Books that Expanded My Outlook in 2023

So I shared brief summaries of the environmental books that I read in 2024 in my last post, but I kept thinking about some of the excellent books I read in 2023, too.  Adding them all to one post seemed too clunky, so I decided to wax enthusiastic over my 2023 reads in this separate post.

Looking over my 2023 list, I was struck by how much more "natural history" I read than in 2024.

The Hidden Life of Trees:  The Illustrated Edition, by Peter Wohlleben, Greystone Books Ltd./David Suzuki Institute, 2015/2016/2018. 

   The text in this edition is abridged from the original (and I still need to find and read the original), but the photographs are sublime.  This book is an excellent and easily readable introduction to forest ecology, incorporating many of the recent breakthroughs in our knowledge. (Note:  Peter Wohlleben is an author and has worked for the forestry commission in Germany for over 20 years.  He now manages a forest academy and a natural woodland in Germany.)

What did I gain from reading this book?  Just opening this book and looking at the gorgeous photos relaxes me.  It is absolutely beautiful.  More than simply being a "pretty face", though, this book was a great summary of the workings of forests.

Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit, by Lyanda Lynn Haupt,  Little, Brown Spark/Hachette Book Group, 2021.

    Rooted is very different from the other books that I have talked about here.  It is based in science, but it is also part philosophy, part spiritual guidance, and part nature guide.  Weaving in quotes from a wide variety of people like Mary Oliver, John O'Donoghue,  Robert Macfarlane, Merlin Sheldrake, and Richard Louv, this book is a rich tapestry from which to draw inspiration and a deep sense of connection with the natural world.

What did I gain from reading this book?  As I read this book, I felt a variety of strands from my life and my reading come together in new ways, highlighting possibilities and encouraging changes in the way I relate to the natural world.  After I finish reading a book, assuming I decide to keep it, I store each one in a  different area, based on how I think I'll access or use it in the future:  plant or animal reference book, general ecological principles, environmental commentary, gardening, poetry, and so forth.  This book is one of the few I keep at my bedside so that I can dip into it for inspiration and rejuvenation when I'm feeling my well run dry.

 

Garden Allies: The Insects, Birds & Other Animals That Keep Your Garden Beautiful and Thriving, by Frederique Lavoipierre, Timber Press, Portland, Oregon, 2021.

    A chapter subheading sums up this book well:  "Actors on Your Garden's Stage".  While other books I read in 2023 talked about all the insects and other animals that share life in and on trees, this book does the same for our gardens.  If you read this book, you'll recognize many, many more of the "little  guys" you see in your garden.  (Note:  Frrederique Lavoipierre has a Masters Degree in Biology with an emphasis on ecological principles of sustainable landscaping;  she was written and worked in this field in numerous capacities.)

What did I gain from reading this book?  Garden Allies was a wonderful introduction to a wide variety of the beings that we see in our yards and gardens.  It would be especially useful for someone wanting to learn more about the variety of "bugs" they encounter in their garden.

Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse, by Dave Goulson, Harper (HarperCollins), 2021.

    For me, this is simply the best book on what's going on with insect declines.  Not only is there good information on insects themselves, there is excellent background on pesticides and changing farming practices, how artificial fertilizers affect insects, the effects of climate change, and the surprising problem of light pollution.  One of the most memorable sections of this book was Goulson's imaginative trip 50-60 years into the future, pondering what life might be like then if we didn't manage to protect insects now.  The last section of this book is titled "What Can We Do?" and, in it, Goulson outlines specific tasks that we can each do to help protect insect populations.  (Note:  Dave Goulson is Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex in Great Britain.)

What did I gain from reading this book?  Simply put, while Milman's book, The Insect Crisis, was good, this book was excellent at defining the problem of insect decline and also, critically, on giving us concrete suggestions that we each can do to avert the "insect apocalypse".

The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet, by Michael E. Mann, PublicAffairs (Hachette Book Group), 2021.

    Michael Mann is a climate scientist who has, for decades, been at the forefront of trying to awaken our country to the looming reality of the climate crisis.   This book is about the history of our understanding about global warming and the history of the fight against action to solve this extreme threat to our world.   This is a call to action, and Mann emphasizes that it is NOT too late to act; he helps us see the way forward.  He is adamant that solving the climate crisis will take more than individual action, and he points us in the direction we need to work. (Note:  Michael E. Mann is a Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State.)

