Gardening by Mistake

I was in the garden yesterday evening and I got a delightful surprise: white borage.

I have a lot of borage plants— all volunteers from an original 2 or 3 plants years ago. They self sow and come up on their own every year. They are an annual but they act like perennials from that point of view. One other feature that I love about borage (aside from its lovely blue flowers) is that bees are wild for it. So, it’s not a native but it gets to stay because I like having plants for the bees and borage is a definite bee plant. It’s also a larval host plant for the painted lady butterfly.

The original borage I planted way back were your average blue borage. Nothing particularly special about them except that mine reach enormous sizes when I let them. So tonight when I saw the white blooms, I was really surprised. I have no idea how I ended up with a borage plant that blooms in white. I like it, though. And it makes a nice contrast to the blue blossoms of the plant next to it.

Borage seeds are a big pain to collect. I may make an effort to collect some seeds from the white plant, though. And next year I’ll be on the lookout for any more volunteers that bloom in white.

Nearby University of Kansas is home to Monarch Watch, a program dedicated to education about and study of monarch butterflies.  They estimate 100,000 people participate in their monarch tagging program each fall. While I have no plans to tag butterflies, I am interested in having a certified monarch waystation. Quite simply, a certified monarch waystation involves having an area that is designed as a monarch habitat. This can often be done in an existing habitat with just a few changes. Monarch Watch says an effective habitat is 100 square feet or more, but this modest size is not a hard minimum.  Even easier, multiple small areas can count toward the overall size.

I had hoped to become certified this year. While I meet the bare requirements, I’m not happy with my overall milkweed population. One significant part of my pocket prairie was going to be the milkweed plants for the monarchs and since my pocket prairie area wasn’t ready this year, I’ll have to plant it next year. Next year I will have more milkweed and I’ll have more than 1 species which is something they encourage. At that point I’ll feel like I can apply for the certification. I’m looking forward to that. Milkweed, in case you are wondering, is vital to monarchs. While they can and do get nectar from plants other than milkweed, their caterpillars only eat milkweed (asclepias). Monarchs will lay their eggs only on milkweed (asclepias) plants. There are no other host plants for monarchs. Without those, you may have the butterflies visit your garden for nectar, but they won’t stay to lay eggs for the next generation.

Whether I’m officially certified or not, the monarchs do find my garden every year. I have many caterpillars every year. In past years, I’ve even taken some caterpillar eggs to the elementary school for several teachers and their classrooms. It has been fun for the kids to watch their caterpillars grow and turn into butterflies. And it has been rewarding to be able to make that possible and from my own garden.

If you are interested in making your garden monarch friendly or you’d like to make a garden specifically for monarchs, Monarch Watch has made it easy for you with a seed kit. The kit contains 6 species of milkweeds and 6 other nectar plants for monarchs. There is a list of those plants on their website, so you can order their kit for a very reasonable price or you can get those seeds on your own through trades or seed companies. You might also be able to get some of those various asclepias seeds from people on the MW listserve who may offer extras from their own gardens. I have so many asclepias syriaca seeds every fall that I could supply the midwest, I think!

Check out the Monarch Watch website. There is a wealth of information there and it’s a great opportunity for a way to make a real contribution to animal conservation.

For years now, I’ve wondered what the tree growing between two of my rose beds is. This tree suckers from loooong near-surface roots. I find little hackberry sprouts coming up 20 feet away. When I tug on them, I can see that they are attached to a shallow root which seems to go on forever. Reminds me of bindweed in the way you can pull a root carefully and follow it along for many feet. Like bindweed, I’ve hated that tree with a passion.

Tonight, I finally identified it, which is good. What is not good is that after looking it up, I now know that it’s a native AND it’s a great tree for wildlife. Twenty-five birds use it as a source of food for fall and winter– a season when food is never plentiful.

Lady Bird Johnson’s Wildflower Center’s Native Plant Database says, “Hackberries are among the best food and shelter plants for wildlife. The fruit is relished by birds.” It also says Celtis occidentalis is a larval host and/or nectar source for:

• Wild Cherry Sphinx
• Tawny Emperor
• American Snout
• Question Mark
• Mourning Cloak

So, my fantasies of killing the tree and turning it into a snag covered with bittersweet or other native vines, will remain only a fantasy. Darn it!

Barbee’s questions on milkweed made me think back to almost 3 years ago when my kids and I watched two monarch caterpillars grow and become butterflies. I was homeschooling back then and I thought it would make a great addition to our science materials. It was fascinating for all of us.

At the time, I had great big milkweed plants growing among my roses. (BIG mistake; see my earlier post). I began looking on the undersides of leaves. I actually found monarch eggs. They are very tiny and easy to miss on a plant. They are only slightly larger than a period.

I took in an egg and a young caterpillar, as well as some milkweed leaves for them to munch on. I placed all of this into a peanut butter jar, drilled holes into the lid and jammed a stick into the inside of the lid. The stick was intended to be a place where the caterpillars could attach their chrysalises.

