Summertime Blues

It's been so busy lately that I haven't been blogging much. For that matter, lately it seems that I'm just not going outside much either.

Of course, temperatures that are consistently in the upper 90's have quite a bit to do with that. I'd have to say that this is one of my least favorite times of year. Heat and I just don't get along well these days.

When I do get outside, I usually spend my time watering, picking blossoms and buds off basil plants, or handpicking pests off my tomato, potato, and squash plants. I'd rather do the latter than spray chemicals - or lose my plants to these voracious eaters - but it's definitely not my favorite garden activity.

Last year my biggest insect issue was squash bugs. This year I read a hint somewhere recommending that you plant potatoes around your squash hills as a way to control these pests. Well, it was too late for that, but I reasoned that tomatoes were in the same family as potatoes, so I planted tomato plants at each corner of that bed, then interplanted basil for good measure.

Results? Not too bad. I've had a few squash bugs, but only a few so far. The squash vines are long, luscious and beginning to set fruit. It's early days to say for sure, but right now I'm definitely going to repeat this planting combination next year.

So this year my chief bugaboo is black blister beetles. Yuck. These guys are relishing the remnants of my potato plants and starting in on the tomatoes. So far I haven't found any natural predators preying on them, but I can always hope. Meanwhile I've started my morning p.b. (jar) and soapy water assault run. If I could remember to wear gloves, I'd probably dread this task less, but I always seem to find myself ready to start with bare hands. Then I'm too lazy to walk back to the house and find the gloves to put them on. (I'm also afraid that if I got back into the air conditioning, I'd find lots of reasons not to brave the heat and humidity again that morning!)

So I steel myself and start handpicking. The little brats are very good at dropping to the ground and quickly diving into the mulch there, so I've developed a routine of holding the jar with its soapy waters of death underneath the bug I'm targetting, then trying to knock it off the plant into the "target zone". My last resort is to actually grab the black beastie between my fingers and carry it to its doom. I manage to zap about 75% of the ones I see by this rather inefficient combination of techniques.

The reason these guys give me such a case of the willies eludes me. They can't bite. Their bodies are soft. Theoretically they emit a liquid that stinks and can cause blisters, but I've never had any problems with either issue. Logic, however, doesn't operate well when it comes to this sort of visceral reaction, so I just grit my teeth and get to the task at hand.

Speaking of which, I've neglected my bug guard duty this morning, and writing about it has given me a good case of guilty conscience. So I guess I'll go grab my trusty peanut butter jar, fill it with fresh soapy water, gird my loins (so to speak), and get it done.

Then, maybe, my halo will dully glow for at least a little while!

Current Favorite Quote

I saw this quote on a stepping stone and it captured my fancy. Unfortunately, the stepping stone was resin, which I dislike, so I didn't get it. Hopefully someday I'll find something more natural with this saying on it....

"We come from the Earth. We return to the Earth. In between, we garden."

Prairie Remnant or Overgrazed Pasture?

I wish I could make up my mind. Some mornings I come back from my walk-about fully energized and excited, sure that I've seen yet another sign that our back 5 acres is a prairie remnant, albeit an overgrazed one.

Then there are mornings (like this morning) when I come back discouraged, sure that all we have is an overgrazed pasture with a few prairie plants in it.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure why it makes a difference to me. It's actually just a matter of semantics...and perhaps an indicator of my day's mindset.

On the "overgrazed pasture" side: the predominant grasses are silver bluestem and smooth brome. There are lots of green antelopehorn milkweed, as well as quite a bit of yarrow, wavy-leafed thistle and ironweed. Foreign "invaders" and weedy species include (besides the brome) yellow sweetclover, foxtail, and windmill grass.

On the "overgrazed prairie remnant" side: 5 leadplants, 3 small patches of sideoats grama, quite a bit of buffalograss, 2 showy milkweeds, lots of wild alfalfa, multiple large patches of white prairie clover, a large area with quite a bit of prairie coneflower and black-eyed Susan, and a couple dozen dotted gayfeather plants. I'm not seeing any sign of big or little bluestem, Indian grass, or switchgrass, although it's certainly possible that I'm just missing them because they haven't headed out yet.

In the long run what matters is how the species composition changes. And on the positive side, I'm pretty sure we've had eastern meadowlarks and dickcissels nesting. I know we had a killdeer that nested, and I hear quail calling fairly frequently.

We'll just keep managing it to the best of our ability and see what happens. Meanwhile, maybe I'll start looking at it as my daily "mood-o-meter"!

Hints for Happiness

Reading the paper, believe it or not, makes me happy. Not necessarily the news that I get from reading it, but the simple fact that I have the time to sit down and scan through the articles, the columns, the ads, the comics and the puzzles. On really good days, I have time to do the puzzles, and on excellent days I find something good or funny or useful that I can incorporate into my life to make it richer in some way.

Yesterday was an excellent newspaper day. My find was in a column by Suzanne Perez Tobias, "Happiness: Plan it, do it, remember it." She talked about happiness in her own (and her children's) life, and gave a link to an excellent blog titled "The Happiness Project".

The Happiness Project is the work of Gretchen Rubin, a lawyer turned writer who is taking a year (possibly more?) to personally test every theory she can on what makes people happy. She is blogging about the experience and, concurrently, writing a book to be published in late 2009.

A quote from her blog that I think is particularly interesting, "My research has shown me that a key to happiness is squeezing out as much happiness as possible from a happy event. Unhappy people don’t have fewer happy experiences as happy people, they just think about them less. [Italics added.]"