What did I gain from reading this book?  Having read about Mann's climate work for decades, I found it fascinating to read his story of how climate policies have been submarined by the fossil fuel industry over the years.  The tactics the industry has used have been impressively effective.  Mann himself has been personally vilified in the industry's quest to "Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead!"  We don't think of scientists as warrior heroes, but Mann has been at the forefront of this battle, fighting for the future for all of us.   

The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, by Margaret Renkl, Spiegel & Grau, New York, 2023.

    Accompanied by a series of delightful artworks depicting nature, this book is a collection of thoughtful and poignant essays on the wildlife all around us in our home landscapes.  Tales of ecstasy and tragedy, musings filled with love and concern, every time I think of reading this book, I reflexively smile.  (Note:  Margaret Renkl is the author of several books and a contributing writer for the New York Times.)

What did I gain from reading this book?  This book gave me beauty and richness and a sense of camaraderie with the author.

   

The Hidden Company That Trees Keep: Life from Treetops to Root Tips, by James B. Nardi, Princeton University Press, 2023.

    When I look at a tree, I look for the animals in and around it, too.  Until I read this book, I usually saw just birds, squirrels, and maybe a few caterpillars.  In this book, Nardi goes much deeper, showing the interconnected webs of hundreds of organisms that are supported by each tree and that support the tree, as well.  He takes each part of the tree and describes the other organisms interacting with that part specifically:  leaves, twigs & buds, the circulatory system, the trunk, the roots, the flowers & fruits.  Who makes galls?  How do trees respond to insect or disease attacks?  What animals help the trees protect themselves?  The richness and diversity Nardi describes are breathtaking. (Note:  James Nardi is a research scientist in biology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.)

What did I gain from reading this book?  I love taking walks around our yard and photographing every animal I can find, big or small.  Many of the animals I find are small...and odd looking to my eyes.  This book helped me understand the complex interactions between the animals I observe and the trees in our yard.  I underlined so much as "important - I want to remember this" that there's hardly a page I haven't marked in some way!

 

Wildscape: Trilling Chipmunds, Beckoning Blooms, Salty Butterflies, and Other Sensory Wonders of Nature, by Nancy Lawson, Princeton Architectural Press, 2023.

    Evocative is the best word I can come up with to describe Nancy Lawson's latest book.  In the grand scheme of things, her Maryland garden doesn't lie all that far from our southeast Virginia one, so she almost feels like a next door neighbor as she talks about the plants and animals in her yard.  And the stories she tells!  Flea beetles helping monarchs in their quest for protective chemicals from milkweeds.  Chipmunks and mice spreading mycorrhizal fungi that connect and nurture plants.  The difference between the songs of "city birds" and "country birds" in the white-throated sparrow population.  The rich discoveries in this book give an increased depth to my experiences in the landscape. (Note: Nancy Lawson is an author, conservationist, and lecturer.)

What did I gain from reading this book?  Nancy Lawson has the gift of loving the unloved - and helping me to love them too.  I see certain plants and animals with new eyes after reading her books or listening to her lectures.  In this book, she took me on a fascinating nature walk, helping me decode some of the behavior or animal traces that I see...or hear...or smell...or touch in the landscape, while helping me appreciate the complexity of plant-animal relationships even more deeply. 

So many books, so little time.....

I hope you're able to find the time to pick up one or more of these books so you can enjoy them too.

Insects Using Gaillardia in My Gardens

Another staple of my (native) pollinator plants is Indian blanket or Gaillardia, Gaillardia pulchella to be precise.   This widespread, short-lived perennial blooms for months and months;  the colorful blossoms almost always seem to have some sort of insect on them. 

Interestingly, though, as I went through my photos, the variety of insects utilizing Gaillardia was not as great as it was for fogfruit.  For 2018, I have photos of only 6 different species using Gaillardia in my gardens. 

By far the most frequent visitor to my Indian blanket flowers was Poey's Furrow Bee (Halictus poeyi), one of the small, somewhat nondescript, native bees. 

I saw this little bee a lot, from early June through the end of October, and it could well have been present before or after I have it documented photographically.  As I understand it, the hook on the back, lower corner of the head, which you can see in this photo, is "diagnostic" of this species.  Even in photographs, though, it can be hard to see this feature due to the diminutive size of this bee and the fact that it tends to round its back and tuck its head a bit as it feeds.

This is typical of what I usually see, even through the camera lens, when looking at Poey's Furrow Bee.

Throughout the summer months, the Brown-winged Striped Sweat Bees (Agapostemon splendens) visited regularly.  I love these vivid little green jewels.  The females are solid green, while the males have black and yellow striped abdomens and a green "jacket" on the thorax. 

