This Week in Pest-Controlling and Pollinating Wasps

While I'd love to be seeing more insect life in our yard, I have to admit that I AM seeing some interesting insects - including a few that are totally new to me.  So I thought it would be fun to share what I'm seeing as well as the blooms that are bringing them in.

How to organize this????  By day?  By bloom?  By type of insect?  I'll just have to see what flows best.....

I started out to make this post an overview of all the pollinators I've seen over the week, but it quickly became apparent that would be overwhelming, so I decided to focus this post just on wasps.

Wasps have been quite prominent recently, especially solitary wasps.  Last Friday, July 20th, was when I first noticed some unusual ones -3 in a row, in fact, over the course of about 10 minutes, on the clustered mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum).

The first was a large scarab hunter wasp that has no common name so I've nicknamed it the fuzzy scarab hunter wasp (Campsomeris plumipes).  Like other scarab hunters, this wasp flies low above the ground, searching for (buried) scarab beetle larvae, a.k.a. beetle grubs.  When she finds one, she digs down to it, paralyzes it, lays an egg on it, and flies away.  The egg hatches out and the wasp larva consumes the beetle grub.  One wasp egg on one beetle grub, so every one of these you see means that a scarab beetle of some sort - say a June bug or green June beetle - didn't make it to adulthood.

As you can see, the adult wasp actually eats nectar to sustain itself, as is true for most of these solitary wasps.  Also as solitary wasps, they are not aggressive and they will not sting unless you actively try to handle them or they get caught in your clothing, stepped on in bare feet, etc.  You can assume this is true for all solitary wasps unless someone mentions otherwise.  It's a nice change from the more problematic social wasps.

As an aside, all the solitary wasps I'm familiar with have only one generation each year, so if you take them out (for example, by spraying insecticides), it may be several years before their population numbers can rebuild by migrating in from surrounding areas.  Given how well they function as both pollinators and, probably more importantly, as pest control, that would seem to be extremely short sighted to me.

Back to my magic 10 minutes by the mountain mint, the next insect to fly in, while I was photographing the fuzzy scarab hunter wasp, was the great golden digger wasp (Sphex ichneumoneus).  This is a species I've seen before, both here and in Kansas, and I love its fiery color and large size.  You just can't mistake this distinctive wasp with its red legs and black-tipped red abdomen for any other species.  Look, too, at the golden glow created by the gold hair on its head and thorax.  That's something you almost have to take a picture of to appreciate, although I've seen it highlighted occasionally as one of these beauties nectars. 

Another solitary wasp, great golden digger wasps hunt for and paralyze grasshoppers and crickets as food for their larvae.  The female digs a burrow in sandy soil, with a central, almost vertical, main burrow and individual cells radiating out from this primary burrow.  She places one paralyzed grasshopper or cricket in each cell, lays an egg on it, then seals up the cell.

As I was finishing up my "photo session" with the great golden digger wasp and taking a few last photos of the fuzzy scarab hunter wasp, I noticed more movement in the air space around the mountain mint - a thread waisted wasp had come in to feed, too. 

This rather bizarre looking wasp not only held its abdomen up at a strange angle as it flew, but the sun caught metallic glimmers of color on its otherwise black body and wings.  Researching on BugGuide.net, I identified this species as Eremnophila aureonotata.  Again there is no common name, so I've nicknamed it the gold-marked thread-waisted wasp, "aureonotata" meaning "gold-marked" in Latin.  This solitary wasp species feeds its larvae on a wide variety of (paralyzed) moth caterpillars, utilizing a burrow in the ground, as far as I can tell.

So, according to the time stamps on my photos, in just over 10 minutes my mountain mint had nurtured predators working to control beetle grubs, grasshoppers and mole crickets, and moth caterpillars in my gardens.  Not too shabby!!!  And it didn't cost me a dime beyond the initial cost of a very pretty perennial plant.

