What Actually Is

It would be wildly inaccurate to claim that our gardens are anything close to well tended this year.  We have always had more cultivated ground than we could keep up with but the present combination of the weather and our age has created a huge mess in what was our garden.  This is the present state of our asparagus bed and the overwhelming presence of the giant weed seeds does not bode well for next year.  This is a sixty square foot planting bed and it could be cleared rather quickly but there are so many other places just like this one.  The combination of heat, humidity and biting bugs had us inside by 10 AM today.

Looking past the brightly colored self planted Gloriosa Daisy, one can see the stone path that edges our planting beds and a horribly invasive relatively new weed that has taken and holds this ground.  It grows close to the ground and finding the centered root mass is not easy.  We believe it essential to remove both the seed bearing growth and the root mass in a futile attempt to eliminate this weed.

 

When selecting photographs to share, it is customary to frame the image so that only beauty can be seen.  This combination of Ruby Spice Summer Sweet, Milkweed leaves that have served as a food source for perhaps a Monarch Butterfly caterpillar, a feeding butterfly whose name is not known and a background of grass and trees is a great picture.  In addition to the visual image, the scent of the pink flowers is fantastic beyond description.

These feeding bugs and a caterpillar appear to be working together despite their obvious differences.  We cannot be certain that they are not harming each other but they may be sharing.

We have been posting Lobelia cardinalis pictures perhaps to excess but the real star here is the Giant Blue Lobelia.  How these plants that feature so many differences can have the same last name puzzles us.  Both are native plants but the structure of their flowers is more different than just color.  These plants are both self planted here but we tend to focus our efforts on the striking red plants.  That should change but we can no longer keep up so the blue beauty will remain on its own.  One thing in its favor is our limited time weeding will not remove a self seeded plant that we do not instantly recognize.

Closed Gentian is a native plant that presents flowers that never open.  It is a vigorous plant that has taken and holds considerable space in our garden.  Pollination falls to the huge bumblebees that force their way into the tightly closed blossoms from the top point where the  petals meet.  Upon first glance, I thought that an insect had chewed a hole to gain an entrance into the flowers interior but that is not true.  A closer look will reveal that the fly's internal organs are visible and that the bug is totally outside of the undamaged blossom.