She goes on to outline 4 stages to increase the happiness you experience from life:
1. Anticipate upcoming events with pleasure,
2. Savor happy moments as you experience them,
3. Express happiness to yourself and others, and
4. Reflect on happy memories of the event or moment.

I really like this idea! It's so simple, but potentially life-changing. Personally, I'm terrible at the first step - when I have an upcoming potentially happy event, I tend to focus on problems that may arise (like focusing on the hassle of getting ready to leave on vacation, rather than on the vacation itself; or focusing on my fears over being inappropriately dressed, rather than on a fun event that we've scheduled). I'm a little better on the other 3 steps, but could certainly do more with each one.

Check into her blog, if you get a chance. It's now happily ensconced on my list of favorites, and I know I'll be checking it with great regularily!

Echinacea vs. Checkerspot Caterpillars Redux

Chock one up to...organic gardening?

...lazy gardening?


...letting nature take the lead?


...all of the above?




About a month ago I noticed a bunch of skeletonized leaves on my 2 young Echinacea plants, which I blogged about here and here. It turned out that the leaves were being eaten by checkerspot caterpillars and, by the time I figured out what they were, their numbers had decreased fairly significantly.

Based on what I observed and learned during this brief incident, the caterpillars were eaten by cardinals, eaten by wheel bug nymphs, and probably dispersed to other plants through their natural life cycle. (Note: I haven't noticed damage on any nearby plants, so if they dispersed, they didn't do any damage that I've noted.)



I thought you might be interested in what the little Echinacea ('Sundown'), shown in my first blog on the subject, looks like now. It has 2 blooms, easy to see in the photo, and another 3 healthy flower buds. You can see the shredded leaves still, but there have been many more healthy leaves added. All in all, the plant looks healthy and happy and is a real asset in our entry garden. It's growing bigger by the day. Predator populations are thriving. I have no idea how many, if any, caterpillars survived and whether they've turned into checkerspot butterflies, but a few certainly could have.

Cost of insecticide: $0

Hours of shopping, driving, and spraying: 0

End result: Priceless.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things....

As I went out to empty my coffee grounds this morning (a daily ritual, fertilizing the blueberries or the roses), several small things brought a smile to my face and contentment to my heart. I thought I'd share them....

After pouring the coffee grounds and water onto the waiting bush, I plucked a couple midnight blue berries, lightly frosted with white, and popped them into my mouth, enjoying the mellow explosion of rich flavor.

In the trees by the draw, I heard the throaty drumroll of the yellow-billed cuckoo's call.

Nearby, the mourning doves "hoo-hooed" velvetly and a cardinal "whitted" sweetly but insistently.

The breeze softly swept over my skin, lifting my hair slightly and coolly touching my cheeks.

As I knelt to nip a few small basil flower buds, I inhaled the tangy pungency with delight and noticed the early morning sunlight shining off the bright leaves with pleasure.

Gently righting a few tomato cages that had blown slightly akilter overnight, I brushed against the tomato leaves and felt their roughly cushioned texture while smelling their tart and potent fragrance.

As I left the vegetable garden area, I noticed a ripe strawberry peeking out from underneath the leaves along the edge of the bed. Picking it, I popped it into my mouth, finishing my morning foray with its bright sweetness on my tongue.

It's getting harder and harder to want to venture away from home, when I have so much pleasure right here around me daily.

The Milkweed Insect Tribe, Part I

Because both milkweeds and the insects that inhabit them interest me so much, I tend to take a fair number of photos of all of them. I've shared some of my milkweed plant photos. Now I thought I'd share a few of my milkweed insect photos.

In this first section, I thought I would share photos of some of the insects that depend on milkweeds for all or part of their life cycle.

To the left, this handsome red beetle with white rings on its antennae is the milkweed longhorn beetle, Tetraopes femoratus.

To the right, this look-alike is the red milkweed beetle, Tetraopes tetrophthalmus. Note that it doesn't have white rings on its antennae, and that the spots on its elytra (wing covers) are elongated rather than round. This pair of species takes careful observation to tell apart.

The genus name, Tetraopes, means "4 eyes" and refers to the fact that all beetles in this genus have their compound eyes divided into an upper and a lower eye by the base of their antennae. Effectively, then, they have four eyes. There are 13 Tetraopes species in the United States, and 24 overall in North America. Many of the species in this genus are host specific, meaning they utilize only one species (of milkweed, in this case) in their life cycle.

These two milkweed beetles lay their eggs on milkweed stems near the ground or just below the soil surface. The larvae bore into the stems to eat, and overwinter in the milkweed roots. In the spring the milkweed beetles pupate, emerging as adults in late spring to summer. Adults eat the leaves and flowers of milkweeds.

Another interesting milkweed inhabitant is this fuzzy orange caterpillar. (I hadn't realized there were other caterpillars besides monarchs that ate milkweeds.) It turns out that this guy is the larval form of a white moth with the rather impressive name of orange-margined dogbane moth, Cycnia tenera. These moths eat both milkweed and dogbane plants; interestingly, the caterpillar can be either white or orange, depending on the species it is eating. I've seen them primarily on green antelopehorn, Asclepias viridis. All of the caterpillars I've seen have been orange.