I've seen a couple other wasps this week, too.  One I've been seeing frequently for several weeks now is less than half the size of the big guys above.  It's a cute little black mason wasp with 2 white stripes on its abdomen (Euodynerus sp.).  When I grabbed its picture above, I think it was hunting for caterpillars among the ferns.  Again, there is no common name for this wasp, so my description above ("cute little black mason wasp") will have to suffice.  Mason and potter wasps feed their larvae primarily on moth caterpillars, although some species also use the larvae of leaf-eating beetles.  If you see smallish wasps using mud to fill up small holes (for example in brick, where your hurricane shutters have gone up in the past), it may well be one of these mason wasps.  They build cells out of mud in hollow tubes, provisioning each cell with a paralyzed caterpillar or beetle larvae on which they lay an egg before closing up the cell and moving on. 

Do you sense a pattern among the solitary wasps here?! They've found a good gig in paralyzing prey to keep it fresh for their young to eat after hatching, then tweaked the process in a myriad of different ways so that each species has its own spin...and ecological niche.

I've seen these little black and white mason wasps nectaring on blossoms as well as hunting in my gardens.  I've found small holes filled with dried mud, which I presume are their nest cells.  These are enjoyable little creatures for me to notice as I go out and about weeding, planting, transplanting, watering, and photographing.  Just in the last week I have photographs of this species hunting in these ferns, shown above, as well as in camphorweed and in and out of leaves and mulch at the base of phlox and lyreleaf sage.  Front yard, back yard.  Sun, shade.  This little wasp is a "busy bee" in its work habits.

At the other end of the size spectrum from the cute little mason wasp is the gigantic 4-spotted scarab hunter wasp (Campsomeris quadrimaculata) that I've seen a couple times now.  Boy, am I ever glad that these guys aren't at all aggressive, because they are HUGE and they give me pause even though I know they won't bother me.  The photo above shows this big black beauty all coated with pollen from nectaring at maypop flowers (Passiflora incarnata).

Here is a photo I took about 2 weeks ago of a "clean" 4 spotted scarab hunter wasp, nectaring on sweet pepperbush blooms (Clethra alnifolia).   See how much pollen the individual nectaring at the passion vine is wearing in comparison?!  That's what I call a pollinator!

For the sake of clarity, again I've made up a nickname for this wasp as, again, it has not been given an official common name.  Its specific Latin name, "quadrimaculata", means "4-spotted", while the entire genus is known as scarab hunter wasps, hence the "4-spotted scarab hunter wasp".   This is another great predator in the garden, paralyzing and laying eggs in scarab beetle grubs.

Big and little, I've got wasps sharing my gardens that are making life easier - and much more interesting - for me.  I used to hate wasps, but now I smile whenever I see one.  I hope you're seeing some great solitary wasps in your gardens, too.

 

A Passion for Life

The fragrances of the earth enjoin and
blossom in my nostrils and
sinus -
breath is what we
share with the world.
                    - Gavin Geoffrey Dillard, Graybeard Abbey

Hmmmm.  Seems like a good month to participate in Wildflower Wednesday, but what flower should I pick? 

The spotted beebalm (Monarda punctata) that just started blooming? 

The clustered mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) that has become a new favorite of mine, with its frosty cool garden presence and its outstanding ability to pull in the pollinators - and their predators? 

The turkey tangle fogfruit (Phyla nodiflora) that I concurrently both love and simply dislike?

The Devil's grandmother (Elephantopus tomentosus) that also just started to bloom and which is actually looking like a garden plant this summer since I finally got around to transplanting some into a bed this spring?

The "Eveready bunny" of my garden, the old sturdy standby Indian blanket (Gaillardia pulchella) that just keeps going and going and going and going?

The swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) that I'm relying on to attract some monarchs to my gardens one of these days?

The trailing pineland lantana (Lantana depressa) out by the front sidewalk, with its lemonade colored blossoms covering tidy mounds of vibrantly bright green leaves?

Nope.  Those are all cool and wonderful plants in my gardens, ...

...but I think I'm going for the maypop this time, a.k.a. passion vine (Passiflora incarnata).  Every time I walk down on the deck or dock this summer, the rich fragrance of these impossibly glamorous blossoms startles my senses with its complex allure.  Is it possible that the aroma of these blooms has given rise to the name "passion vine"?  I know that's not the commonly told history, which involves some rather convoluted symbolism about the "passion of Christ", but passion vine fragrance is every bit as romantic as gardenia to me.  This has been the first year that I've really processed how deeply fragrant these flowers are.  To my nose, I think the smell of maypop flowers is richer even than that of roses - and I love the fragrance of roses.

