Life in my garden today

Just thought I'd start my own thread of pics I took today. It's a whole other world out there!

A Gulf Frit, who did check out the passionvine but left no eggs...yet.

A Queen visiting her favorite plant.

A Skipper

Another Skipper?

Great pics :) What a wonderful flutterby garden you have !

An assassin bug on my milkweed. I did ask him to leave (by a gentle thump to another plant) because he's waiting for my butterflies. (no no)

A furry Robber Fly that appears to have robbed something else of life. Oh well, such is... I have 2 of these today and watched the other one almost grab lunch but that bee got away. I haven't had these furry ones before.

Lunch for another bee of some sort.

(greenie, I'm having that focus problem again!)

And just because it's one of my absolute favorite plants, the Bog Sage. It's real blue, not purple!

Thank you for visiting it Teresamas! :)

Konkrete what a pretty garden! I can't get bee balm to grow. It just stays the same. It could be the area it's in is too rich. Is your bee balm area lean?

It's not lean but it lacks something because I have a problem with the Black and Blue salvia next to it becoming too fluorescent green. I use a ton of compost tho. I rarely use synthetic fertilizers tho, mostly organic stuff until I just can't stand it then I'll give it an emergency dose of something.

Hang in there KB...I still have that problem from time to time. On my camera, if I hold the button down only halfway, it will show me what it's focusing on before I shoot. Sometimes I just can't get around it though. I need to take a class.

Wow! Beautiful garden and friends you have there. I can't wait to get my garden started. I had a few butterfly plants at the old house, but rarely any butterflies. At the new place, where I actually have old trees and native plant, I see them every day floating through the back yard and trees in the far back. I can't identify most of them because they have nothing down low to stop on yet, except for the wild Sunflowers out in the very back. I am pretty sure I have seen Painted Ladies, Gulf Frits, Sulpher butterflies, and possibly swallowtails, but it's hard to tell.

What an awesome, lovely garden and great pictures, konkreteblond!! Thanks for the tour today, I enjoyed it very much. :-))

I'm jealous of your Queen Anne's Lace. Mine already pooped out and went to seed. My Monarda and Gaillardia, however, are going to town. The bugs and birds are loving it.

Absolutely, stunningly beautiful! Thanks for sharing!

I love your pix! What a gorgeous garden. I hope to have something this lovely one day. I just started this year on the back yard.
How long have you been working this garden? I noticed you have large groupings, do you leave paths to get around in between the plants?
Do you mulch around the plants for weed control?
I just want some suggestions so I don't make mistakes & have to pull stuff up later.
Thanks for sharing the great pix!

Your garden is so beautiful, so full, so lush and colorful! Something to aspire to, thanks so much for sharing.

KB, I took another tour of your photos, and I believe the bee-looking insect on your daisy is a hover fly. She's one of the good guys that lays eggs among the aphid colonies. The babies eat aphids. (AKA Syrphid fly larva) The adults eat pollen and nectar.
Great shots!

wonder pics KK. Everything looks so inviting

Wow - you have a beautiful garden!

Sorry, KB...I was so busy comforting you on the pics that I forgot to say what a lovely garden you have. Very beautiful!

Konkrete, what's the white umbel flowers in the bottom right?

Those are her Queen Anne's Lace that I am jealous of since mine went to seed on me already.

Did you start them from seed? They're really pretty.

Yes I started mine from seed, but maybe too early. I got the planting fever in January this year. So they had a good five-six months growing period before petering out on me.

I love QAL. They are one of my favorites.

koncreteblond!

What great pics of your pretty garden and visitors! Should be pictured in a Butterfly Gardening book, I think!

Oh my gosh KK, those pictures are gorgeous!! I agree..your garden should be pictured in a book!! I tried planting a lot of different things, and instead of being able to see what is what, it ended up being mass confusion. Oh how I wish I had such variety.

Good Job!!

One jealous PiggyPoo :0)

Love your garden!

Thank you all SO much! This was like having you all visit. It's fun to be able to show your babies to others who understand. I didn't want to bore everyone with a ton of pics but now I want to show you all everything! I still have my front bed and the side too.