Of course the classic milkweed insect is the monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus. I've seen quite a few adults feeding at milkweed flowers this year, like this one on common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca, but I've only seen one caterpillar so far. It was on green antelopehorn. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me, so I didn't get a photo. It was large and healthy, though, and probably just about ready to pupate.

The last of the milkweed-obligates that I've been able to photograph so far this year are the large milkweed bugs, Oncopeltus fasciatus. Lately I've seen some of the bright red young, called nymphs, that have recently hatched. They tend to feed in groups, at least at this stage, like the ones I photographed feeding on this green antelopehorn leaf and seed pod.

I've been seeing the adults, like the one to the right on a green antelopehorn bloom, for quite some time now. They seemed to appear shortly after the green antelopehorn started blooming. Again, like almost all of the milkweed specific insects, they are marked with warning colors: black and (in this case) orange.

In doing a little research, I learned that some of the northern dwelling large milkweed bugs actually migrate south far enough to overwinter as adults. Any adults or nymphs left far enough north to freeze during the winter will die. In the spring, the remaining adults start moving north again. Thus, the farther north you live, the later in the summer it will be before you see this species. I don't know whether the first adults I see here each spring spent the winter locally or moved up from more southern areas.

It takes the large milkweed bug nymphs about 40 days (and 5 molts) to reach adulthood. Only adults have wings, therefore only adults can fly. Both the nymphs and adults have the defensive habit of dropping to the ground if they are disturbed, which can make it hard to look at them closely. They'll remain still on the ground for several minutes, appearing dead, which is another defensive behavior, since many predators prefer to eat living animals.

In my next milkweed insect post, I'll show some of the other insects I've observed feeding at milkweeds. It's an interesting potpourri.

A Multitude of Milkweeds

For some reason, I'm enamored with milkweeds. It probably started with their cachet as food for the caterpillars of monarch butterflies. All schoolkids learn about monarchs, I think, and most learn to love them. I know I did.

Then I discovered that milkweeds host an entire community of milkweed-specific insects, adapted to eat their poisonous tissues. Because these insects feed on milkweeds, they taste terrible and may even be poisonous in their own right. This means that few animals want to eat them. Not surprisingly, the milkweed eaters boldly advertise their untasty status with bright colors.

The final building block in my love affair with milkweeds was discovering how many of them have extremely fragrant flowers. I'm talking the kind of fragrance you drink in from several feet away, wondering, "What's that lovely smell?" Add in cool seed pods, pretty blooms in many species, and what's not to love?

So it's been fun to discover that we have several species of milkweeds on our property.

The first milkweed species we found was green antelopehorn, Asclepias viridis. Its flowers are neither showy nor fragrant, but the plants possess a certain quiet appeal nonetheless. They increase in overgrazed pastures. We have a lot of them.

Next I realized that we had a plant or two of common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca. Ironically, I've discovered that this species is the least common of the milkweeds that occur on our 10 acres. One of the taller, upright milkweeds, common milkweed has large, pretty pink pom-poms of fragrant flowers. Personally I think it would be a lot more popular with a less "common" common name.

I identified both of these 2 species shortly after we moved in. The third species was visible last year, but I didn't look at it closely enough to realize that it was different from the common milkweed. It's growing on the west banks of the draw in a small, loose colony of about 20 individual plants. (At least I think they're individuals. I haven't uprooted any to see if they are connected by underground rhizomes.) Another upright, pink, fragrant bloomer, it's known as showy milkweed, Asclepias speciosa. Its blooms are composed of fewer flowers than those of common milkweed, and they look "spikier". The leaves also tend to be held a little more upright than those of common milkweed.

About 20 feet away from the showy milkweed colony, back up on flatter land, I noticed a group of upright milkweeds this spring that didn't bloom as soon as the nearby showy milkweed or the further away common milkweed. Sure enough, when they did bloom they were a 4th species called smooth or Sullivan's milkweed, Asclepias sullivantii. Again they are pink and fragrant, but their odor is different, reminding me of cloves. Note that their flowers are not as "spiky" as the showy milkweed's, and their stem is smooth.

Backing up a bit, a month or so ago as the green antelopehorn was starting to bloom, I noticed a few scattered, smaller individual stems of what looked like milkweed, but it wasn't blooming. I marked several of them with orange flags and I've been monitoring them to see what they are. About 2 weeks ago, they started to bloom with odd little clumps of greenish-white flowers. Shown here to the right, the flower is on the lower left, the buds are on the right. I'd never noticed any milkweeds like these before but, in looking them up, I've learned that they are called green milkweed, Asclepias viridiflora. Chalk up another species that "magically appeared" after burning.

Finally, when I was out trying to get a decent photograph of the green milkweed, I noticed a singleton plant with much finer leaves and slightly different flowers. The flowers were still greenish-white, but they weren't as pendulous as those of the green milkweed. The overall effect of the plant was daintier, if taller. This turned out to be narrow-leaved milkweed, Asclepias stenophylla. As closeups of its flowers show, it's probably the least showy of them all (although the green milkweed is a close second), but I'm still glad to find it on our prairie.

I'm still waiting for the prom queen of the milkweeds, the orange-flowered butterfly milkweed or Asclepias tuberosa, to show up, but so far I haven't seen any sign of it. No luck finding swamp milkweed, Asclepias incarnata, or the endangered Mead's milkweed, Asclepias meadii, either. (Not that I think there's the slightest chance of finding the latter on this property, but one can always dream!!!) There are a few other species that are possibilities, but meanwhile I'm enjoying my embarrassment of milkweed riches with the 6 species I have found.