The larger of the two caterpillars on August 25th. (The other caterpillar is on the far right, about 1/3 of the way up the picture):

Also on August 25th, this picture shows both caterpillars together. The smaller one is right above the 28.5 cm mark of the ruler. “He” is tiny!

Two days later, August 27th, the larger caterpillar is almost twice as long and twice as wide. In two days!

The little guy has also grown considerably in those two days.

On August 31st, the larger caterpillar was ready to form his chrysalis. You can see in the picture that the caterpillar didn’t need my helpful stick. I have no idea how it got the chrysalis webbing to stick to that plastic lid.

The kids and I waited for the butterfly to emerge. On September 11th, a beautiful monarch emerged from the chrysalis. The second caterpillar was also in a chrysalis by this time.

Here the first caterpillar turned monarch is on our deck, where we placed it while it warmed its wings. The butterfly is holding on to a stick in the second picture.

This last picture was taken September 14th, shortly before the second butterfly emerged from its chrysalis. Look closely and the butterfly’s wings can be seen through the chrysalis.

In zones cooler than my 5b, you might need to look for monarch caterpillars earlier than late August, as I did. You want them to have time to mature and then migrate once they are butterflies. If you do this, you must make sure you have a supply of fresh milkweed leaves as this is the sole diet of monarch caterpillars. And you will be amazed at exactly how much a caterpillar will eat before turning to a butterfly.

Yesterday I posted a picture of a Lemon Spice bud opening. Here it is today, and it smells as wonderful as it looks.

This picture doesn’t do the rose justice, but my Secret is blooming, as well. There is a reason this rose is one of the select few (that is, it’s one of 16 roses out of the the 30,000+ registered rose varieties) to receive the Gamble Fragrance Award. Mmmmm! It’s divine.

I checked the Queen Anne’s Lace today and, sure enough, the swallowtail caterpillar is still there. Looks like he’s managed to munch off several leaves. Other insects were really enjoying the plant, too. Lots of small bees and butterflies fluttering around. I don’t know what kind this one is.

While I was out there, I thought I’d see how many of the QAL plants I needed to remove. I was startled to realize that all of this belonged to a single plant.

Sometimes a rose bloom will have what appears to be another, misshapen bud trying to bloom from the center of it. There’s a term for it: proliferation. You can see a picture of a rose with proliferation here. Anyway, it’s an odd and not very attractive sight. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen often. I’m wondering if that is the same thing occurring here. I’ve never seen echinacea blooms look like this before, but I have a couple odd ones right now. These are on a plant with perfectly fine flowers, as well, and no chemicals have been sprayed on or around the plant. With roses, they say it can have something to do with cool weather, but that just may be because that’s when it’s most likely to happen.

Whatever it is, it’s just not attractive.

And, finally, I thought I’d post a picture of something from my garden to see if anyone can identify it. I know what it is. Do you?

We’re having a cool, rainy day. It’s great! It’s very, very rare to have a 66°F day and it’s been several days since it rained. The cool and the rain are welcome today.

I was anxious to get out and check a couple of things. I finally couldn’t wait any longer, so I ran out when the rain had largely tapered off but wasn’t entirely done. I made sure I checked on the borage. Looking carefully at three plants, I found only 1 other pink blossom. If they started pink and turned blue, I should have seen many more pink blooms with as many flowers as I have.

While out, I thought maybe I’d yank out (or at least cut down to the ground) some of those Queen Anne’s Lace plants that snuck into my rose border. In bloom it’s easy to see that there are far too many of the plants. As I went to pull, though, I saw this:

Thanks to Google and the Web, I was able to quickly determine that this is a Swallowtail butterfly caterpillar. So, for now, the QAL stays, thanks to the caterpillar. (I may run out later with my pruning shears and snip off all the other plants around this one, though!)

While I had the camera and was thinking about it, I snapped a picture of a tragedy: the “after” picture of an echinacea’s unfortunate encounter with a mole. Overnight, a healthy clump of echinacea suddenly goes limp and turns brown. My stomach sinks every time I see this.

Here’s a lovely gaillardia bloom from a plant I grew from seed. This plant seems to get little respect and appears to be considered “common” in some circles, but I like it. It’s hardy, tough, can take my benign neglect, and colorful. It pumps out lots of blooms all year long. Just don’t grow it in an area where it never dries out. That’s the one way to kill it quickly. This variety of gaillardia is the “basic” form. There are multiple other colors and gaillardia to use, as well. I had some pretty yellow gaillardia one year. (It turned out those ended up in a place where they had wet feet and they didn’t last the full season, sadly).

Next to the borage, I found the pumpkin blossoms open.

In this next picture you can see two things: the blossom has partially filled from the rain and that it’s very large. I placed the tip of my index finger in there for reference to size.

Everything in the garden is decordated with beads of water from the rain. It’s a pretty sight.

Lemon Spice. This rose has that wonderful “old rose” scent.

A careful look shows water droplets hanging from parts of this chive blossom. (You may need to look at the larger image to see it),

Just Joey is one of my favorite roses. I like this picture because the flower seems to glow from within.