Summer 2011 - What's blooming in your garden? Part 1

Frank - Swallowtails come to my yard, too. The giant swallowtails like my false lime tree. And the Black Swallowtails like my parsley plants. The White Peacock butterflies use the lemon bacopa, and the Gulf Fritillaries and the Zebra Longwing like the Passiflora vines. And the Sulphur butterflies are always in my yard because of the Cassia trees. Between all those and the birds that come to my bird feeder, the air is a-flutter with all kinds of flying creatures including dragon flies and damsel flies. The next thing I want to attract to my yard is bats. I want to mount a bat house somewhere. :-) Bats make the best fertilizer is what I've heard and I suspect they would be good to keep the mosquito population in check as well. :-)

Becky, you have an amazing garden and green thumb. Your vegies look good especially that watermelon. I always want to stop and buy one along the road in the summer. Having butterflies in the garden is a plus to enjoy!

Helena - Thanks so much. I garden on a shoe-string and lots of hard work! Don't we all?!! :-) I appreciate your compliments. :-)

I have to agree that it appears I may have finally gotten a green thumb. I had a brown thumb for years! LOL!

Becky, thanks for sharing the wonderful pics. Beautiful tropical plants and l love your hardy Clematis too.
I enjoyed the pics of the butterflies at different stages

Thank you Jackie and Debra! It's been a good year for growing plants for me!

Thought I would share the butterflies with all of you. Five emerged. All females. I hope I get at least one or two males out of the bunch. Need a male to breed them for more babies! LOL!

First the chrysalis will turn dark as you can see the 5 in the photo. The caterpillars will hang upsidedown when they are ready to change into a chrysalis. (You can see two hanging in this photo also.)

A few hours later, they were hanging upsidedown drying their wings. :-)

I take them outside and let them sit in my hand and leave when they are ready! It is such a wonderful feeling to have raised them and then release them to go out into the world and do whatever it is that butterflies do when they are free to fly!

Three of them flew right over to this area to settle in and decide what they wanted to do or to go next. :-)

oh Becky that is so wonderful, thank you for sharing!

Amazing photos Becky.

Oops! Lost track of this thread. All the butterflies were released. There were 6 males and the rest were all females. Several of the females have come back and have laid eggs on the milkweed. After a week or so, I find the cats once again and collect them and add them to the caterpillar cages. I probably have close to 20 more caterpillars again. They sure eat a lot of Milkweed!!!

Here is a photo of the Milkweed growing all over the place in the daylily bed. This raised bed serves double-duty! Well worth it too! Love all the butterflies in my yard every day!

I have finally been rewarded with Lotus blooms! After a long 2 1/2 years of waiting! I was very happy to see these blooms. It appears to be "Red Scarf" cultivar of Lotus!

No buds yet from this lotus pot! :-(

Mexicana water lily bloom! I really love these yellow blooms! So cheerful! I think yellow is becoming my new favorite bloom color! :-)

Debra - I hope you get blooms on yours this year!

I've become a big fan of caladiums. Especially the ones that have these bright red leaves!

What a great documentary... I love the butterflies. We have thousands of that black skeletonizer moth all over the grapes and some cats too. I don't want to spray anything because the monarchs will soon be here..

Great looking water lillies.. the leaves look neat protruding out of the tubs..

I have some in pots and some in hanging baskets.

I got this bloomer... a Desert Rose Adendium

Thanks, A! I love the aerial leaves of the Lotus. That alone is well worth growing them for! But the beautiful blooms are the icing on the cake! LOL!

I love caladiums and have some in white too! They are very hardy here! I have small and large patches of them in the ground. This is one patch near my Moonflower vines! Love the white blooms and these white leaves! :-)

A - OMG! Your Adendium is gorgeous!!!!! Looks good there mixed in with my red & white caladiums! LOL!

Another white caladium. I think of a ghost when I see this one! LOL!

I love the caladiums also, maybe this coming year I'll replace all the ones I lost... don't know yet, depending on how many pots I'm allowed to have around (DH hates clutter) and I thrive in a jungle of plants...

LOL! Your dh sounds like my dh, Antoinette! I'm winning because my yard is becoming a jungle! LOL! And I remind my dh that if I add flower gardens everywhere, he won't have to mow the yard anymore. He likes that idea! LOL!

This is the little corn snake that lives under the door jam of my front door! These are beautiful snakes and they eat the beetles at night! :-)

Oh my goodness, I don't like snakes at all. Becky, aren't you afraid of them? Yikes... they creep me out.

