A walk in the woods

Today I walked a trail through a nearby park, Landahl Park, and saw a couple of plants flowering along the path. I'm always on the lookout for flowers that look good in the shade and one in particular seems to love it. It's American bellflower. I've seen the plants listed as Campanulastrum americanum and also as Campanula americana. The Missouri Plants website lists it under the second name.

It's blue flowers are striking and open along straight standing stems. The ones I saw today were growing very near the path. I imaging with a little more light and planted in groups these flowers will make a beautiful show.

The other shade-loving plant was new to me. It had small sweet pea-like flowers on branched stems. I'll have to bring my camera on my next walk to snap a few pictures. My memory might not have captured enough details to identify this one :-)

Fame Flower

Finally, my camera cooperated and I got a photo of this great flower. It's only about 1/2" across, but it's intense magenta color makes a big impact. It's fame flower (Talinum calcynium). I tucked these little succulents into the gaps in the rocks that border my pond and they are thriving. The tiny plants are now filling the spaces in the rocks and every afternoon I'm happy to see many of these pretty little flowers bobbing in the air around the edges of my pond.

We've had a pretty wet summer so it's still hard to say exactly how drought tolerant they are. Looks like there's a dry week coming up. I guess I'll find out. 

Even more butterflies

I think this one is pretty common. It's an Easter Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus). It was the first to find the purple coneflowers I transplanted into the front yard.

This butterfly was in the island garden amongst that huge mass of purple coneflowers. This is a Common Buckeye (Junonio coenia). Although it's mostly brown, the large circular "eye" on it's wings are quite striking.

Here's another brown one. I think his one is a Great Spangled Fritillary (Speyeria cybele). Click on the butterfly name to check out the species description. On the description page there is a link that will show more images. It's a little faded, but the markings on the underside of it's wings look identical to me. It was a large butterfly, which also fits the Butterflies and Moths specied description.

Every weekend I appreciate that huge mass of coneflowers more. These are only the butterflies I could capture in a photo. There are lots more that just won't hold still long enough for a photo. I'll keep chasing them, though. It makes me feel like a kid again :-)

Plains coreopsis

Here's the newest addition to my prairie garden in the front yard. It's plains coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria). On my trip to Arkansas last weekend I saw this growing everywhere along the roadsides in the southwest corner of Missouri and as I traveled in the northwest part of Arkansas.

These plants are annuals that self-seed easily (from what I hear- and observed along the roadsides). I think they will add a lot of color and fullness to the area around the edge of the pond and perhaps fill in among the grasses and other prairie plants in the front yard next year. I usually shy away from annuals, but I like these. They're very pretty :-)

By the way, I'm really looking forward to the filling in part in the prairie garden. It looks very sparse right now. But, on the brighter side, I see new shoots on most of the plants, even the ones like the Monarda and rosinweed that have suffered from my dogs running through the garden. And this weekend I'll add some purple coneflowers from the island garden in the backyard and rudbeckia from an area near the vegetable garden. That should help.

I believe I'll install more of those ugly wire fences to keep the dogs out until I can move the underground fence. They protected the spring bulbs and the daylilies along the sidewalk this spring. I removed them when the daylilies filled in. And they were just a little ugly for just a little while :-)

More butterfly fun

Remember this butterfly from a post last week? I thought it was a Pipevine swallowtail. Actually I found a link on the Discover Life site mentioned in that post to another site Butterfliesandmoths.org. There I found a perfect duplicate of the butterfly in this photo and it was a Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes). The Butterflies and Moths site is a good one; lots of photos. The photos are arranged by butterfly or moth family, so you kind of have to know what you're looking for or be willing to spend some time looking.

I'm still looking for an image to identify the butterfly in this photo.

Growing veggies - still learning

Here's a view of my vegetable garden. I know, it's pretty well covered with crabgrass. But there are some vegetables in there. The beds on the far side of this photo actually produced lettuce and already have bell and hot peppers and tomatoes. As you can see the lettuce has gone to seed. The zucchini and yellow squash in the nearest bed are pretty slow to produce, I think. I'm not sure why. There are a few zucchini already, but no squash at all.

Here is a little bit of a bright spot - collard greens. They are a favorite of mine. These are a little bug-eaten, but still a beautiful and tasty plant. This is growing in the same bed as the lettuce.

This is a view of my tomato plants. They seem to be doing pretty well. They aren't overly productive, but we've already had to give away lots of cherry tomatoes and a couple of slicing tomatoes.

This has to be my favorite plant in the vegetable garden. It's horseradish. I think it's really lovely. I noticed it last year. Then this spring it produced tall stems with many small white flowers that were very, very fragrant. You can see the dead, dried flower stems here among the large shiny basal leaves. I think I'm going to use this plant near the foundation of my house in place of hosta. It is growing here in the shade of an oak tree, so I think it will tolerate a partial sun/shade location.

Next year, I won't have a water garden to build and a muddy front yard to cover with a prairie/meadow garden. I'll just have maintenance there. So maybe my big project will be raised beds for the vegetable garden. Or maybe it will be a grabgrass-free vegetable garden with lots of nice fluffy amended soil :-)

Purple coneflower frenzy

As little as a two weeks ago this was the overgrown island garden that I watch from my kitchen window. Please excuse the huge walnut tree seedlings that grow faster than I can find them and the purple loosestrife that no one should have in a Missouri garden. But notice the variation still visible at the edges where I've planted some herbs and tickseed coreopsis that I brought from my previous home. That same space is now nearly totally covered with layer upon layer of purple coneflower bloom. Here's a photo.

It is truly eye-catching. I've spent so much time in the front yard that this garden hasn't gotten much attention. Yesterday when some friends were over to celebrate the Fourth, I brought them back here to explain that I could share some purple coneflowers and, Wow!, was what they said. Standing back, like in this photo just doesn't do the beauty of this mass of flowers justice. You have to get close. Because when you do, you can see all the stuff that's happening.

The bees were everywhere. There were big bumblebees like this one and smaller bees. Are the smaller ones honey bees? I'm not sure. There were also many wasps, but not on the coneflowers. They seem to like the flowers on the oregano and yarrow that I transplanted from my old garden. The whole garden was buzzing with activity. It's very wonderful; more to see than you can take in with one look.

In addition to the bees and wasps, the garden is attracting some quieter and gentler bugs like this one. I haven't tried identifying a butterfly before. But doing a quick internet search I found a site called Discover Life that leads me to think this is a pipevine swallowtail (Battus philenor). Discover is a cool site with lots more than butterfly identification. Nice, nice, nice. I love summer :-)

I may have to rethink the amount of coneflowers I want to move - and when to move them. In spite of its overgrown and kind of weedy looks this backyard, ignored garden has become beautiful. I would hate to disrupt the work of these garden friends. I wonder if bringing coneflowers to the space in the front will also bring all of this lovely activity? I bet it will. There's something to look forward to.

Happy summer!