The Arrival of Winter - A Sign of the Season to Come?

Well, winter suddenly descended last week with a blast of strong wind that was followed a few days later by a thin blanket of snow.  This was enough of a shock to my system - I'm very thankful I don't live in south Buffalo, New York, right now!

While nothing too exciting has happened with this seasonal change, above and beyond earlier-than-usual cold weather with a couple inches of snow, it still seems like I ought to celebrate the arrival of winter with a brief post.  So here goes.

Since there was little transition between the relatively warm fall weather and a cold snap more typical of January than mid-November, quite a few trees and shrubs were caught with leaves in place.  Thankfully, we didn't get ice, so the leaves simply freeze-dried in place.  Some species, like cottonwood, have gone ahead and shed the remainder of their leaves.  Others, like the oaks, are still sporting a green coat.

This is the young Shumard oak that we planted shortly after we moved in.  I wonder how long the leaves will stay green this winter?

My aromatic asters were also still blooming when the cold hit.  Despite their late bloom cycle, this is the first year I've noticed any of their blooms getting caught by winter weather.  The purple is still obvious, 10 days after the cold originally hit.  How long will I have purple "blossoms" coloring the winter landscape?

After snapping a few pictures of the asters, I noted this grayish "growth" on the side of a basket sitting on the front porch.

Recognize it up close?  A praying mantis's egg case.  I'm actually rather surprised that I haven't found more of them, as I had many, many praying mantises in my gardens this year.  I feel rather lucky that all of the mantises I've seen have been the native Carolina mantis, rather than the interloper, the Chinese mantis.

In the back yard, I managed to catch a photo of a white-crowned sparrow hiding on the far side of a rose bush.  I was quite close, but evidently this little beauty felt safely hidden, because it made no move to flush while I stood there.

The most unusual sighting was the set of little tracks going across the driveway, between the redcedar hedge on the south side and the Rose of Sharon on the north side of the driveway.

With the obvious marks of the tail dragging, I'm quite sure it's a rodent of some sort.  Perhaps a hispid cotton rat.  I really don't know how to tell different rodent tracks apart, but I do know that I've got plenty of cotton rats around!

I didn't get out to take photos until 2 days after the snow fell, so I have no glorious shots of snow, quietly sifting out of the sky, or sitting heavily on the branches of the trees, but there was still enough snow around to document the start of winter.

Each year is so unique - I wonder what THIS winter will bring?  Is this early snow the sign of much more to come?  Or is this the only snow we'll get all season?  There's no way to know so, as always, we'll take the new season, day by day, week by week, month by month.  Suspense - natural style.

Aromatic Asters - Summer's Last Blast

I love many, many plants, but if pressed to name my favorite, I think it would be aromatic aster, Symphyotrichum oblongifolium.  Since these are the last perennials to start blooming every year, these plants look like nothing more than small green shrubs for much of the summer.  Additionally, in my garden they tend to suffer from lace bug damage, so their leaves often look light green and somewhat mottled when the summer gets hot and dry.  I grit my teeth and ignore it.  It won't hurt the plants and I'm darned if I'm going to spray.  Sometimes I start questioning how many I have in my gardens, but...

...then they burst into bloom.

They bloom and they bloom and they bloom.

Talk about the garden going out with a splash each year!

Insects love these flowers.  As I walk down the front path while the aromatic asters are in bloom, I'm usually surrounded by a happy hum of bees and by clouds of butterflies and skippers rising and then settling back to feed.

The predatory insects are well aware of how many pollinators are visiting.  It's easy to find wheel bugs, praying mantids, and ambush bugs hidden...often with an insect in their grasp.

One of these days, I'll try to collate a list of all the insects I've noted on aromatic asters.  Until then, I'll leave you with one simple question - have you added any to your garden yet?!

The Fly and the Caterpillar: Not a Love Story

As I was doing a quick look-see in the vegetable garden yesterday, I heard a fly buzzing.  Why a buzzing fly caught my attention, I really can't tell you, but it did.  Perhaps it was because the noise was coming from the top of a tomato plant, which isn't normally fly country.  Anyway, I stopped to see what was going on.

