A Tired Time of Year in the Garden: Time to "Tolerate the Uglies"

As I look around my garden these days, there are definitely places where it's starting to look worn out and ratty.

For example, what's the end result of this sight, on August 25th?

This sight on September 9th!  And LOTS of gulf fritillary butterflies gracing our yard, too.  Just recently a seemingly unpenetrable wall of green, the passion vine (Passiflora incarnata) is literally skeletal now.  All of its leaves - literally ALL of them - have been eaten by gulf fritillary caterpillars (Agraulis vanillae), leaving nothing but awkward stems with the remnants of a few fruits hanging on.  I'm not worried, though.  The passion vine will be back next spring, as full and pretty as ever.

Also, did you notice?  The leaves of the vines were beginning to turn yellow by the end of August anyway.  They weren't going to last much longer even if the caterpillars hadn't been eating them.

The victim of twin onslaughts - monarch caterpillars and advancing age, the swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) is looking rather pathetic too.  It's a battle to see whether the caterpillars will eat the leaves first or whether they'll turn yellow and fall off from the bottom up.  (The tall, leggy plants in the photo above are the swamp milkweed, planted just behind the birdbath basin on the ground.)  It's the legginess and ugliness of this stage of their life cycle that encourages me to generally plant swamp milkweed in the back of the border, hopefully behind some "fluffy" lower plants like red sage (Salvia coccinea) or short species of asters.  If you look closely at the left side of the photo, however, you can see that the monarchs aren't upset by the state of the milkweed at all. 

There are still many flying in the yard, with females frequently seen laying eggs here and there - even on "ugly" plants.  

Flyr's nemesis (Brickellia cordifolia) is just about done blooming, so its small, cotton candy pink pom-poms of flowers are fading into grayish lavender mush.  The leaves still look good, but the stalks have sprawled everywhere, thanks to the weight of all those beautiful blossoms over the last couple weeks.

I've got these few stalks held up with stakes because they were lying flat on the lawn.  Our 3 year old grandson gives a good sense of scale against these shortest of the Flyr's nemesis stalks.  Despite the waning number of blooms, the monarchs, gulf fritillaries, and little bees are all still enjoying the Flyr's nemesis immensely.

Declining in the same way they grew, from the bottom up, the Dr. Seuss flowers of spotted horsemint (Monarda punctata) are past their prime as well.  There are still individual flowers in the upper bloom clusters, but the bottom clusters are turning brown and drying out.  Like the Flyr's nemesis, the stems have sprawled from the weight of bountiful blossoms.

Looking up into the trees, numerous nests of fall webworms (Hyphantria cunea) pockmark the ends of the branches of the pignut hickories (Carya glabra).  I've noticed an increased number of birds like bluejays up in the canopy since the webworm nests appeared, so I'm guessing that the birds are having quite a nice, seasonal, tree top feast up there.

In the front gardens, even the tidy green mounds of the trailing pineland lantana (Lantana depressa) are showing signs of decline, although thankfully you have to look fairly closely to see them. 

Many leaves have been used as caterpillar food by some sort of leaf rollers this summer and they have become gray ghosts of themselves.  Empty flower stalks are numerous now, too, although the blossoms still attract most of the attention, especially from a distance.  Luckily, again, the butterflies, skippers, and other creatures don't seem to mind at all.

When I worked the phone line for the Master Gardener office, we'd always get concerned calls at this time of year, "My plant leaves are looking so sick.  What should I spray on them?"

My response then was the same as it is internally to myself now, "It's the end of summer.  The leaves have been working hard all summer and they are tired and worn out.  It's almost time for them to fall, where they will continue working to make the garden healthier as they decompose into rich topsoil.  Don't spray anything.  This is all just part of the natural cycle of life.  Nothing is wrong at all."

Or, in other words, it's the time of year to remind ourselves to "tolerate the uglies" as the seasons begin to change yet again, moving us into the release of fall and the quiet peace of winter.  This, too, shall pass.

Fall? Well, maybe.....

While all my friends in more northern climes are talking about goldenrod blooming, ducks and geese flying south, and the massive Painted Lady butterfly migration, I am left looking around for signs of the seasons changing in my Florida panhandle garden.  What do I notice here?

First and foremost, I realize that I am finally back outside!  During the peak heat of the summer, it's hard to motivate to do more than look out through the windows at the flowers blooming.  Now, though, I'm back out in the garden, pulling the summer weeds that have grown up, working to lessen the seed load for next year and to give my perennials a bit of breathing room.  It's still hot.  After a couple hours, I still come in dripping sweat and craving water.  Somehow, though, the worst of the sauna is gone and I leave the garden looking forward to my next time out in it.

With the autumnal equinox approaching rapidly, the days are definitely shorter now and, while I want to work outside more, I have fewer daylight hours to do so.  I awake to dim, early sunlight and find myself with extra evening time on my hands after darkness falls.

Along with shortening days, another fall change is that hummingbird migration is in full swing.  Walking out of the back porch, I can count on being buzzed by at least one hummer, zooming past as close as an inch or two from my face or shoulders: "This is OUR territory, lady!" They never seem to take into account that I am their FRIEND, the one who fills the feeders they so dearly love.

Looking up, there are Fall Webworm webs in our Pignut Hickory trees (Carya glabra)...

and. looking down, the Fall Webworms (Hyphantria cunea) are starting to leave their nests and look for a place to pupate.  Eventually they'll become white moths with black spots.

The hickory nuts are beginning to drop, resounding sharply off the metal roof of the playhouse like a sudden shot or thudding loudly on the resonant boards of the deck. 

The squirrels are busily gnawing away at the fresh largesse, leaving tiny sculptures scattered around the yard in quiet testimony to their appetites.

Butterflies and moths, while sadly still not common this year, are seen more frequently now.

There are the Gulf Fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae), busily nectaring at Beggarticks (Bidens alba) and laying eggs on the Passionvine (Passiflora incarnata), ...

Long-tailed Skippers (Urbanus proteus) nectaring at the Flyr's Nemesis (Brickellia cordifolia) and Agastache, ....

Monarchs (Danaus plexippus) dropping eggs on the milkweed (Asclepias sp.), ....

Cloudless Sulfurs (Phoebis sennae) stopping to snack at Scarlet Sage (Salvia coccinea) on their way to points south, ...

Swallowtails majestically visiting, but generally camera shy, like this Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) nectaring at Flyr's Nemesis, ....

and even the occasional "rarity", like this Hummingbird Clearwing moth (Hemaris thysbe) that dropped in to feed at the Flyr's Nemesis while I was sitting quietly nearby, weeding.

With summer basically done, many plants are starting to look ragged, and that's okay.

There are the annuals and short-lived perennials, like this Indian Blanket (Gaillardia pulchella), that have bloomed valiantly all summer long and are suddenly just tired out, ready to call it quits.

There are the milkweeds, whose lower leaves dropped months ago and whose upper leaves are now caterpillar food, busily making new Monarchs.  (Look how tiny this little Monarch caterpillar is!  See how thick the leaf he's eating is in comparison to his size?!)

There are passionvines (Passiflora incarnata), whose holey-ness (or is it holiness?) speaks of many more Gulf Fritillaries to come.

The signs of fall may be more subtle here in the southland...but they are here all around me, nonetheless.