In the photo above, the male is probably more interested in the female than in the flower.

Here is a closer view of a different female, giving you a bit more of a feel for the vivid coloration of these little sweethearts.  What a disappointment the common name of this bee is - "Brown-Winged Striped Sweat Bee".  The "A. splendens" of the Latin name much more closely describes how I feel about them!

An insect that I've seen on several different plants around the yard, this Camouflaged Looper, a.k.a. the caterpillar of the Wavy Emerald Moth (Synchlora aerata), looks a bit different depending on which bloom it's raiding for its wardrobe.

What looks like a large, brightly colored piece of debris hanging from the underside of the flower is, in fact, the caterpillar with bits of petal attached.   

Yes, the bloom this little guy raided looks rather tattered, but I personally think it's well worth the less than perfect blossom to see how the flower finery has been used!  In 2018, I photographed camouflaged loopers on Gaillardia blooms on June 23 and again on August 5.

Getting back to native bees, one of my favorite groups is the leafcutter bees.   Females in this group are easy to recognize because they carry pollen in hairs on the underside of their abdomen, giving them a potbellied appearance.

This cute little female (Megachile sp.) demonstrates that trait perfectly.

The only insect I photographed utilizing something besides the bloom of Gaillardia was this paper wasp, which I saw on July 18th.

Truthfully, I don't know if I just didn't notice other insects on the stems and leaves, or if few insects actually utilize the foliage of this plant.

The final insect in my Gaillardia roundup is this flower beetle, the Pygmy Chafer (Strigoderma pygmaea).

In conclusion, I enjoy having Gaillardia in my gardens a lot, finding that it brings in a reasonable number of insects and provides a nice pop of color throughout most of the growing season.  Loving full sun and tolerating pretty dry conditions, it's usually very easy to grow.  The only downside I've found to Gaillardia pulchella is that each individual plant lasts for 2-3 years at most.  It will reseed a bit and, if I watch for seedlings, I can usually keep it as a garden presence without having to buy it again each year.  If you live within its (wide) native range, I'd definitely recommend it for your pollinator garden.

Turkey Tangle Fogfruit Community

Certain plants seem to create large communities of insects and other wildlife within my garden.  I thought I'd do a series on a couple of these species, starting with Turkey Tangle Fogfruit (Phyla nodiflora).  As I've gone through my photos from last year, I realized I've got pictures from at least 23 different species of animals using this species in 2018 alone - and that's just the number I captured with my camera.  I know there were animals using it that I wasn't able to capture on film (like swallowtail butterflies).  I'm equally certain there were animals using it that I simply didn't see.

Fogfruit is not a showy species to my eye.  Although some people really like its dainty flowers, to be honest, I find this plant rather blah visually.  It is, however, a powerhouse for supporting pollinators and other insects and, as such, has earned a place in my yard whenever possible.

Essentially a groundcover, fogfruit grows around 8" tall.  About 3 years ago, I started out with 2 plants in gallon containers, planted 2' apart.  The fogfruit now covers an area that is about 6' X 8' - and it would be happy to be out in the driveway and into the street, too, if we didn't keep it trimmed back.  On the plus side, fogfruit manages to hold its space fairly well, once established, and doesn't need much of any care.

The first photos I have of the animals it harbored last year are from mid-May.

Here is a small spider that I saw on May 15th, then didn't see again all year.  It's a pretty little thing which the great folks at Antman's Hill on Facebook helped me to identify as an orbweaver, Gea heptagon.

On the same day, I captured a photo of this little syrphid fly (Toxomerus sp.) nectaring at one of the fogfruit blossoms.

Like others in this genus, the larvae of this fly feed on aphids, thrips, and small caterpillars throughout the garden, so it's nice to see the adult visiting.

By June 10th, the action was heating up.  There was this cute little orange "teddy bear" nectaring, a bee fly (Chrysanthrax cypris).

Cute as this guy is, its life cycle is less cuddly.  Flies in the Chrysanthrax genus are external parasitoids on the cocoons of some solitary bees and on the cocoons of tiphiid wasps, which are themselves predators of beetle larvae.  The "balance of nature" is sometimes hard for me to feel comfortable with and gracefully accept, but I do my best.

Throughout June and again in August, I have photos of another bee fly (Exoprosopa fascipennis) nectaring at the fogfruit.

Again, I find this an attractive little creature, but again its life cycle is rather fearsome.  The bee flies in Exoprosopa feed on the cocoons of many different kinds of wasps, including the tiphiid wasps mentioned above, spider wasps, and a group of solitary wasps known as sphecid wasps.

