Goodbye, Groanhouse! Down It Comes!

 On the 17th of July, I said a final goodbye to the Groanhouse with a grim smile and a shake of my head.  I couldn't say I'd miss it, knowing what would replace it. We'd had ten years of good times and bad. Mostly good. It had saved me in the winters, and it had destroyed me, too, when the gas would cut off and its contents would almost instantly freeze (which happened about every three years, on average). To say it was uninsulated was kind. 

Over time, as you can see, the plastic turned yellow and deteriorated, and I really noticed the effect of that decrease in light transmission on my plants in winter. 

I also noticed the Arctic breeze coming through the holes in the roof. I was tired of patching everything, the seams and now the roof, with Gorilla Tape. I was tired of everything about this structure. Good riddance, you bunch of poorly planned obsolescence. Thanks for the memories!

I had a large amount of work to do before the excavators got here and demolition commenced. There was some beautiful crocosmia "Lucifer" and a ton of nice Rudbeckia "Goldsturm" in the bed closest to the construction site. The retaining wall that supported that little bed was coming out, and I had to remove all those flowers. I potted them up and got them out of there the day before the excavators arrived. 

I put crocosmia all around the yard. This is the back deck bed, which I reclaimed this year from the giant kiwi vine that had eaten it for the past 16 years.  More on that later...that was a thing.

The side shade bed, emptied of its gold and scarlet treasure. The Groanhouse awaits its fate.

I don't like to waste anything, especially not living things. To my surprise, the Rudbeckia barely batted an eye when I dug it out and potted it--as long as I kept it in full shade and watered it every day. 

I loaded the 16 pots in the trailer and drove them around to live under the back deck for the rest of the summer, where they put on a beautiful show. I just had to remember to water them every day or two...I'm STILL watering those pots, two months later. 

Operation Relocate Rudbeckia in progress.

I took a deep breath. I was ready for the next morning, when the excavators would arrive. 

Lane was concerned that the weight of his mini-excavator might crack my sidewalk, so he executed this nifty leapfrog, taking the weight of the machine on the scoop and sort of jumping over the sidewalk!

Here comes the demolition crew: two young men. Lane, in red, and Stone, in gray, use their bare hands, arms, and legs to dismantle what took us a whole bunch of Saturdays to construct. I took a weird delight in seeing it taken apart. 

Witnessing Curtis watch the demolition squeezed my heart. He's nervous, licking his lips and shifting his gaze. He doesn't understand why I seem to be OK with my Groanhouse being destroyed. He thinks maybe he should do something about it, but he's taking his cues from me. Bless his rounded little head. He's got thoughts packed in there, he does.

Going, going...

Just a bunch of pieces. It left this world as it arrived. A deconstructed kit. 

Off it goes, carried by hand. Sheesh. Such an ignominious end.

Young Hummingbirds On the Loose!

Summer. I love it. But I really, really love August, a month that doesn't get much respect because people remember it as too hot, too humid, too something or other. Here's how I see August. Everything is still growing and blooming as hard as it can. Baby birds have fledged, by and large, and are absolutely everywhere, at least on my ridgetop in southeast Ohio. Wherever I walk, I'm scolded by parent birds, who are telling me they have young ones hidden nearby. I hear a strange continuous rustling in pine needles and follow the sound to a male hooded warbler, puffed up, tail dragging, skittering slowly over the forest floor as he leads my eyes inexorably away from his nest. It is SO cool. To enjoy August, all you have to do is stop complaining and show up.

 

This is a typical move by a juvenile ruby-throated hummingbird. Young flight muscles tire easily, so they're always looking for a place to stand while learning to ply the flowers for nectar. You will not see an adult rubythroat busting a move like this.

They vie for privileges at the crocosmia blossoms with spicebush swallowtails. Crocosmia "Lucifer" is native to Africa, and is naturalized in places like Costa Rica and Scotland, my goodness. While it spreads in my beds, I haven't seen it popping up in other places in my yard or in southern Ohio. It grows from a bulb, but you don't have to lift it in the winter. Just leave it right where it is! For whatever reason, mine just went NUTS this summer of 2021. It was a gift from my friend Bonnie many years ago, but this year it took center stage, delighting the hummingbirds and swallowtails and me.

The young hummingbirds stop frequently to rest and preen.

 

  

I love being in on the intimate moments when they're acting like birds instead of insect helicopters.

Sometimes, when the sunlight is bright and clear and striking the flowers just below my studio window, I get some acceptable photos. Like this one:

And this one, which is one of the better hummingbird photos I've taken. The trick is having sufficient light and fast enough shutter speed to freeze those wings.The brighter it is out there, the more likely you are to be happy with your shot.

I absolutely love the video game thrill of keeping my lens on a rapidly moving hummingbird. Or warbler, for that matter.

Pretty little glittering scrap of life, lighting up my world.

 

 I'm very grateful that the stem borers that attacked and killed my cardinalflowers last summer are nowhere to be seen this summer. This hardy native has thrown seed children all over the bed where it first started, and marched up along the north side of the house. I've aided the dispersal, transplanting many seedlings up into the front yard beds, which is now aflame with crimson blossoms and the little green sprites who feed on them. It is most satisfying. I've also given lots of cardinalflower seedlings to local friends, who very much appreciate these Ohio-tested natives adapted to our conditions. The trick in growing and propagating cardinalflower is not to deadhead it. Let it go to seed and disperse, then lay the ripe seedheads on bare soil where you want it to come up. Don't mulch a cardinalflower bed! you'll inhibit recruitment of seedlings. Do keep it moist. Be generous with water, especially in dry spells. 

Super tall stalks appreciate support, and hummingbirds love to perch on the rungs of tomato cages, too. Win-win. 