The Guardian

For several weeks now our front yard has had a guardian. From morning until night, we have a winged gray troubadour loudly proclaiming his dominion through songs broadcast nonstop from the uppermost tip of the dead cottonwood or from the top of the chimney/antenna.

I'm sure he has a nest in the yard, but I've rather superstitiously avoided searching for it, as my track record on nests is abysmal. (If I can find a nest, it seems that shortly thereafter, so can a predator of some sort.)

Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll see a fledgling mockingbird or two in the area. Then I'll know that all of this serenading was not in vain. Meanwhile, we're enjoying the daily concert and smiling broadly while we listen. You just have to admire the guy's endurance and vocal range.

The Snowball Effect of Successful Gardening

Why is it that success in one thing often leads to some further problem that has to be solved? My latest run-in with this conundrum has to do with finally learning how to produce fruits and vegetables reasonably successfully in our garden.

For years I "gardened" as a biologist. If biodiversity was good, as I was taught in biology classes, then it made sense to me that leaving weeds in the garden would create more biodiversity among the vegetables and thus minimize pest problems. The problem insects would have a harder time finding the food crops and it would be harder for disease to move directly from one plant to the next.

Needless to say, it didn't quite work out that way. (Yes, you true gardeners can quit laughing and rolling your eyes now!) The insects and diseases had no problem finding my poor garden plants, which were probably sending out major distress signals from being overcrowded and outcompeted. Crops, such as they were, tended to be small...if the plants even lived long enough to produce anything.

Slowly (sometimes I'm REALLY dense), I learned that removing competition from weeds was not just a good thing, but an absolutely necessary thing. Eventually I even learned that mulching kept weeds down with a minimum of effort on my part. In fact, mulching even kept the roots cooler and moister so I didn't have to water as much. Watering regularly, if rain wasn't coming consistently, was a good thing too.

I'm finally learning how to harness biological principles to garden successfully. Besides weeding, mulching, and watering regularly, I still garden organically. When black blister beetles attacked my tomatoes last year, I picked them off by hand each morning and dropped them in soapy water to kill them. I removed all of the squash bug egg clusters I could find, as well as giving the adult squash bugs and their nymphs the same treatment as the blister beetles. We use raised beds, lots of composted horse manure and shredded leaves by the wheelbarrowful. It's not a perfect system, but it works for us.

In fact, it's working well enough that we're now producing reasonable amounts of the fruits and vegetables we were aiming for. And that's where the new problem has arisen: I find that I'm not very good at using my produce when it's ready to be used. "Spinach tonight? Oh, I'm too tired to make dinner. Let's just eat leftovers." By the time I'm in the mood to make the fresh spinach salad, the leaves are big and old and bitter.

I'm better at utilizing our fruit crops. After all, left in a bowl on the counter, the blueberries make a great snack every time I walk through the kitchen. Strawberries worked that way, too. The peas just haven't got the same snack appeal, though.

I'm getting better, but it's a slow process of changing how I plan and fix dinner, as well as how I garden. Who knew that growing a few edibles would lead to such self examination and changes in my lifestyle? Before I know it, it's going to be time to try chickens again!

Kansas - Land of Feast or Famine

It's been raining here. A lot. Not enough to cause major flooding concerns as in Iowa, thank heavens, but more than enough to saturate the soil.

Normally, saturated soil wouldn't be that big a deal. But right now the wheat has ripened and, for the second year in a row, the farmers can't get into the fields to harvest it. If the rain stops for a few days, they may be all right overall, but some of the wheat is beginning to turn from beautiful golden to sickly grayish brown. My heart just cries as I look at those fields.

My heart cries, too, as I think of the farmers having to stand and watch and wait, unable to do anything else for now but pray and keep their fingers crossed.

It's a reminder, once again, that the prairie is a hard environment. Even when it's "soft" with rain, the prairie often runs to extremes that test the endurance of man, beast and plant. Last year, for example, after raining like this for months during the spring and the first part of the summer, the rain suddenly quit in early July and there was no rain at all for over 2 months. At the same time the temperatures went from 70's and 80's to the upper 90's and stayed there for most of the dry spell.

I'm loath to wish for the rain to stop in Kansas. (I always keep in mind to be careful what I ask for, especially around here.) That said, I hope for the farmers' sake that the rain slows down for a while to allow them to harvest the crop they've so carefully planted and tended.

"I Found [a] Thrill...."

We (well, to be perfectly honest, HE) did it! We managed to get a decent crop of blueberries in south central Kansas. It's actually even better than most of the crops of blueberries we managed to produce in Mobile, land of acid soil and blueberry plants.

Shortly after we moved here last year, Prairiewolf decided that one thing he really missed from Mobile was blueberries. So he researched and learned of a way that we might be able to manage to grow them here on the prairie.

Essentially he made a series of mini-bogs by digging out large (24-30" wide, 12" deep) holes and replacing the soil with peat moss. We found blueberries at the Wichita Lawn & Garden Show last spring, compliments of a company from Missouri, and eventually got them planted.

Prairiewolf fertilized them a few times with fertilizer for acid-loving plants, I've religiously anointed them with coffee grounds for most of the past year, and we've both worked hard to supplement any lack of rainwater and keep them well hydrated.

Out of 6 plants, we lost one (which we replaced with a box store substitute this spring), had one struggle but make it, and had 4 that have done very well. For anyone else trying this, start with larger plants - the two that had problems were both #1's; all 3 of the larger #2's did fine.