Speaking of wasps, in mid June, this scoliid wasp (Scolia nobilitata) was enjoying the fogfruit nectar, too.

Scoliid wasps are parasitoids of beetle grubs, especially the grubs of May beetles.  The females dig down to the grub, sting it to paralyze it, and deposit on egg. When the egg hatches, the wasp larva eats the perfectly preserved beetle grub.  I like my grub control to be natural (even if it is rather gruesome that way)!

Since both the bee flies and the scoliid wasp were nectaring at the same time on the same plant, it is possible that one or the other of the bee fly species parasitizes this scoliid wasp species, following females as they leave their feeding ground and search for beetle grubs to parasitize.  There is so much about these little guys that we simply don't know, even things as basic as which bee fly species parasitizes which wasp species.  Often these predator/prey relationships with parasitoids are very specific, confined to just one or two species, or perhaps between two particular genuses.

Moving back to less gory lifecycles, a couple days after photographing the pretty wasp above, I started capturing images of butterflies and skippers.  First was this Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phyleus) on June 16th.

 Since the larvae of fiery skippers dine on grasses such as St. Augustine, this species is relatively common.

On June 22nd, I photographed the first Phaon Crescent (Phyciodes phaon) of the year, although these photos are from later in the summer.

These cute little orange butterflies utilize fogfruit as their larval plant, as well as obviously nectaring on it.  Since I see quite a few of them, I'm pretty sure that my little patch of fogfruit is producing phaon crescents, but I've never actutally found one of the caterpillars.

Something sure likes to eat the fogfruit leaves, though!

I spotted this dainty damselfly hanging out around the fogfruit several times last summer. It's the only damselfly or dragonfly species that I photographed on the fogfruit last year, and the folks at Antman's Hill identified it for me as a male Rambur's Forktail (Ischnura ramburii).  That makes sense, as I've seen the (orange) female Rambur's Forktail in the yard multiple times, although I've never photographed one on the fogfruit.

There were several more wasps and bees over the course of the summer, including this potter or mason wasp on July 20th, .....

...and this paper wasp (Polistes metricus) on August 10th.

I actually don't see many paper wasps in the yard - which is fine with me.  Instead, I see lots of solitary wasps, who are generally much easier to share space with. 

One of my favorite finds was this cute little black leafcutter bee, the Carpenter Mimic Leafcutter Bee (Megachile xylocopoides).  As the name suggests, this stunning black bee with the fluorescent blue shimmer is considered a mimic of larger carpenter bees, specifically the Southern Carpenter Bee, which I also saw in my yard last summer.

Note the long hairs on the underside of the abdomen?  That's how you can tell it's a leafcutter bee - at least if it's a female.  Female leafcutter bees carry pollen in those hairs, often giving them a potbellied appearance.  This gal was apparently feeding herself, not gathering pollen for future offspring.

On August 8th, I was able to capture photos of a Barred Sulfur (Eurema daira) visiting...

...and if you look closely at the stem a few inches below the blossom, you'll see the wad of spittle that signifies a spittlebug nymph feeding - yet another insect species utilizing the fogfruit.

A few days later, I photographed this crisp Checkered Skipper (Pyrgus sp.).

Apparently, most skipper larvae fold and sew leaves together to make tent shelters for themselves, so don't be too quick to destroy any such structures you might come across in your garden.

Of the 23 species I photographed on my Turkey Tangle Fogfruit in 2018, the above photos were the most interesting and/or the insects were the most photogenic.  Rounding out my 23 species were 4 more species of flies, 2-3 species of small beetles, a honeybee, and two other bees I haven't been able to identify yet.

Like the plant they were visiting, most of these animals aren't large or particularly beautiful.  They are the everyday denizens of our gardens, busily living their lives and often feeding other animals in the process.  To me, each of these species has the right to exist, the right to its place on this Earth, just as much as any other species has that same right.  I hope that, someday soon, we humans can learn to coexist with the other plants and animals on this planet, instead of needlessly and carelessly destroying them.

Book Time: THE HUMANE GARDENER

After running across and deeply enjoying Nancy Lawson's blog, Humane Gardener, I was excited when I realized she was writing a book by the same name.  The subtitle of her blog is perfect, "Cultivating Compassion for All Creatures Great and Small".  Lawson worked for many years as an editor for the Humane Society of the United States - and I think that caring and compassion for ALL animals has seeped into her psyche, based on the writing she shares both on her blog and in her book.