LOL! No! I love the snakes as long as they aren't poisonous. They help keep the bug and rodent population in check. That is a very small snake. A baby still. He only comes out at night. Never during the day! He's our "Watch Snake" instead of a watch dog or watch cat! LOL! He guards the front door! LOL LOL LOL

We had some company over about three weeks ago and they found this Desert King Snake, at the time I didn't know they had killed it. I don't kill anything, but when they showed it to me, I couldn't believe it was in my yard this whole time. When I found out what it was it made me so sad that they killed it. The roadrunner that lives in my yard tried to poke the eyes out of the snake. Okay this is a long story, but, here is a photo of it. The way I feel is this, I don't know a good snake from a dangerous snake, so they need to move along out of my yard.

A - That actually made me sick (sad) that someone would kill a beautiful snake like that. I am telling you ... you want snakes in your yard! They will keep the rodents out of your home!!! I try to make a habitat in my yard for them. I just think they are very efficient at getting rid of mice and rats! And they are a creature that everyone in my family respects! We had two pet corn snakes when my kids were little! My 3 yr. old daughter picked out snakes as a pet instead of hamsters when we went shopping for her birthday for a pet. She loved those 2 baby snakes! I just hated feeding them baby mice. It was gross to see them kill the mice. But my daughter didn't care! She loved her snakes! Isn't that funny? And my dh was scared of them! LOL! He was so glad when they finally were gone years later. :-)

Oh gosh, I don't know if I could get used to it. We have a cat, 2 dogs, and 19 turtles, a roadrunner and I don't think they would all get along. We had 3 clutches of Barn Swallows already flying around the yard, but the first clutch got eaten by the roadrunner. I don't know what to do with this eco system in my yard. I have to let what happens happen. The darn cat eats some of the doves, the roadrunner finds the eggs and eats the babies, then I have lots of toads in the yard that Harley one of the goldens picks up in his mouth and they make him really sick, he is at the doctors more than I am..lol sometimes he will try to get one of the turtles to bring to me. I have to be careful and protect the turtles. It is not easy. There are tons of other bugs and birds here that eat the grapes, sunflower seeds etc.. I feel for all the animals, so, what will be will be. I don't know if the cat would kill the snake or the roadrunner would, they both eat meat.

Usually the snakes hide pretty good. I rarely see mine. But I know they are around. ;-)

So you got a cat now? Awesome! How does the cat get along with the two dogs?

So sorry to hear about the barn swallows and the doves. Some of my doves get attacked and killed every so often too. They must not be very alert birds or are slow to fly away. None of my other birds like cardinals, blue jays, or grackles ever get attacked.

Nineteen turtles! Oh my! I didn't know you had that many now! LOL! You have a yard/house full of children (pets)! LOL! Like the old woman who lived in a shoe, had so many children she didn't know what to do! LOL! I don't know where you find the time to take care of all the pets and still garden too! Super woman! :-)

We have had a cat since before we left CA, we brought him with us, Hobo Joe, he just showed up one day and stayed.. The dogs and cat do NOT get along, he tries, but the dogs do not give him a chance, so guess what, he has his own room near the laundry room. He really is a Lucky Cat.. he is so neat too. I have to make sure the turtle pens have lids or else... as for superwoman, NOT, why do you think I can't be here most of the time.. Okay, gotta go, time to make dinner!

A - Love your cat's name! Too cute! Glad he has his own palace area! :-) Don't over do it, Super Woman!

Becky, I missed this somehow. I love your Lotus blooms, even prettier than water lillies.

A your Adenium blooms are lovely. A luscious pink.

Thank you, Jackie! I love the Lotus blooms. They only lasted two days. :-( Waited two years for them to bloom! LOL! Sheesh!

I have Autumn Clematis growing up both sides of my pergola. This is so weird. They don't bloom at the same time. One side will bloom and then several weeks later the other side will bloom. The scent is amazing! The clematis has reached the top of my pergola on both sides. I need to train it to go across the top now. Love it!

My Scarlet Hibiscus is in a small water pot. Really small pot. I pruned it back short and it must have produced at least 20+ blooms for me this year! Best year ever for it!

Becky, I love the sweet Autumn Clematis and the hardy Hibiscus. Wish I had planted my hardy Hibiscus in the ground. I lose them when I grow them in pots.