At first I didn't see anything, then a movement attracted my attention.  Was that a smallish horn worm? 

I kept looking, finally able to see the outline of the caterpillar against the underside of one of the tomato leaves tucked in a ways.  Suddenly I saw a quick, dark movement and the caterpillar thrashed wildly.  What was going on???

As I watched, it became obvious that a fly was attacking the hornworm.  Every time the fly circled around and came near, the hornworm would move.... Trying to defend itself?  Trying to attack the fly?  Trying to keep the fly from landing?  I couldn't really see what was going on, but I took a series of photos, hoping to capture something with my lens that my eyes couldn't see.

Here are the best shots from the encounter...

The hornworm when I first saw it.

The first view of the fly.

Another "fly by" by the fly.  (Look carefully - you can see the fly's legs above the caterpillar;  the body of the fly is mostly hidden by the tomato stem.)

The fly comes back for another go-around.

And another attack - Fly attack #4...

This one lasted a little longer and the fly seemed to land on the caterpillar's body, despite the hornworm's thrashing and attempts to defend itself.

Fly attack #5.....  (You can just see the eyes of the fly coming into focus to the left of and slightly below the caterpillar.)

Fly attack #6...

Now there's fluid on the back of the caterpillar;  the fly has definitely made contact.

Still the fly comes back again....

But this seems to be the end of the attack.  A drop of "blood" on the back of the caterpillar remains, but the buzzing fly is gone.

According to my camera's time stamp, all of these photos were taken within a 2 minute window.  I don't know how long the attack had been going on when I chanced upon it.  Still, overall, the action didn't last that long.

I am assuming that the fly was a female and that she laid at least one egg in the caterpillar.  Judging from the fly's hairy abdomen that I could see in the photos, this was probably a tachinid fly.  If that's the case, the hornworm will go back to eating as if nothing has happened, but when it goes to pupate, the fly larva that has grown inside it will take over and kill the developing moth.  The hornworm pupa will actually only produce one or more fly pupae, which will, in their turn, produce more tachinid flies to carry on the cycle.

I knew that tachinid flies were parasitoids of caterpillars, but this is the first time I've actually witnessed the interaction between the caterpillar and the fly.  I see many, many tachinid flies in the garden, especially in the fall when they are feeding at my asters, so I knew this sort of event had to be occurring.  Adult tachinid flies are pollen and nectar feeders...and good pollinators.  Hornworms, while I think they are cool and interesting, are pests on tomato plants.  This is natural predator control at its most basic.

Life is not particularly gentle, but it tends to balance itself when allowed to do so.  Sometimes the variety of feeding strategies truly boggles my mind.   What predatory insects have you seen in YOUR garden lately?

Last Hurrah in the Aromatic Aster

On the 15th of November, about 5 weeks ago, I took a series of photos of the insects nectaring at the last of the aromatic aster blooms.  We'd already had a frost or two and the tomato plants had become black mush weeks before, but the aromatic asters just kept valiently going on, day after day after day.  I'm sure that most of these insects have since descended into their final cold sleep, but it seemed like a good time to share one of the last warm days of 2013 on my blog....

What do the following insects have in common with each other, besides the plant they are nectaring on and the fact that they were still alive on November 15th?

Insect #1

Insect #2

Insect #3

Insect #4

Insect #5

Guesses, anyone?  That's right! The answer is that, despite the striped black and yellow camouflage that some of these guys are wearing, all five of these insects are flies and they are all native pollinators!  What's the tell?  The give-away to their true identity is their antennae and the single pair of wings.  Flies have short, stubby antennae, while bee antennae are longish and usually have a single bend near the forehead.  Flies have a single pair of wings, while bees have two pairs, often "stitched" together by tiny hooks to look like one pair, though.

Why do several of these flies look like bees or wasps?  The better to fool predators and stay uneaten, of course!  Humans aren't the only animals that are wary of getting stung.

Of course there were some true bees nectaring on the asters as well.

There was this classic honeybee...which is NOT native, by the way, although it does function as a pollinator.

And I saw this little beauty, a metallic green solitary bee, brightening up the day for me.  The tiny little shadows of these insects make me feel very tender towards them, for some reason - and you can see the long antennae that helps identify this animal as a bee particularly well in its shadow, too.