The Queen Anne's Lace did come up from seed that I threw out in the fall. I had great success with this method so I will continue to just toss carefree. :) I had some confusion this spring when my QAL was coming up. I finally figured it out when everything started blooming. I had QAL, false QAL (pulled up now that I have the real one) and Poison Hemlock! (got rid of those too)

QAL is supposed to bloom the 2nd year but a lot of mine bloomed the first, which was also confusing. I cut most of them back this month and saw the there were also a lot of smaller plants underneath that didn't bloom. A few others bloomed more (in the pic) after I cut them back.

I do have a "mass of confusion" but I like it. And I do have a path of tiles thru it all but some of it is totally grown over but I'm working on that now. Later in the season I will have a ton of milkweed and zinnias that I leave in masses for the Monarchs. Most everything I have has either spread or just reseeded, which is why there appears to be groupings. (that certainly wasn't my doing)

The yellow Rudbeckia's are my favorite this year! They came up from some seed too. They have fuzzy leaves and I was not sure what they were going to be. I will definitely let them reseed.

In the back I usually have Hyacinth bean vines but this year I planted Black Eyed Susan vines and got a new Mexican Flame vine. They are all being shadowed by some of the larger stuff tho so it's taking them a while to grow. More cutting to be done today to help them. I have a purple passionvine and coral honeysuckle to the left of the pic on another fence.

Thanks for the encouragement! This is my front bed.
Paige

A closer pic so you can see what's going on.

Part of the side bed. Pardon the soaker hose. The grass was having a problem but since we finally got some rain I can reroute it.

Oooooowow! first picture left corner..is that monardo? i want seed.

I have been out all morning trying to capture on film a butterfly in flight......no sucess...so I am sending a collaged picture of my butterfly garden, wraps around the north and west side of my house

Man....awesome!.I can't decide which you do best ........gardener or photographer...excellent work Paige.......I can't believe I had the guts to even post on the same page..........WOW!!!

Konkrete!!!! Beeeautiful!! What is the fuzzy purple on the right, behind the phlox? You really should send some pix into a garden magazine! I like the cottage garden look, kind of unrestrained and a little wild, but not too fussy.

LOve Pic #2! Beautiful!

Your garden is so warm and inviting. I'm sure that's the general consensus among the hummingbirds, butterflies, and other wildlife that appreciates flowers. Your garden is the picture I envision when I think of the ideal garden. I especially like the picotee cosmos and the black eyed susans that are happy and thriving in your garden. It's obvious a lot of hard work and heart went into building your garden sanctuary and that encourages me to put more effort into my own garden.

Btw, when you plant cosmos, do they mind being planted close together?

This message was edited Jun 25, 2006 5:55 PM

Thank you! You all are so sweet and supportive! My stuff is not without it's problems and sometimes I'm too hard on myself but you all have made me feel like I have accomplished something!

Jackie, your garden looks great! We just need to see it closer. It looks like you've got a ton of stuff too! (Here's my photo tip: take pics when it's a little cloudy or in the evening and things don't get washed out by the bright sun)

fly_girl, you might convince me to send in a pic to BirdsNBlooms. I think the "fuzzy purple" stuff you are seeing is actually the Bog Sage. It's the last of the first pics I posted and it's right on that corner of the house to the right of the phlox. Is that what you are talking about? (close up pic below)

GL, I had to go to the PlantFiles to find out what the Picotee Cosmos were! lol I like those too. They are much taller this year, which is their second year. They just reseeded and I don't bother them so I guess they don't seem to mind where they are. They better learn to like a crowd in my garden! Actually, I have a lot of different cosmos and they are all thick because I never have the heart/nerve to thin them out. I'm always afraid if I pull some out the others might die then I'll have none.

The only problem I have with cosmos is that ants seem to like making their nests at the base of them. I had to pull up a few of these last year because of it. I could not kill the ants so I just had to pull out the plant. Thank you so much for your comments. It can be a lot of work but it's the most relaxing work I could ever do! :)

CJ, I just can't tell if that bee is a Hover fly or not. It doesn't look exactly like other pics. I do have a lot of Hover fly larvae each year and do leave the Santolina because I read it's one of their host plants, but I actually thought they were much smaller bees.

Hill, how about asking that DH of yours?! :)