I wish there was a way to put a scratch & sniff app into this blog post.....

I'm obviously not the only living creature that thinks maypop flowers smell appealing, as I frequently see pollinators on them.  These big blooms seem built for BIG pollinators.  Recently, for example, I've seen both...

carpenter bees (Xylocopa virginica)...

and this huge scarab hunter wasp (Campsomeris quadrimaculata) acting almost drunk with the richness of the nectar they are drinking.  Note that the back and head of this wasp are actually coal black without pollen on them.  Yes, this wasp has accidentally gathered THAT MUCH pollen!

As this photo with the blurry carpenter bee shows, there is a horizontal space between the stigmas (curved, long and white with greenish tips) and anthers (yellowish rectangles) and the nectary (reddish purple fuzzy area at the base of the central stalk) that seems expressly designed for such big floral visitors.  If you look back at the photos above, you can see how absolutely covered with pollen the backs of these large insects are!  A smaller bee or wasp wouldn't be anywhere close to as efficient in transferring pollen as these big guys are.

A consequence of such efficient pollination is, of course, the production of seeds.  In the case of passion vine, the seeds are housed in the passion fruit.  For years I've heard that these tennis ball sized fruits are edible, but I've never tried one before because, quite frankly, they just didn't look that appealing to me.  I've decided that this year I'm going to be a bit more adventurous.  According to the web, the fruits are ripe when they start to turn yellow, get wrinkled, and fall off the vine, so I'm keeping my eyes open.  If these fruits taste at all like their fans online say, the taste may rival the fragrance of the flowers.

Humans, bees, and wasps aren't the only animals that love passion vines.  As almost anyone who has planted one knows, gulf fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae) use them as their larval plants and the fritillary caterpillars can quickly reduce a vine to tatters.  In fact, during most growing seasons I have to remind myself to "tolerate the uglies" so that my vine(s) can send many more gorgeously glowing, orange, floating "flowers" off into the breezes.  Luckily, no matter how thoroughly the passion vines are eaten, they always seem to survive and thrive the following year.

This year, however, has been different.  I saw 4 gulf fritillary caterpillars about 2 months ago, but I haven't seen another one since then...until yesterday.  Meanwhile my vines have grown huge, luxurious, almost rampant.  As passionvines do, new vines are sprouting up a dozen feet or more from the parent plant in every direction and they are now even starting to impinge on the deck stairs.  There are plenty of blossoms and a burgeoning crop of that intriguing fruit is developing.  A myriad of flower buds promise ever increasing numbers of blooms still to come.  Truth to tell, it's all beginning to get a little over-the-top, but I don't want to cut it back.  I'm waiting for the caterpillars to come and do that for me.

Finally, yesterday, I found 2 little gulf fritillary cats determinedly munching away.  Then, this afternoon, another 3 more.  Hopefully at least a couple of these tiny orange babies will make it to adulthood, providing some much needed pruning along the way.  Meanwhile, I'm joyously sharing the breath of the world with every deep inhalation of that glorious passion vine fragrance.

The Icon Tree

Have you ever read Stanley Kunitz's The Wild Braid?  If you haven't, you should.  It's a marvelous meditation on the intersection between gardening and poetry, one of those books I like to pull out and dip into every so often.  Each time I reread it, I find something new that stands out.

Several months ago, looking (I think) for references to winter solstice, I pulled The Wild Braid back off my shelf and revisited it.  While I didn't find anything that spoke to me about winter solstice, I did find a passage about an old tree in his Provincetown garden that resonated, so I marked the passage to blog about.  As I've thought back to that passage over the intervening time, I've remembered his old tree as an aging eyesore that became an "icon tree" in his garden.

Speaking of aging eyesores, smack dab in the center of our view of the lake, there's a dying laurel oak down by our dock. 

As I went about daily life this winter and spring, occasionally I'd think about the blog post waiting to be written.  Somehow our gaunt and decrepit laurel oak merged in my mind with that dying cherry, tended by Kunitz in his long ago Provincetown garden.  I came to think of this laurel oak as our garden's "icon tree".

Well, 6 months later I'm finally getting around to writing that blog post.  I pulled The Wild Braid out of the stack of books by the recliner to refresh my memory by rereading the passage before beginning.  Scanning the passages I'd marked, I could find no reference to an "icon tree".

