Flip the pages of the calendar ahead to June and this is what you’ll find in some of my gardens. Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) is a wonderful flower to attract pollinators, and what better example to find than a Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus).
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Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Oxalis stricta.
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The Mourning Cloak Butterfly (Nymphalis antiopa). One of the first butterflies that you’ll see in early spring, or during warm winter days. They’re able to accomplish this because they overwinter as adults in locations such as tree cavities or under loose tree bark. Emerging as an adult rather than having to mature from a larval or pupal stage, having a head start over other butterflies.
They sometimes are the first butterfly that you’ll see in the spring (like me, today!). They also have one of the longest lifespans, at 11 to 12 months, of any butterfly.
They generally can’t be counted on to be pollinators, since they prefer eating rotting fruit and the sap of deciduous trees.
I’m looking forward to seeing many more Mourning Cloaks as the calendar’s pages are turned.
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This one, the Six-spotted Tiger Beetle (Cicindela sexguttata), which I love to find along the trails up here. A lovely color. Metallic, emerald green, though some lean toward a blue-green.
A beneficial insect, consuming insects and other arthropods that are pests in our gardens and woods.
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Happy Pi Day!
Remember Heidi Bakery? Sponsor of The Pick Temple Show. I was on that program when I was in 1st grade. Ah, the memories!
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Since autumn they’ve been waiting there at the ends of the branches. Waiting through the chill of winter. Biding time till spring. Now that spring is nearly here the buds are swelling.
Oodles of buds. Blueberry bushes in front of the cabin, in front of the woodshop, in front of the vegetable garden.
With just a bit of time there will be blossoms that will in turn become luscious berries.
And those berries will become pies, pancakes, muffins, toppings for cereal, sundaes, countless forms to delight.
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Snow this morning. First a nice slow gentle falling. Then lots of graupel that made the ground look like it was covered by exploded bits of styrofoam coolers. Then snow, snow, snow. Lots of snow falling from the sky. It covered the ground with a serious, measurable, inch of snow. The most snow we’ve had all winter long.
And now, as I type this I realize there is more snow coming down. Could there be more than an inch on the ground in the morning? Haha! Wishful thinking.
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Wikipedia says, “Daylight saving time, also referred to as daylight savings time or daylight time, or summer time, is the practice of advancing clocks during warmer months so that darkness falls at a later clock time.”
Oh dear, it’s going to happen again. Don’t forget. Tonight.
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The woods are full of small, soft yellow-green blooms now. Spicebush (Lindera benzoin) is showing off its flowers.
Spicebush, the larval host plant of the Spicebush Swallowtail (Papilio troilus) is a perennial shrub that often reaches to 15 feet, sometimes 20 feet. It is dioecious, meaning there are only male or female flowers on a single bush. It also means that the beautiful crimson berries that appear in autumn are only on the female bushes.
A lovely shrub to have growing throughout my woods.
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The delightful spring weather called to me today. Called me to come out. To walk around. Something that I love to do. And when I’m out I am always looking for something new, something that will reinforce my love of nature. Big or small, there is always something out there. Most of the time, that something is a surprise. Sure enough, I certainly wasn’t expecting to find blooming Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis). But there it was shining, snow white, making its way through leaf litter.
Sometime later I walked past this same Bloodroot bloom and there was another surprise. The first Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens) of the season, collecting pollen from the soft yellow anthers.
Nature never fails to surprise me. There is so much out there to take in.
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