This week we literally started reaping the benefits of our labors. The plants are still small, so we're getting handfuls, not bowlfuls, but we're relishing every bite.

How long will they continue to do well in a land they're not really adapted for? Who knows? We just plan to enjoy them for as long as they're able to put up with us!

Documenting "Monet Season" Before It Draws to an End

As I'm getting to know this new homestead of ours, I'm starting to identify mini-seasons on it - seasons within seasons, as it were.

These aren't real seasons, of course, but they're subsets of seasons based on groups of plants that bloom together, changing light and color conditions, and, above all, time swiftly moving by.

Last spring I fell in love with a soft, warm time of year that, in my private moments, I call the Monet season. It's characterized by young fresh foliage highlighted by blooms of soft blues and yellows and whites, with occasional pops of magenta. The weather tends to be balmy (at least in my memory!). Before it completely fades out this year, I'd like to commemorate it by posting a few photos.

The first photo, seen here to the right, is my attempt to capture the overall feel. As a side note, I find it's hard to capture the landscapes of this season - the photos tend to wash out. My eyes are evidently drawn to pick up the blues and light yellows...but the camera isn't! It doesn't help that many of these flowers don't fully open until the sun is relatively high in the sky, and that the same flowers close by mid to late afternoon. If you've ever done any flower photography, you know that mid-day is an absolutely horrible time to get photos; the lighting is too harsh.

At this time of year, much of the blue is supplied by spiderwort (Tradescantia spp.), seen in closeup in this photo to the left. Spiderwort gets its common name by its mucilaginous sap - when you break the stem and slowly pull it apart, the sap spins out thinly like a spider web. Of course another colorful, if not terribly complimentary, common name for this group of plants is cowslobbers, based on the massive amounts saliva coming from the mouths of cattle as they eat it - also caused by that viscous sap. Whatever you call it, the blue of its flowers is truly heavenly, reflecting the powder blue of the sky on sunny, late spring mornings.

Lots of gardeners in the deep south don't like spiderworts because they tend to escape easily into lawns there. They may do that here in Kansas, too, but I'll take that risk to have their fresh beauty shining through the newly green prairie grasses.

A little of the blue is supplied, when I'm lucky, by blue wildindigo (Baptisia australis var. minor), one of the queens of prairie wildflowers, as far as I'm concerned. Not only is its color magnificent, displayed in 18" spikes of vivid flowers, it fixes nitrogen and thus helps enrich the soil. It's definitely a "decreaser", a plant that tends to disappear from the prairie when it's subjected to agricultural grazing. Thus I feel lucky to have discovered 6 plants so far on our 10 acres. With care and luck, I hope to increase that number...significantly. I'm not sure I could ever have too much blue wildindigo mixed among my grasses.

Switching hues, the soft yellows of Monet season are often supplied by two dandelion look-alikes. The first, false tuber dandelion (Pyrrhopappus grandiflorus), even has a basal rosette of leaves that looks like dandelion leaves! When it blooms, however, it's obvious that it's a different flower from the common dandelion as it's much taller and softer yellow. It also has the virtue, in my eyes, of being native. Here a bee is helping itself to some pollen while helping out the flower by fertilizing it.

The other frequent yellow "pseudo-dandelion" on our property is known as western salsify or goat's beard (Tragopogon dubius). This species was introduced from Eurasia and, while it's not native, it's not very aggressive either so I don't mind having it around. In fact, one of it's most enjoyable features for me is its huge seedheads, again like dandelion seedballs, but on steroids and with a geometric bent.

As the season closes on this group of flowers and the mild weather that tends to accompany them, different, more vibrant wildflowers are starting to bloom and a new mini-season is coming together. Temperatures are rising and the sun's rays are getting hotter and higher. Plants are putting on spurts of growth and insects are appearing everywhere. I'll be blogging about those, too, but right now I want to bid a fond farewell, for this year, to the Monet season and its soft pleasantness. I'll be looking forward to experiencing its balmy warmth and blue and yellow beauty next spring.

It's Chigger Time Again!

There was a faint hope in my heart that, after 6 years away from Kansas, my body's extreme over-reaction to chiggers would have faded. So each warm day that went by without my finding any chigger bites after a walk-about was cause for hope. Alas, that hope is gone. Yesterday, June 10th, was official "Beginning of Chigger Season" day on our homestead this year.

On the plus side, my body's reaction to the bite(s) I received appear to be a little muted. So far.

So, in my normal attempt to find something good (or at least interesting) in a seemingly negative animal or situation, I did some web research on chiggers today.

The first article I came across, a fact sheet (HYG-2100-98) from Ohio State University's Extension system, started out with a statement that I loved. It encapsulates so much! "Probably no creature on earth can cause as much torment for its size than the tiny chigger."

Okay, I certainly can't disagree with that. But I was looking for some fun, interesting or positive facts. Here's what I came up with....

The chiggers that we know and "love" are the newly hatched larval stage of a tiny mite from the genus Trombicula. Mites are closely related to ticks. The adult chigger mite, actually called a harvest mite, is small (about 1/20 of an inch long); the newly hatched larva is microscopic (1/150 - 1/120 of an inch). This newly hatched larva is the ONLY stage of this animal's lifespan that is parasitic.

In fact, the older nymphs and the adults eat tiny insects and the eggs of arthropods, including mosquito eggs. That could actually qualify them as beneficial to humans, in one of nature's ironic twists.

