrant plants, seasons
Monday, January 08, 2007
Meeting the Neighbors
Four of our new neighbors stopped by for breakfast yesterday. I took a couple of pictures (1, 2) to share with everybody.
Have I mentioned that they're vegetarians? So hard to think of a menu that will please everybody...
Labels: critters