Puzzled, I went back and looked harder.  I'd marked a section about a tree that Kunitz called the lamentation tree (p. 58-61).  Could that be the tree I was remembering as the "icon tree"?  As I reread the section closely, I decided that it was.  Funny how our minds play tricks on us!

"When we first moved in, there was a wild cherry tree, rather nondescript, growing there in a bed of ivy by the cellar door in front of the house.  It was the only tree in the garden areas, and, like most wild cherry trees, it was infested with gypsy moths and all sorts of destructive creatures.   ...[T]he tree showed no signs of recovering....  ...[T]he roots were being devoured by root borers...and meanwhile the wild ivy kept growing.  ...[S]oon the ivy covered the whole tree and began dangling from it.  In time the tree assumed the character of a woman locked in mourning."

Kunitz goes on to recall Martha Graham and a famous dance she performed called "Lamentation," where the postures of the body contracted and bent to visually personify grief.  "Gradually my ivy-burdened cherry tree seemed to take on the exact same posture.  It was so bent over with the weight of its grief that it no longer reached toward the sky but toward the earth, and so I named it "The Lamentation Tree."

After several years, the tree eventually succumbed to the weight of the ivy combined with the force of storm winds.  Kunitz wrote, "The lamentation tree was the most conspicuous eccentricity in the garden during those early years.  I've always regarded it as an allegory of the capacity for change in nature.  That tree changed its character and took on a life of its own, transforming from a wild diseased cherry tree into something else, no longer a tree really, but something emblematic, mythological.

"Part of the fascination of gardening is that it is, on the one hand, a practical exercise of the human body and, on the other, a direct participation in the ritual of birth and life and death."

The ritual of birth and life and death.....  Something emblematic, mythological....  An eccentricity.

While I'm not trying to be sacrilegious, there's something in the shape of my gaunt laurel oak that reminds me of a cross...or a scarecrow...or the burning man.

In April of 2015, before we even bought our house, this was the icon tree.

About a year later, the top 4-5' or so broke off.

I kept the broken wood and have it nestled in a bed just a few feet  away from the base of the tree.

There are holes in the remaining snag at the top, one of which I think woodpeckers used to nest in last summer.

There's no ivy climbing up my icon tree, only a little bit of Spanish moss draping from the few remaining branches.  The shape is not bent, but starkly upright, courageously tall despite the continual erosion of its body parts.
  
We moved here to celebrate new life - the birth of our first grandchild - and have since also welcomed his brother into our lives.  Birth and new life, while this stark tree reminds us of death.

While our icon tree can't actually talk, we've (coincidentally) mounted a sonorous wind chime on it which only sounds in relatively strong breezes, accompanied by clanks of its clapper chain that call to mind Ebenezer Scrooge's chains.  Describing it makes it sound lugubrious, but listening to it is peaceful and reassuring.

Obviously, I've never known this tree as anything but half dead.  Truthfully I find it amazing that the tree has survived at all:  about 10 years ago, when the seawall and deck were put in along the back of our property, almost half of this poor plant's root system was stripped away when the hill it grew on was sheared off.  Then, adding insult to injury, bringing the water line from the house to the deck required trenching through another quarter of its roots down to at least 2'.  So our icon tree has lost at least 60-75% of its root system.  Any wonder that it's not looking too healthy these days?

Recently I noticed that there seem to be streaks on the lower bark that look discolored.  A fungal disease attacking?  How much longer can this survivor hang on?

Tragically, no matter how much care it receives one way or another, this tree will never again be totally healthy...which makes me think about humans whose support systems are removed from them.  How can they be expected to fulfill their potential - ever - if they've been dealt devastating blows or been denied significant support, removing their very roots and the (human psychological) nutrients those roots provide in their lives?

However compromised this tree is, though, it still hangs tenaciously on to its spot on the side of our hill - and it still provides shelter for other forms of life, like the woodpeckers who have used its dead wood to bring new life of their own into the world.  I've known quite a few humans like that, too, and my hat is off to them as they take circumstances that would cripple others and continue to make the world a better place through their presence and their lives.  I hope I, too, can take heart and learn life lessons from this gaunt old individual, enduring through adversity. 