Another interesting piece of information that I learned is that we are rather accidental hosts for chiggers. In fact, our allergic reaction occurs precisely for this reason! Actually, chiggers are primarily on the prowl for reptiles, such as snakes and turtles, and birds. These animals do not respond with allergic reactions to chigger bites.

So, now that we're on the topic of actual chigger bites, I learned a little bit about the actual "bite" process itself. Chiggers do not burrow into our skin. They do not suck our blood. What a chigger does is insert its mouthparts into a skin pore or hair follicle, especially in an area of thin skin or tight clothing. The next step is to inject salivary juices containing potent digestive enzymes into our skin, literally liquefying some of our skin cells. Finally the chigger sucks up the liquid that results. Surrounding tissues harden in an attempt to block off the intrusion, and a straw-like structure is formed through which the chigger continues to alternately inject digestive enzymes and suck out liquified skin cell contents.

It is our body's reaction to the digestive enzymes and the hardened "straw" (called a stylostome) that creates the inflammation response and itchiness. In our country, there is no known disease transmitted by chigger bites. However, secondary infections due to wounds created by scratching are not infrequent.

It takes about 4 days for a chigger to fully feed. Once done, it falls off and changes into the next life stage, the nymph. As mentioned earlier, no other stage in the chigger's life feeds on us or on any other vertebrate.

The chigger stays on the skin's surface the entire time that it feeds and, thus, it is unlikely to complete its meal before being removed because it's been scratched off or scrubbed off in a bath or shower. If it hasn't completed its big first meal, the chigger that is removed from the skin dies. It is unable to reattach or to go on to it's next life stage.

Although it seems like chiggers prefer "biting" women and children to men, the actual difference in bites is due to the thinner skin that women and children have in comparison to men.

And one last piece of information that I find amazing.... In Missouri Department of Conservation's article "Chiggers!", they have calculated a chigger's journey to locate a suitable eating site by comparing it to a human journey:

"The chiggers that annoy people have long legs and can move rapidly. They are capable of getting all over a person's body in just a few minutes. The long trek from a victim's shoe to the belt line (a favorite point of attack) is a climb that take about 15 minutes but is more than 5000 times the chiggers's tiny length. That's about the same as a human scaling a large mountain-and on an empty stomach."

I don't know about you, but I have to have some respect for an animal that's willing to make that kind of journey just to eat a little take-out.

To See Takes Time

I have been warring within myself over whether or not I "should" be taking the time to do a walk-about each day. To really do it justice, I need to spend about 90 minutes, give or take a half hour.

This isn't exercise, because I move much too slowly. "Saunter and pause, saunter and stop, stand still while watching, saunter again" is a relatively accurate description of my pace on these jaunts.

My purpose, besides getting outside, is two-fold: 1) to see what's happening in our yard, and 2) to exercise Becker (whose pace is more like "run and sniff, jog and sniff some more, lie down in the shade if she's being stupid and stopping in the sun, get up and run again to catch up").

Ninety minutes a day is a chunk of time. It seems almost sinful to spend that amount of time without making money or cleaning the house or paying bills or, at least, toning my body.

However, I ran across a quote from Georgia O'Keeffe recently that makes me feel better about my choice to use my time this way, "Nobody sees a flower, really, it is so small. We haven't time - and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time."

"...[T]o see takes time like to have a friend takes time." She's right. It takes time for me to go slowly through our yard, looking, ready to see new events or animals or serendipitous moments, photographing some of them to share with others. And it takes time to really be a friend, too. Time to talk on the phone, meet for lunch, help in an emergency, get together to shop, visit after you've moved apart from each other.

None of which makes money or advances careers or cleans the house, but all of which sure enrich my life.

There's more to a rich life than money. I have to remind myself of that over and over again, with the pressure of our culture sounding the constant refrain to "make money, spend money, show off your wealth, then you'll be happy." I know that's a lie, but a lie repeated often enough becomes perceived as the truth, to rephrase a quote that some other famous person made.

So now I'll arm myself with O'Keeffe's quote and, when the pressure to "be more productive" with my time starts eating at me, I'll quietly repeat its wisdom to myself...as I call to Becker and we start on our daily walk-about.

An Unplanned Animal Awareness Day

I was lucky enough to get several glimpses into the vertebrate animal life sharing our property today.

#1: As I was walking out in the back prairie this morning, a jack rabbit spooked up and literally high-tailed it south into the neighbor's horse pasture. It's quite a sight to see this large, gangly, rabbit-like creature racing away from you, topped by huge whitish ears tipped with black . Those ears draw your eyes like a magnet.


After the burn, I worried a bit about how barren that back 5 acres had become. Would it green up fast enough to provide sufficient habitat for the local wildlife that needs to use it this summer? Well, the last time I saw a jack rabbit was before the burn, so just short of 2 months after the burn, the prairie has recovered enough to allow a jack rabbit to feel at home again.


#2: Speaking of the burned area as recovering habitat, after the burn I found at least one bird nest (meadowlark?) destroyed by the fire. That hurt. For several weeks, I saw many birds feeding in the ashy soil and regrowing vegetation, but only recently have I seen signs of nesting birds again.


Meadowlarks and killdeer have been territorializing loudly and melodiously for several weeks now, and for the last few days dickcissels have joined the chorus. Furthermore, I've noticed a killdeer getting particularly agitated in the southwest corner of the prairie when Becker or I were near, so I started skipping that area as I did my walkabout. However, several days ago I saw no sign of a killdeer anywhere, so I ventured back into the area today to pull up some marker flags.