As I was snooping into the lives of these 6-legged creatures, I was privileged to see an interesting standoff occur:  this tachinid fly landed right in front of the wheel bug, who was obviously interested and had her beak out as if ready to pounce.

I watched for several minutes, though, and the wheelbug never did actually attack the fly. 

Eventually the fly seemed to get bored and flew away.  Perhaps the wheelbug had already laid her full quota of eggs, was tired, and was just too lazy to go to all the effort of catching and eating even one more insect....

Each year there is only one generation of wheelbugs, fierce predators from the moment they hatch, so perhaps this old lady was getting ready to peacefully let go, her role in the wheelbug lifecycle now complete.

One other insect caught my eye that day, although this one was no longer alive.  This little bee, still festooned with full pollen baskets, had the ill fortune to become a spider's meal.

I never did see the spider, but the little bee's gaudy corpse twisted sadly in the breeze.

The variety of insects I see in my yard and gardens never ceases to amaze me.  What's especially fascinating is how many of them are predators.  Or beneficials, for that matter.  I see major life dramas enacted daily, or come upon the remains of tragedies after they've occurred.  These days, I can't imagine gardening without paying attention to the insect life with which I share my garden.  It's opened up a whole new world to me.

Shoulder to Shoulder, The Asters Begin to Take Center Stage

It's October and the asters are coming into their full glory.

In my garden, aromatic aster is the biggest player.  Bigleaf aster is actually about bloomed out.  The short, pink, 'Dream of Beauty' aromatic aster is already completely done.  However, the heath asters, both in the gardens and in the prairie, are in full bloom now.  One seedling aromatic aster has come into full bloom too...

...and there are sporadic single blossoms on the other aromatic asters throughout the garden.  One of these sporadic blossoms, next to a heath aster in full bloom, gave me an interesting photo opportunity to show off the contrast between the different sizes and textures of the blooms found on these two, wonderful, native species.

The single purple bloom is, of course, the beginning salvo in the barrage of blooms about to break forth on this aromatic aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolius).  All of those little, light green balls will be purple blooms in a week or so.  The mass of small white flowers at the bottom of the photo is the top portion of the heath aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides), which is in full bloom right now.  

By now, at least among gardeners who enjoy and use native plants, aromatic aster has a well deserved reputation for hardiness and a beautiful, bountiful display in the fall garden.  It serves as a leafy green filler for most of the summer.  Heath aster, though, has escaped most people's notice.  Rather than lush or beautiful, its foliage is "interesting" and consists of tiny, dark green leaves that stay close to the wiry stems of the plant.  In late September, the branches become covered with small, white, daisy-like flowers which, like most asters, are beloved by pollinators.

I have a lot of heath aster in the Back 5 Acres.  I used to dismiss it as rather boring and "weedy."  Two years ago, though, I noticed that the masses of heath aster gave a lacy effect to the fall grassland, which was otherwise looking rather sparse due to severe heat and drought.

After seeing the pleasant effect of the heath aster in the Back 5, and after loving the trailing effect of Snow Flurry heath aster in my front garden,...

 ...I think I'm purposely going to add a little more heath aster into my main flower beds.  It could make a nice texture contrast, both during the time it's mainly a finely textured, green "bush" and later when it's loaded with tiny, white blooms.

Speaking of asters and their gorgeous bloom displays in the fall, it's fascinating to go back through my old photos and note overlapping bloom periods.  Each year is a little different. This year almost all of the goldenrod is already finished, including the Wichita Mountains goldenrod, while the peak of the aromatic asters is still a week or more away.   Two years ago, I took this photo of aromatic asters and Wichita Mountain goldenrod blooming together on October 16th....

This year the goldenrod will be brown by the time the adjacent asters bloom.

I guess it's all part of the challenge of gardening - you do your best to plan bloom sequences and arrangements, but the plants are living creatures and will do what they need to do to survive.  Each year the weather throws in a curve ball or two or three, too. Thankfully, the changes are for the better almost as often as they are not.  Meanwhile, I never seem to tire of the ever-evolving display of beauty just outside the doors of my prairie home.