Joe Pye And The Butterflies

It was a lovely evening. I repotted a bunch of Angel Wing Begonias and enjoyed the lovely.

Tales From The Crooked Shed

I lived in a small house on a dead end street at the bottom of a long drive on the island of Maui for sixteen years. I have lived along the scenic byway in the even smaller Hale Mana at the bottom of a longer drive in the wilderness of North Carolina for eight. Stuff rolls down hill and accumulates no matter how remote, what size the house and how long the drive.

I needed the Crooked Shed. I have more stuff again. It accumulates.

Today the painting was finished. The first shelf was hung. The roof peaks were bat barricaded. I have all kind varmints.

There were wild pigs on Maui. I have my own wild pigs in North Carolina.

They are ripping up the Great Lawn. It annoys me. I put in a call to my hunter.

It begins quiet in a blue meadow in the first light of day. The creatures of the night have finished their shift. As the sun rises, flocks of small song birds begin dive bombing the wild flowers. The daytime chorus of migration takes over.

Life always flows through gardens.

I have seen a solitary monarch butterfly feeding in the meadow every day this week. I don't know if it was the same one hanging out and resting for a bit or a new one each day. It was always just one. Monarchs are not very common up here. I see them for a short period mostly in the fall.

Today there were a half a dozen Monarchs feeding in the meadow at any given time. I have three kind milkweed growing up here, but have never seen any signs of them using it to breed. They were all fresh and perfect. I assume they are just passing through. Up here on the continental divide I always wonder which way they are headed.

My pile of collectibles has been sitting out in the weather for a very long time. It was officially turning to junk. The wood in there is officially rotted. After eight years, it is time for this pile to go.

So it began. The collectibles are in flux. The first layer was examined and sorted. Some of it is going to be carted back up the drive and deaccumulated. The rotten wood will be burned. The pile will eventually disappear. Something new can go there.

So how much stuff can a crooked shed hold. That is the question. The exterior decorating has already begun. It will look so much nicer than a pile of junk when people roll down my drive.

Rare Visitors

I wait all year for this, the big end of season show.

When everything goes just right, it is quite the show. Even when things don't go just right which is more often the case, it is still quite the show. This year there was a vicious hail storm and the last few weeks have been deadly dry. It is time for some rain.

The Tall Flower Meadow at the end of season peak attracts all kinds of visitors. By late afternoon it audibly hums. For a few days every year I see some of the more rare visitors.

I have milkweed, two species, and not once I have I seen a monarch caterpillar. I have Milkweed Tussock Moths eating my milkweed.

I see monarchs in September. They are just passing through and stopping at the local diner to fuel up for their long journey.

I have bees and flies and wasps and beetles and all kinds of bugs milling about the wild flowers and hardly ever do I see honey bees. I saw one yesterday. Just one. It's a big meadow. Maybe there were two. I don't know why I rarely see honey bees. I would assume they have escaped cultivation and gone wild.

We do fine with out them.

If everything goes just right the asters will come into strong bloom while the rest of the wild flowers are still going. The asters have started. Some have shriveled up into dead sticks before they had a chance to bloom. Not many fortunately. It is time for some rain.

Not bad for a dry spell though.

This morning it was gorgeous. This afternoon the skies bled water in torrents and the meadow promptly fell down. I did ask for rain. I muttered it better rain all morning long. It rained hard.

Tall things flop when wet. I wandered out briefly and saw a little stem breakage. In abundance that can be handled. Most of it will stand back up, leaning perhaps, but not down for the count. The frost will do that.

I did ask for rain. The asters were drying.

A Hint Of Blue

I do have some blue in the tall flower meadow. I have three patches of this blue, the very hard to photograph Clematis stans, in the lower right in this picture. It is much more dramatic and showy in person. It has the ability to set seed and spread and I would be fine with that. It just isn't showing any wantonness. I have found one seedling so far, but in the tall flower meadow it could take years before a seedling reached blooming size and was truly found.

Eurybia divaricata, the White Wood Aster is now joining the late show. It is the first of lord I have no idea how many asters there are up here to bloom.

Joe Pye does its thing to the delight of many. The insect diversity to be found on Joe Pye is a show in itself.

The tall flower meadow is getting there. This is actually the first year the notion in my head has begun to show up. The biggest factor in achieving this has been the removal of the unwanted. Absent the competition, the wanted fill in.

Underneath it all is the structure of a growing garden that will take me through the winters.

I just need more blue. And some more grasses. And some purple would be nice. And.......

In The Beginning

The end of season bloomers of the tall flower meadow have started to turn. It could get colorful around here soon. I am about to find out what my editing has done to nature's offerings. This whole process is highly experimental. I edit and observe.

The new blooms will join the Joe Pye and Boneset that are already in full swing. There will be a lot of Goldenrod.

I will keep adding, editing and experimenting. Eventually more pleasing plant combinations will emerge. Part of that will be the addition of more grasses. The Lush will become more organized, a sense of design could appear.

This crazy gardener is trying to turn a wild, low species tangle of a meadow into something Piet Oudolf would recognize, a stylized recreation of the real thing. Is there such a thing as garden irony?

Butterflies On Joe Pye

Something Will Be Blooming Next Week

I can only do so much in one week with little time on three acres of ground. My main goal is to get the paths open. With all the rain we have been having that now involves trimming branches of trees and shrubs in addition to weed whacking the paths themselves. I imagine a few weeds will get pulled. The rest is out of my hands.

What will be blooming will be blooming. What looks good will look good. What looks like a mess is indeed a mess.

All this rain has kept things cool. We haven't been above 80 since who knows when. The diagnosis is for cool for the rest of the week. That means the flowers won't be in any hurry. There's plenty of back up anyway and new things continually coming into bloom. Something will be blooming next week.

Unless we have a heatwave after whatever this thing is that is stuck on top of us, I won't be having any okra. This may not have been the best year to test out sweet potatoes as a replacement for the raccoon's sweet corn either. We will be eating something out of this garden if I ever get around to harvesting anything. The chef has essentially refused to harvest. We'll just see what happens when the tomatoes start ripening.

The wild cultivated garden is what it is. With limited time spent in a garden that could use a full time gardener, it is a miracle that I am making any headway at all. If I had more time it would just be a tidier and more floriferous wild cultivated garden.

At least something will be blooming next week.

Another Day Another Garden

Where I found rose rosette on the climbing rose and two Sourwood trees whose trunks had been completely girdled at several intervals by some boring insect.

Gardening is a constant confrontation with pestilence.

The average client tends to think there is some spray, some potion, a fertilizer, a chemical treatment of some sort that I should know about that will fix things. A lot of times there isn't.

I thought I would be getting away from the annual plagues caused by newly introduced insects and diseases when I left Maui. Not. There are times I think I need to get out of the gardening business before the environment goes completely haywire.

At least we will always have the weeds...er wildflowers. I hope.