Image my surprise and dismay/delight when I saw this female sitting tightly on her nest near where I was working. She was obviously torn between staying still and leading me astray by distraction. I snapped a quick photo, then moved on rapidly, keeping Becker on heel until we were safely out of range.

#3 and #4: When I got ready to leave on an errand late this afternoon, I noticed a little spotted lump by my front wheel. It turned out to be a young...brown thrasher? I'm not sure what it was, to be honest. The breast was spotted like a young robin, but it had no red on it at all and it definitely had 2 white wing bars. There was a mockingbird raising a big fuss as I knelt to take the photo, so I wondered about that, but the spots have me a little confused. My memory says the baby was rather grayish, but the color in the photo looks rather rusty brown, like a young brown thrasher. Since that would coincide with the spotted breast and wing bars, I'll go with fledgling brown thrasher as my tentative identification.

Whatever it was, the little thing had a lot more gumption than coordination! It couldn't fly at all, but when I got too close for its comfort, it took off rapidly with an odd, distinctly earthbound mix of hopping, running, and trying frantically to use wings that just weren't cooperating. I didn't want to chase it, so this one photo was all I was able to get.

Getting back to the car after all that excitement, I double checked under it and behind all the wheels, managing to scare up a VERY fat toad, who proceeded to exhibit a death wish by repeatedly hopping underneath the car from one side to the other. If anyone was watching, I'm sure I presented a rather comical figure, vainly waving at some small lump on the concrete while bending over and/or kneeling beside the car doors. Finally I was able to chase the toad under some shrubs and get away before some other misguided creature decided to hunker down next to this metallic "mother".

#5: My last encounter for the day occurred at dusk while I was deadheading some Coreopsis grandiflora in the front flower bed. It's a nice sized clump, about 18" in diameter, and blooming profusely. To encourage it to keep blooming, I was chasing each spent bloom down into the foliage, to the nearest stem joint, and snipping the stem off between my thumb and finger. I'd done about 2/3rds of the blooms when the clump suddenly gave a shudder and a thick brown snake about 2 1/2 feet long shot out and shimmied into the thick daylilies about six feet away.

I didn't get a close look, but from the glimpse I got, I'd guess that it was a water snake of some sort. I definitely didn't see (or hear) any sort of rattle, so I don't think it was a rattlesnake. Nonetheless, I felt distinctly disinclined to disturb it further by chasing it down!

Days like today make me feel privileged, both to be granted these brief glimpses of other lives coexisting with us on these 10 acres and to simply be able to live here.

It Only Took a Day....

Update on checkerspot caterpillars on Echinacea:

When I went to check on them around noon today, I could only find 4 caterpillars total (out of a rough estimate of 2-3 dozen last night). Oh, and the crumpled remains of a fifth caterpillar being carried by a wheelbug nymph as it sauntered down the Echinacea stem.

When I looked this evening, I could only find 1 caterpillar on all 3 Echinacea plants.

Not knowing how large the caterpillars get before they either pupate or quit eating "gregariously", I can't say for sure whether the caterpillars moved on of their own accord or whether they became breakfast, lunch, or dinner for a little wheel bug, a cardinal, or some other animal. Whatever actually occurred, it appears that my Echinacea are safe for now.

Once more, doing nothing proved to be a highly successful strategy. Being "lazy" isn't always bad.

"It Pays to Pay Attention"...or "A Natural Course of Action"

You'd think I'd know better. I noticed a few days ago that my young Echinacea plants were looking a little bedraggled, as if some of their leaves had a fungus. Coming from Mobile lately where wet weather made Echinacea extremely difficult to grow, I sighed, lamented that the recent extremely rainy weather had allowed fungus to attack my Echinacea even here in Echinacea-land, and forgot about it.

Then today, while I was letting the dogs out for a bladder relief session, I looked at my Echinacea plants a little more closely.

Imagine my surprise when the "dry, curled, fungus-afflicted" leaves turned out to be skeletonized and covered with frass (bug poop). Obviously there was something other than fungus going on here.

Imagine my further surprise when I noticed that the dark mass of "dead leaf material" I'd noticed from the porch turned out to be a very much living mass of small, dark caterpillar bodies covered with bristles. (Note: My photograph here isn't the best. You can see one caterpillar fairly clearly and 3 more rather fuzzily. The dark bundle at the center of the photo is a mass of other caterpillars, which you can kind of make out if you use your imagination!)

So it was off to my books and the internet for a little research.

To the best of my ability to chase it down at this point, I think these are caterpillars of one of the checkerspot butterflies, probably the silvery checkerspot (Chlosyne nycteis). The photo to the right shows a single caterpillar on a partially skeletonized leaf, with several other "used-up" leaves in the background. The silvery checkerspot caterpillars feed "gregariously" on plants such as asters and Echinacea, skeletonizing the leaves as they feed. They are not considered to be a major problem, presumably because they don't get very big...and because we're not trying to compete with them, i.e., eat the Echinacea ourselves. When disturbed, the caterpillars quickly curl up and drop to the ground, behavior which I witnessed firsthand.