 

This is how the original bed, which I've had going for at least 20 years, looked in 2017. Borers killed these plants, but new ones have spring up and will soon be as tall and beautiful as the originals. In the meantime, the crocosmia has spread like mad, and I'll have to take some of it out to make room for more cardinalflower. A great problem to have!
 

Feeders are fine, as long as you keep them absolutely spotless and free of mold and bacteria. But there's nothing like watching hummingbirds feed the way they were designed to, at the plants they evolved with. Plant it and they will come!

JZ

Butterfly Crazy!

I knew it was going to be a good butterfly day when I couldn't get a dang thing done at the drawing/writing table. 

I kept seeing swallowtails. 

Eastern tiger swallowtail on crocosmia

This was interesting to me because I couldn't remember having seen swallowtails fighting over the crocosmia my friend Bonnie gave me years ago. I was astounded when she told me I wouldn't have to pull the bulbs over the winter, that it was hardy right in the ground. I had to believe her because she's from Erie PA and it's a LOT colder up there than it is here in southeast Ohio. 

I planted them and they sat and thought about it for a year and then decided they liked Ohio and took off running all over my hummingbird bed.

I've seen crocosmia just like this growing naturalized on roadside banks in Costa Rica. I wrote that sentence before I Googled "Crocosmia native to" and found out it's native to grasslands in southern and eastern Africa! Zowie! 

Had a feeling it wasn't native to Costa Rica. Kind of amazing that something from East Africa overwinters in Erie PA, huh? Amazing and a wee bit scary.

The hummingbirds love it, as do the spicebush (left) and tiger swallowtails. And so do I. I love anything that multiplies enough so I can give some to friends, but not so much that I have to pull the plug and go all zero-tolerance on it. Like lavatera and loosestrife. Got some crocosmia earmarked for Shila's newly revived and humming front garden. Paying it forward--for me that's what gardening's all about. I've got enough cardinal flower seedlings that I can give some to Shila, too!

Pipevine swallowtail says YEAH! 

I went to the kitchen to fix a little something to eat right after taking these shots through my studio window and stared slack-jawed as a very large brilliant lemon-yellow butterfly fluttered at Pelargonium "Happy Thought Red."  Duh? Whazzat??

It took about 20 seconds to sink in on me that I was looking at a giant cloudless sulfur! 

From there, it went to the Million Bells petunia (GCSU's love pink!)

and then zooped right over to the Naked Ladies which you may remember I dug up down on Dean's Fork and brought home in a paper cup because I wanted to know what kind of bulb made those funny straplike leaves in early spring. You can see that they, too, like living here. Who wouldn't? Heapin' helpin's of cow manure!

For a hoot, see "Digging the Mystery Daffodil," from March 2015. It tells the story of finding the mystery leaves, digging the bulbs, and figuring out what they were. 

The sulfur muscled its way into this flower and I was astonished to see it shoulder another giant cloudless sulfur out of the same blossom! I should stop here to say that giant cloudless sulfurs are a bit of an event in Whipple, Ohio. They are a southern species that makes a reverse migration in the late summer, flying far north of their breeding range for reasons unknown. Fun? Profit? 

For a dizzy and probably unrepeatable moment, I had two GCSU's in the same frame, on the Naked Ladies I'd dug, not knowing what they even were, years ago, who were now doing their spectacular thing in my heirloom bed. Hm. That sounds a little odd, but I'm too lazy to rewrite it. I kind of like the way it came out anyway. Heh. It's a terrible sentence, but this is a blog, not a book. 

LOOKIT THAT!!!!! The green leaves behind? Dean's Fork peony!!


I love this shot of a GCSU rising straight up, its abdomen above its hard-beating wings. It must need to get that little bod out of the way of the rotating wings when it's helicoptering straight up.

On the next stalk, that same tattered pipevine swallowtail I shot on the cardinal flower was having its way with the ladies. 

And peeking down beneath, I found a Peck's skipper sipping nectar from between the petals. Too small to go into the flower for nectar like the big boys, it still makes its way and finds sweetness.

I came back in the house and Jemima paid me a visit through the studio window.  She likes to check up on me.

I can't even tell you how I love this bird, love that she still visits her ma and takes handouts of pecans and chicken breast, rice and sweet corn, sunflower hearts and peanuts from her window feeder.

As of July 31, she was easy to tell from the other four jays in the yard by her molty wings; she'd lost her big white-tipped tertials and was still growing replacements. The two deck feathers of her tail were about 3/4 grown in, too.  She changes every day, and she looks so different now (August 6)! I worry that I won't be able to pick her out from the other jays very soon, when her first alternate plumage is finally in.

I had a feeling, based on what I was seeing in the yard, that the Monarch Meadow would be hoppin', so I betook myself out there to meet Shila, who drove out after work to shoot butterflies with me. 

We were not disappointed. Another late summer/autumn reverse migrant from the Deep South is the giant swallowtail, sometimes called the Orange Dog for its depredations on orange trees. The broodplant for GISW is citrus! Since my Ruby Red grapefruit "tree" croaked, not much of that is growing in Appalachian Ohio. So these big boys have to come from afar.

Giants are just beeeyoootiful. I love the underwing!!

Can you believe this is the same bug?? Yep. Upperwing, with that fabulous stripe of gold across the middle.

Really it's hard to believe it's the same butterfly. Like giant cloudless sulfurs, giant swallowtails like pink.

This summer has been so very beautiful. Cool and rainy, lush and green. There's not a blade of grass wanting for water anywhere. I haven't had to water since June. Divine!! And all these butterflies, coming out just when I need them most, in the most perfect milkweed monarch meadow on the planet.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.