Color Clash: Where Do I Go From Here?

I'm not normally the sort of gardener who obsesses over clashing colors in my flower beds.  In fact, I'm rather an "anything goes if I like it" sort of person.  However, I find myself being challenged by color clashes in my front yard this spring.

Specifically, I have a couple plants that I absolutely adore:  downy phlox (Phlox pilosa), a beautiful soft purplish pink bloomer that goes from December through June, and Indian pinks (Spigelia marilandica), a graphically spectacular bloom of bright red with yellow highlights.  For better or worse, because I love both of them, I planted both of them in my front flower bed...pretty close to each other.

And they clash.  Even to my eye, they clash.  (The phlox is on the left, the Indian pinks are on the right, and a Darrow's blueberry is in the middle.)

I guess I figured that one of them wouldn't do so well, leaving just one for me to enjoy, but they fooled me!

Now I have a dilemma.  Which should I transplant, if either?

The downy phlox provides great color for months AND it stays low.  It blends well with foliage of the Darrow's blueberry subshrubs (Vaccinium darrowii) that are also doing well in that bed and with the spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis) and the blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) that bloom spectacularly in the front gardens during the spring.

The Indian pinks bloom for a much shorter period of time than the downy phlox, but I have a special place in my heart for them.  I've tried them unsuccessfully in both my Mobile and in my Clearwater, Kansas, gardens, so having them do well here is exciting.  Truthfully, I'm a little scared to transplant them and risk watching them wither in a different spot.

The first time I saw Indian pinks was on a garden tour in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where they provided a thick, blooming carpet on a shady hillside.  I've never forgotten that spectacular sight.

While the Indian pinks clash with the downy phlox (and truthfully with the Darrow's blueberry too), they look great with the native columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) that seems to have found a happy home in my garden where it has started to seed itself about a bit.

So far the columbine hasn't seeded itself close to the downy phlox, but it would clash, too, if they grew in close proximity.

So, fellow gardeners, any thoughts?  I won't promise to follow your advice, but I value it nonetheless!  Maybe your thoughts will help me clarify my own.....

Living With Southern Magnolias

A dear friend of ours loves southern magnolias and has tried to grow them in her suburban Chicago yard.  She fell in love with the species many years ago when her father grew one in their yard in Wichita, Kansas.  Plus, it's a challenge to grow them in Chicago - right?!

Despite covering the small tree with burlap to protect it from the harsh winters of northern Illinois, there is no young southern magnolia permanently gracing their yard yet.  As its name suggests, southern magnolia prefers the south lands.

Indeed, southern magnolias (Magnolia grandiflora) aren't a challenge to grow here in the Florida panhandle at all.  Truthfully, it's more of a challenge NOT to grow them here, given how easily they sprout from the numerous seeds produced each year.

We inherited 2 large southern magnolias when we purchased our home 3 years ago - one in the front by the driveway and one in the back by the bedrooms.  Both are within 25 feet of the house.  There are 2 more southern magnolias, much smaller, along the side of the yard, and a 5th next to our neighbor's house, just over the property line.  Each of our neighbors' yards also boasts a large one at the far back, hanging over the shore of the lake.  We've rapidly gained a fair amount of experience gardening with - and under - this species.

This is the first time I've had large southern magnolias in my yard and I'm developing a distinctly bipolar, love/hate relationship with them.  Sorry, Shelley, but sometimes these guys do TOO well to fit in a yard or garden comfortably.

For starters, let me be positive.  Wildlife loves southern magnolias and I constantly see birds foraging among the branches. 

Well....   To actually be accurate, I have to say that I frequently see birds fly into the tree(s) and I occasionally get a glimpse of them as they move through the heavy canopy of large, dark leaves, presumably foraging.  I know my southern magnolias get a LOT of use, but most of the time I'm darned if I can really see what's going on up there.

Those large leaves are where the love/hate part of the southern magnolia equation comes in for me.  The shade cast by southern magnolias is dense.  Here in our yard, even the shade of the individual tree that has been limbed up halfway to heaven casts a deep shadow on the house.  Some days our home feels positively gloomy with the sun blocked so thoroughly by these dark guardians.