I'm not quite sure how I'm going to handle this yet. It would (will?) be easy enough to handpick them off the plants and drop them in soapy water, thus keeping the Echinacea healthier and allowing it to grow bigger and bloom more this year...but one of my main reasons for having a native perennial garden is to provide habitat for the native animals, including butterflies. It hardly seems fair to start killing them as soon as I see them, just because they are eating the plants that I put there for them!

Then again, I may not have to worry about the problem much longer. When I went back out to take a few pictures, I disturbed a pair of cardinals who had been, if I'm not mistaken, busily eating the delicious little black caterpillars they'd discovered in my flower bed.

Mother Nature's 24/7 Scales of Ecological Balance! Once again, I think I've proved to myself that letting nature take its course is the most effective - and interesting - plan of action.

Peony Envy

It always seems like people - sadly, even gardeners (especially gardeners?) - lust for what they can't have. Here in south central Kansas, gardeners lust after azaleas, rhododendrons, blueberries, blue hydrangeas, and tropical plants like jasmine, gardenias, and palms.

Down in Mobile, Alabama, they grow those things with little effort. The Mobile gardeners lust after other plants, like apple trees, lilacs, pink hydrangeas...and peonies.

Especially peonies. So in honor of the Gulf Coast Peony Society, of which I was a charter member several years ago, I want to post these photos of my newly expanding peony collection.

To the President of the GCPS, J.W., who has successfully grown a peony in Mobile (and actually gotten it to bloom!), I dedicate these photos. A little over a year ago, we discovered this peony plant sadly crouching under the overgrown yews in front of the house, when we rudely and crudely cut the yews down to daringly expose our windows to sunlight. Last summer this waif had few leaves and looked quite bedraggled, but this year it has recovered strength and even rewarded us with 5 large, fragrant blossoms.

To the Vice President of the GCPS, B.W., who has so far successfully resisted the urge to try to grow peonies in a climate they are inclined to hate, despite remembering how gorgeous they looked in other locales where she has lived, I dedicate these photos. Last spring I ordered a series of 3 peony roots, which promptly arrived...and which I just as promptly forgot about. Five weeks later, I ran across them again and stuck them in the ground with a prayer for forgiveness. Evidently my prayer was successful, since they came up last year and have even given me several blooms this year.

To the rest of the Gulf Coast Peony Society, N.M., G.S., P.L., P.S., and others, I dedicate the peonies that I am beginning to try to rescue from a home that is due to be auctioned off later this summer. The owner, sad enough about the fate of her family home, is hoping to find new places for many of the plants that she and her mother and her grandmother lovingly tended for so many years. To the best of my ability, I hope to help her in that quest. (I don't have photos of these plants yet, but I hope to by next year.)

Thank you all, members of the Gulf Coast Peony Society, for allowing me to join your august ranks during that wonderful time that I spent in Mobile. Grow a few blue hydrangeas and Formosa azaleas for me!

New to Me This Year: Carolina Anemone

It's amazing how many new wildflowers I'm finding around the yard this year. I don't know if the conditions were somehow "just right" for them to appear this year but not last year, or if they were able to store enough energy last year to really emerge and bloom in full force this year, or if I was just much less observant last year. Whatever the explanation, I'm enjoying the increased diversity.

The first exciting new wildflower that I noticed this year was the Carolina anemone (Anemone caroliniana). I first noticed a blue one, looking very much like a large single aster bloom on a really short stem, some time in late March or early April. Soon I noticed a second blue one nearby, then one or two others which were white and formed another small clump elsewhere in the yard. By the time they were done blooming in late April, I'd found about five small populations and one large population scattered throughout the front areas of our property.

This pretty little flower comes in two color forms: bright purplish blue and white. The photo at the right shows, obviously, the white form, with a tube of lip gloss for scale. Both color forms of Carolina anemone have a clear yellow center. There doesn't appear (at least in my yard) to be any intergrading between the two colors - each "clump" contained either blue or white flowers. The only population to contain both colors was the large group, and it really appeared to be several smaller populations in close proximity.

I don't feel too bad about missing this flower last year, as it is almost impossible to notice the leaves if the plant isn't blooming. It is also one of those plants where the flower opens in response to sunlight, so that in the early morning, late evening, and on cloudy days, the flower remains shut fairly tightly, looking like an unopened bud. (The photo below shows my largest population of Carolina anemones, both blue and white. The purple flower seen tinting the mix is that old Kansas springtime favorite, henbit.)

Since they were so inconspicuous unless they were blooming, I marked the areas where the Carolina anemones were with orange flags, so that I could follow what happened after they bloomed and so that Prairiewolf wouldn't mow them down prematurely. First they dropped their petals, leaving a small central structure that looked rather like a thimble (the righthand structure in the photo to the left)...and presumably giving rise to another common name for them, thimble flower. Later the "thimble" seemed to get fuzzy, as the seeds matured, seen in the lefthand structure in the photo to the left. After some of the seed had dropped naturally, I collected the rest and scattered it in the back prairie.

In summary, I can't really explain why I've been so attracted to this little flower. Perhaps it's because I'd never even heard of it before seeing it early this spring in our own prairie. I'd always thought that anemones were delicate flowers totally incapable of surviving in Kansas! Whatever the reason, my feelings are best captured by a sentence in Janet Bare's book, Wildflowers and Weeds of Kansas (p. 115), "No description or photograph can recapture the enchantment of these flowers for those who experienced it in pioneer days when in early April in delicate tints it overspread the prairies around homes and schoolhouses and away toward the horizon." I'd love to increase its numbers enough that I could see that sight here on our own little bit of prairie.