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.

Digging the Mystery Daffodil

A fine spring day. The temperature hit 70 in the afternoon. Chet and I had to get out and see what was up on Dean's Fork, put a few more miles on the chassis. Just the sky alone would have been enough, but the warmth was intoxicating. To run in a tank and shorts, feel the warm wind on my skin.

A couple days later, it plunged to 18, and we got an inch of snow. Such is spring. 

This is why it's good to live in the moment, and grab it when it comes.

When there's almost nothing green yet growing, green catches the eye. I fixed my binoculars on these clumps across Dean's Fork. They look like daffodils, but there's no explanatory tumbledown homestead near. Odd. Could they have been washed out and deposited here by a flood? I don't know. Mystery abounds.

I picked my way across the stream. These are worth examining.

They're plucking at my memory. It's a daffodil, I think, but I can't recall what kind has such broad, round-tipped leaves.

You know what I'm going to do here. I'm going to go all Stone Age.

I search the stream bank for a trowel, and find a stone that's bladelike but cupped. 

Those bulbs are really in there, with long strong roots going down about 8". I have to dig for quite awhile to encompass them. Finally I can dig no deeper and am forced to pull the bulbs as gently as I can. Luckily, the roots come with them.

This takes awhile, and Chet settles down to bask and stand guard.

 She does this from time to time. Hunkers down and digs and mutters for a long time. I just wait it out. I have nothing else I have to be doing. This is what I do.

 Voila! I have my specimens. I take only three, and leave dozens of others in the two clumps to grow in peace.  Another cool thing about plants...you can take a little piece, and if you're patient, it'll replicate the original plant in time. You don't have to pillage the whole thing.

 I bundle them in wet leaves and leave them in a puddle, because I have several more miles to run. Well, traverse.

On down the road I come on the Peony House, the tumbledown structure where I found my beloved Dean's Fork heirloom peony years ago.

Here's how it looked in situ on May 15, 2014. This unexpected shot of white in front of a barely discernible structure. Once a proud part of someone's garden, now just persisting there because that's what peonies do best. Everything else has been subsumed by ragweed and ironweed and star chickweed, but the peony stands strong.

It makes me happy to see it prosper, even if no one but me ever sees it or kneels to smell its heavenly bouquet.

 Four years ago, in the fall, I dug two small eyes, planted them in my asparagus/rhubarb bed, and waited three years for them to make flowers. They finally bloomed in 2014. They should be wonderful this spring. 

P.S. It smells like roses in heaven.

Near the tumbledown house I see a small bulb sending up shoots. I crush a leaf, note its oniony scent and find it's an allium, decide to leave it grow. It's probably a little yellow one I already have. These are the places you find heirloom plants.

I pick up my bulbs on the way back up the road, bundle them in wet leaves and sandwich them between a couple of slabs of bark. I know if I root around Harold's weekend mancabin, I'll find a cup that will work better as a transport system. 

C'est voila!

I bring them home and plant them immediately in one of my terraced beds. I can't wait to see what they'll be. If these small bulbs don't bloom this year, I can still find out.

Because the next morning, I pull up at my financial advisor's office in town and find the same plant growing in a clump by the parking lot.  Ah! I knew it looked familiar. It may not turn out to be anything special. But then again it may.

Of course, there's always the chance mine are different. That's the fun of plants, and the mystery of finding them, digging them out and spreading them around. Someone years ago planted them at a homestead now long rotted and gone. And there they are, still fixing to bloom in the middle of the woods. Whatever they are, they've probably lived there a hundred years, winter after dry summer after winter.

The shadows grow long and we turn for home, thinking about spring and clouds, daffodils and dinner,  the enduring wonder of plants that persist. 

**So before evenfall, fellow gardeners on blog and Facebook have all decided that what I have here are NAKED LADIES! I'm so excited! This perennial amaryllis makes leaves in spring that die down by June. And in August, it sends up a surprise stalk of pink fabulous.  Hence the name. Surprise Lily is another common name.

This photo takes me back to a lovely time in 2011 when Nina and Tim came to roll around in August on Indigo Hill, and Chet was only six.

Thanks, everyone, for chipping in on the ID. I hope mine have a dusting of blue on the end of their pink petals. Divine!