While southern magnolias are evergreen, that doesn't mean that the individual leaves remain on the tree longer than leaves on other trees.  It just means that the leaves don't all fall at once.  Indeed, the leaves fall constantly throughout the year in a never-ending rain of big, waxy, plant smothering, brown layers.  Some gardeners think that southern magnolia leaves decompose slowly, but they rot almost as fast as the much smaller oak leaves that also fall in our yard.  The difference is that the individual oak leaves don't cover entire plant crowns when they land, giving the plants below them a chance of finding daylight sometime within the next year.

In the photo above, a 2 year old golden alexander (Zizia aurea) struggles to keep above the gathering magnolia leaves.



I've decided that one of the anti-competition strategies developed by southern magnolias is the ability of those fallen leaves to smother all plants that attempt to grow within their drip line.

Even lawn under trimmed-up magnolia trees can be a challenge.  The leaves in the photo above have accumulated just since the last lawn mowing, maybe 10 days ago.  You can see how the heavy leaves can quickly smother even healthy grass if they are not removed, let alone what they are able to do to more delicate plants like ferns or small perennials.

To add to the joy brought by the continuous shower of large leaves in the garden, those same leaves often curl as they die and drop, cupping in a way that holds water if it happens to rain.  Since we get a LOT of rain here along the Gulf Coast, that's not an infrequent occurrence.  With humidity levels that prefer to linger between 75% and 95%, the tiny water pools in the magnolia leaves don't evaporate very fast and certain mosquito species have adapted to lay their eggs in these tiny personal incubation ponds.  Southern magnolias might well be nicknamed mosquito trees down here.  (Note:  See the P.S.S. at the end of this rambling commentary.)

Recently I've noted that it's not only the large leaves that hold water once they fall from this giant tree - the huge white petals of the grand flowers (M. grandiflora) do as well, after they've finished their job of attracting insects and they have gracefully drifted down to the ground. 

I don't mean to be completely negative.  The giant blossoms look and smell wonderful, after all.

Then there are the snazzy looking seedpods that develop from the large, sumptuous white flowers.
 

These seedpods are seriously cool:  fuzzy, brown or brownish green, stemmed grenades with an intricate arrangement of little holes that each hold a bright red seed or two if that ovary was fertilized.  I LOVE the seedpods...most of the time.  Unfortunately, these spectacular structures are also quite heavy and surprisingly spiky, given their soft appearance.  We park our cars under the front magnolia and have had the roof dented by a particularly weighty magnolia seedpod that fell on it.  I have nightmares about what it would feel like to have one fall on my head.

Not only are these fist-sized seedpods weighty and prickly, they are also impressively abundant, landing in the flowerbeds, as well as on the lawn, sidewalks, and driveways.  Once on the ground, they defy the most powerful of leaf blowers to move them and they dull any mower blades that dare to bite into them.  Unlike the leaves, magnolia seedpods do take a long time to decompose, so there gets to be quite a buildup of them over time, providing a cobblestone like texture to the soil beneath the parent tree.  Oh, to have grandkids old enough to want to earn a bit of money by gathering them all up to send to the landfill.....

Thinking about the seedpods that bear the magnolia seeds brings me back, full circle, to how well southern magnolias grow around here.  Each of those gorgeous red seeds has the potential to put down roots and become a NEW (giant) southern magnolia - and a surprising number of the seeds make the attempt.  I am constantly pulling up seedlings - or saplings, if I've missed a hidden sprout.  It doesn't take long for a dainty, little seedling to develop into a sturdy, small tree that gives obvious promise of its eventual ability to heave up concrete and dominate the space around it. 

Despite its challenges for the home gardener, southern magnolia is an awesome tree perfectly made for the Gulf Coast.  Even though those huge leaves seem like they'd catch the wind enough to uproot the tree, it is one of the top 3 trees for hurricane resistance.  Southern magnolias grow superbly in a variety of soils, including the deep sand that makes up our local landscape. 

All that said, given my druthers, I'd plant this tree in the back of the yard, along the lake shore, where its leaves could accumulate to their hearts' content or could float away to decompose in downstream waters.

Since I didn't get a choice about siting these trees in my yard, I manage in the best way I can.  For me, that means going out periodically and (literally) picking up, by hand, the leaves that have fallen into the flower beds. 

