Early Spring in the Garden

Our friend Gordon (founder of Montgomery Victory Gardens) stopped by this afternoon to see what was going on in our backyard. It was a good guess on his part -- we happened to be planting potatoes. It turned into a little photo shoot of early spring in the garden...

In & Around Our Pond Lately

We put in a little stream with a waterfall at the top. It has become a huge bird magnet, more than the pond ever was on its own.



The dragonflies seem to be finding us better this summer, too.



This frog we raised from a tadpole but we haven't heard it lately in the pond -- we are worried it has left or been eaten. But for a few weeks there we had a bona fide frog pond.

Nesting Orioles

We've had a big pile of brush in our fire circle for weeks now, since we cut down all the old flower stalks earlier this spring. In the last couple of weeks it's been attracting all kinds of birds -- robins, starlings, catbirds...but we never dreamed it would attract a pair of Baltimore orioles! They've come back repeatedly over the last couple of days. We have yet to figure out where they're building the nest -- they're definitely flying out of our yard with the materials. One is the male and the other the female. Which one is which?

Cedar Waxwings

We've been hearing big flocks of these guys for days now, and seeing them from afar. But this morning a big crowd decided to visit our pond.

You may have to click on the picture above to see the lovely yellow and red markings. Apparently the red bits are wax, giving these birds their names.

What's Blooming in the Yard?

So many things, all at once. In this shot: bleeding hearts in the left foreground; columbine and a few remaining bluebells in the right foreground; wild blue phlox, more columbine, and golden groundsel around the big oak tree; stonecrop sedum around the pond; and further back where you can't really see in this picture, wild geraniums, shooting star, creeping phlox, star chickweed, dwarf iris, and probably things I am forgetting. Happy Spring!

geranium maculatum with newly hatched swallowtail butterfly

shooting star - dodecatheon meadia

Woodpeckers

Another frequent sight in our yard is woodpeckers...sapsuckers, downies, flickers, once or twice a piliated. But the most common are red-bellied. We think they are nesting in our neighbor's silver maple.

Our Newest Pet

A green frog, now residing in the pond.

In the Yard Lately

spicebush swallowtail caterpillars on our spicebush

passionflower/maypop/Passiflora incarnata

a migrating warbler by our pond - common yellowthroat, we think

monarch on new england asters

white wood aster & winterberry

Raising Monarchs

We've got over a dozen monarch larvae and pupae in our kitchen right now, eating lots of milkweed. It is especially heartening to raise so many this year, because we've seen so few butterflies this summer -- it seems they can use all the protection from predators that they can get.

This generation should all be heading to Mexico when they emerge as butterflies. We tagged our first butterfly the other day using tags from Monarch Watch. They pay folks in Mexico for every tagged butterfly they find. So we'll be checking this winter to see if any of our babies made it!



UPDATE: As of 9/20, we've successfully hatched, tagged, and released 17 butterflies!

What's Blooming in the Yard

It's really starting to look like summer!

pickerel weed in the pond

Canada lily and bee balm

oxeye, threadleaf coreopsis, and butterfly (milk)weed

What's blooming in the back yard

Strawberries!

Golden ragwort, blue pholx, and columbine

Bleeding heart

Shooting star

Geranium

Tadpoles!

Brought home as eggs but now swimming freely in our pond.

Deconstruction

One rainy day this fall Matt decided to start taking out the back wall of our living room, so we could see out the windows of the small mudroom that had been added on the other side. This was a former exterior wall of the house, so we went through the following layers: wainscotting, drywall, concrete/asbestos shingles, tarpaper, clapboard, lath, and plaster. Now that's a demolition job!
And here is a time lapse of the disappearing plaster & lath, as seen from the living room.

Let there be light!

Frequent Fliers Part 3: Bats

Most evenings we have a few bats flying around the oak tree in our backyard.

Frequent (and not so frequent) Fliers Part 2: Butterflies & Moths

More of the critters in our front-yard wildlife habitat...

Tiger Swallowtail on lavender bergamot.

Red Admiral on Joe Pye Weed.

Black Tiger Swallowtail on lavender bergamot.

Spicebush Swallowtail on swamp milkweed.

Clearwing Hummingbird Moth on lavender bergamot.

Summer Bounty

Frequent Flyers Part 1: Birds

Our yard is starting to feel like the wildlife habitat we've been striving for. Among our most colorful visitors are hummingbirds and goldfinches. We're loving eating on the porch to see who stops by. And we're loving our new hand-me-down camera with 10x zoom (thanks to an upgrade by Matt's dad)!

Building a Pond

Over the course of a few weeks we helped some of Matt's clients remove a pond where they were building a house addition, dug a big hole in our backyard, and made our own pond.


Phase two will be lining the edges with rocks and putting in a small waterfall!

Backyard critters

We woke up early in the morning to see the raccoon that lives in our oak tree staring right at us. He walked around in the tree for a while before sprawling out on a branch with his legs dangling over the sides. Maybe he was trying to stay cool.

Wonders of evolution: Antheraea Polyphemus

So many things in this world make me wonder at the power and grandeur of evolution. How's this: polyphemus moths are about 5 or 6 inches across. They don't eat or drink as adults (only as caterpillars) -- they don't even have mouth parts. Their entire purpose as adults is to reproduce. Toward that end, the female (first picture below) emits pheremones to attract males, which may fly in from over a mile away when they catch the pheremones on their antennae. To top it all off, they have these amazing markings featuring translucent patches in the middle of their eyespots. When they're not flashing their protective markings they look a lot like dead leaves.



Matt brought home the cocoon of the female pictured above last winter. We were starting to lose hope that anything was going to hatch out of it, when we discovered this beauty one morning. That night, we left her on our porch in an aquarium. When we woke up the next morning, these two males were trying to get in through the screen and a third fell on us as we were investigating the scene. We let them in the aquarium so they could do their thing.

Check out the antennae on this guy!

Soon the female started to lay eggs. We never saw any mating, so we're not positive the eggs will be fertile. Only time will tell -- if we have babies you can be sure you'll see them here.