Here is a trug with the leaves that I picked off the lyre-leaf sage (Salvia lyrata) just to the right of it....

Combined with the magnolia leaves we rake off the lawn and blow off the driveway and walkways, these waxy packets of organic matter can be chopped up with a combination of lawnmower and leaf blower into pieces that no longer hold water, then dumped back into the beds to decompose and enrich the soil. 

The small pile of chopped leaves above, with 3 whole leaves for contrast, gives a sense of the great leaf mulch that magnolia leaves can provide, with a little effort on the part of the gardener.  And, oh, the resulting soil is so wonderfully rich!

Sometimes, while I'm picking up the leaves, I'm graced with the sight of an anole sunning in a shrub, a brown skink skittering through the litter, a dark-winged damselfly waiting to give chase, or a wolf snail hunting its prey.  I've slowed down, sat down, and started moving at the patient pace of nature.  In the end, that deliberateness is a gift of incalculable value, opening windows into the world around me.


P.S.  I was out front picking up magnolia leaves from in between fern fronds and other plants this afternoon, wondering how silly I looked to the neighbors as I spent my time in this manner.  Then I stopped and asked myself what other people were likely to be doing at that very moment.  Watching TV?  Checking out Facebook?  Recreational shopping?  This close to the Gulf, many folks were likely to be at the beach, lying on the sand.  Nobody would think twice about whether any of those activities were "worthwhile", so why was I worrying about looking silly as I picked up magnolia leaves in the garden?  I was outside (in the shade), enjoying a beautiful day, listening to birds singing, watching for little critters among the plants as I removed and gathered the smothering leaves.  No matter what anyone else thinks, I certainly could have spent my afternoon in a much less enjoyable and productive manner! 

P.S.S.  While I was picking up leaves, I noticed that quite a few of them were "pre-drilled" with drainage holes.....  Thank you, fungi, caterpillars or whatever other natural phenomenon might have created those holes!  Another benefit of letting nature balance itself.

Acceptable and Unacceptable Changes to the Neighborhood Landscape

At the beginning of June, we will have lived in this house for 3 years, although I didn't start gardening in the yard until the fall of that first year.

This is what the front yard looked like in mid April, 6 weeks before we moved in....

While the yard was neatly trimmed and mowed back then, I found it sterile and boring.  Naturally, when I began gardening, I started adding native plants and removing non-natives.  As usual, I had more of a general idea of what I wanted the garden and yard to be, rather than any firm plan.  Most of all I just wanted my yard to be a small wildlife refuge in the midst of suburbia.  And I wanted it to be pretty, too, if at all possible.

I kept the huge canopy trees, a southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) and a laurel oak (Quercus laurifolia).  They are both native and, while I probably wouldn't have chosen either species to put in their spots, they add gravitas and presence to the yard.  Besides 3 dwarf yaupons (Ilex vomitoria) and a few of the lawn weeds, they were also the only native plants growing in the front.

Since those first days, I've added a laundry list of natives to the front gardens, including shrubs (oakleaf hydrangeas, Virginia sweetspire, sweet pepperbush, dwarf Florida dogwood, wax myrtle, Darrow's blueberry, and a deciduous holly), ferns (southern shield fern, leatherleaf fern, and southern woodfern), perennials (columbine, blue eyed grass, golden ragwort, little brown jug, lyreleaf sage, Indian pinks, Walter's violets, woodland phlox, downy phlox, garden phlox, green and gold, Louisiana iris, mouse-ear coreopsis one, mouse ear coreopsis two, spiderwort, Gaillardia, Florida scrub skullcap, golden zizia, bluestem goldenrod, showy goldenrod, regal catchfly, powderpuff mimosa, dense blazingstar, native lantana, white Baptisia, butterfly milkweed, and fogfruit), and even a grass (Elliott's lovegrass).  I'll spare you all the scientific names - this time!

Here's a recent photo of the front yard....

Only now are the garden beds beginning to show up and look like gardens.  "A year to sleep, a year to creep, a year to leap."  The old maxim holds true yet again.

Having added such a wide variety and large number of plants, it's odd to me what people notice and comment about in my front gardens.  I had a neighbor tell me how much she liked the "yellow flower", golden ragwort (Packera aurea), shortly after I planted it next to the sidewalk, under the magnolia. 

Ironically, I love the foliage of this plant, which is low, dark green, shiny, and rich looking to my eye...but I don't particularly care for the flowers.  I do love their cheerful presence early in the growing season, though.  Golden ragwort are the first native flowers to bloom in my garden. 

Recently, a woman who came by to pick up wild strawberry plants I was giving away commented how much she liked my columbine and blue eyed grass.  That made my day!  She even knew the names!

Here's one clump of the blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) she was admiring, by the front porch, ...

...and a closeup of blue-eyed grass blossoms in the shade nearby.

Then here's a picture of the other species she was admiring, eastern red columbine (Aquilegia canadensis), taken a couple weeks ago when it was first starting to bloom.

As much as I love blue-eyed grass and columbine, I am surprised that no one has ever mentioned my downy phlox (Phlox pilosa), which I think is beautiful.  A tidy mound of cotton candy pink at the front of the flower bed, this classy little plant blooms nonstop from December through to the end of May and even into June.  Perhaps to most eyes it just looks like a standard annual bedding plant?

The spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis), which is spectacular right now, doesn't get much mention either - although another neighbor has started telling me when he sees it popping up in wild areas around the neighborhood, encouraging me to go dig it up and add it to my gardens.  Since he lives 2 doors down from me, I figure he must like it at least a little or he wouldn't be encouraging me to plant more.

In particular, though, one plant has caused unexpected reactions:  powderpuff mimosa (Mimosa strigillosa), a relative of catclaw sensitive briar, for those of my friends who garden in the prairie.  Greg loves groundcovers, so we thought we'd try putting this low growing plant, with its pretty foliage and its blooms that look like sparkling pink pompoms, up front.  We are encouraging it to spread out and fill in the hell strip between the sidewalk and the street.  To our eyes, it's prettier than weedy grass any day! 

Ironically, no one seems to notice the blossoms (which are, in my opinion, very cute and very hard to miss), but the foliage makes people uncomfortable - superficially it looks too similar to chamberbitter (Phyllanthus urinaria), a.k.a. gripeweed, a common lawn weed down here.

Unfortunately, I inadvertently played into this concern by planting the first two powderpuffs at the base of a newly planted wax myrtle.  I didn't take the time to clear a large, carefully delineated "bed" for the powderpuff to spread into.  I've done my best to keep the grass weeded out of the spreading groundcover, and the powderpuffs have filled in marvelously well...but there isn't a defined edge to help people "read" this part of the landscape easily.  That was a mistake on my part.

I'm going to keep working on the powderpuff, but another element I added to our front landscape is slated for removal:  the small brush pile under the big laurel oak - at the base of its trunk in the photo below. 

Living in such a high humidity environment, many woody branches are covered with fascinating, feathery mini-gardens of lichen.  When several small branches ornamented in lichen "lace" fell in the front yard, I couldn't bear to put them out for the city to pick up.  Instead I used them to construct a small brush pile towards the back of the bed.  Here is a photo of a branch covered in lichen that fell in our yard...

...and here is a closeup of that lichen.

Several people have asked why I'm leaving "that pile" there and I've taken the time to tell them about the benefits of brush piles, but I've decided to move the pile around to the backyard where it's nobody's business but ours.  The pile's been growing a little faster than I was planning, anyway, as more branches have fallen out of the oak.  I still can't bring myself to send those gorgeous lichens off with the city dump trucks!

Despite my occasional misstep, the plants I've put in the front gardens are taking hold and growing well, getting taller and broader, blooming more fully.  I'm far from the world's best landscape or garden designer, so my color and form combinations are rather haphazard, but I get a buzz of pleasure now when I drive up to our house or walk outside.  For example, when I left the house this morning, I noticed a towhee foraging among the skullcaps by the sidewalk, and there are almost always at least a few butterflies, native bees, or honeybees diligently working the flowers.  Little brown skinks commonly rustle through the leaf mulch and green anoles prowl the shrubs and perennials, males puffing out their salmon-colored throats in displays of pride and power during these lengthening spring days.

I hope my human neighbors come to enjoy my wilding landscape.  I love that the wildlife is making itself at home outside my house...and it makes this yard home for me now, too.