The Humane Gardener:  Nurturing a Backyard Habitat for Wildlife, by Nancy Lawson, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, New York, 2017 is a relatively small book, almost a series of 6 essays rather than a scientific tome or an intense guide of gardening methodologies.  Each essay, or chapter, is accompanied by a "portrait" of a real garden and its real gardener, exemplifying the characteristics talked about in the companion chapter.  The gardens range from California to Florida, from Ontario to Oregon, with Colorado and the Chicago area filling in the area in the middle.

More than most gardening books, The Humane Gardener focuses on the animals that are so often collateral damage in modern gardening methods:  from the wide variety of small animals that get chopped up, along with the grass, by lawnmowers to the tiny denizens of leaf litter when it's allowed to lie undisturbed under shrubs and perennials.  There are a few statistics ("The nestlings of 96 percent of North American terrestrial bird species survive on spiders and insects, mostly caterpillars, who are themselves babies with specialized habitat needs....") but most of the information and advice is given in anecdotal form, which makes it easy to digest.

In the book's introduction, Lawson remarks that the gardeners she chose to highlight "embody the ethic of compassionate landscaping, challenging long-held assumptions about animals, plants, and themselves."   Compassionate landscaping.  Compassionate landscaping.  I love that term and the ethic it defines.  The Humane Gardener is a great introduction to this ethical concept.

This ethical concept does not, however, meld well with the perfection-driven standards promoted in most regular garden literature, and Lawson talks about her journey from a mainstream gardener to a compassionate gardener, from being willingly sucked into the "marketing ploys of the Landscaping Industrial Complex" to learning from the plants and animals sharing her yard with her.  In her garden portraits, she often talks about the journeys these other gardeners have made, too. 

As a map of a changing journey in gardening, this book is written as a general guide of concepts which can be used across the entire country.  Thus there is little talk of specifics:  don't look to this book for which particular species to use where or what the best method of performing a particular task is.  The overarching ideas Lawson shares are widely adaptable and easily understandable, though.

The last section of The Humane Gardener is a series of resources you can turn to if you want to get started practicing compassionate landscaping yourself:  among them are a couple addresses for excellent blogs, a short list of regional references for wildlife habitat gardening, notes on the individual chapters, and a selected bibliography.

I greatly enjoyed The Humane Gardener and I would highly recommend it to anyone intrigued by the idea of using compassionate landscaping in their own home environs.

Book Time: GARDEN REVOLUTION

As I started thinking about getting ready for holiday guests and Thanksgiving feasts, I realized that I had a pile of books on our dining room table that were there to remind me to write about them.  It's a pile that's been slowly but steadily growing for quite some time now - and I was somewhere between shocked and dismayed to realize that, in that pile, I had amassed 6 books with gardening as their theme.

So I've pulled them out and arranged them in the order that I read them, in the process realizing that one book had been added to the pile without my actually having read it.  Oops.  Wrong pile.  (Yes, sadly, I have many piles of books around the house.)  So let me get busy with the first of the remaining 5 books in my dining room table pile.

Without further ado, here are my thoughts on Garden Revolution, by Larry Weaner and Thomas Christopher, Timber Press, 2016, which I read about a year ago, in November 2017.....

Subtitled "How our landscapes can be a source of environmental change",  Garden Revolution truly amazed me.  I've been interested in gardening for and with wildlife for decades now and I have read a lot on the subject.  I am deeply interested in the environment and in ecology.  Not surprisingly, I've done a lot of hands-on gardening and landscaping for wildlife over the years.  Native plants are my "go to" species in planting my yard and its individual gardens.  Truthfully, it's rare for me to find a book with a really new spin or a new series of concepts on any of these subjects - but that's exactly the sort of book I found as I delved into Garden Revolution.

Larry Weaner is a landscape designer who specializes in ecological restoration AND fine garden design.  One of his early insights as he worked in garden design was "...a traditional garden is like a beautiful car with no engine.  The body is sleek, the interior is plush, and the stereo sounds great, but the owner will always need to push it up the hills with bags of fertilizer, weeding forks, and watering wands."  Weaner works WITH nature, in truly amazing ways, to develop beautiful, continually changing, living landscapes.

Working with nature....  What, exactly, do I mean by that?  Before, I've always just meant avoiding pesticides and using native plants, while trying to match the plant species to its preferred growing conditions and hopefully creating habitat for wildlife.  Weaner takes it so much further.  He pays attention to the seeds found in the "seed bank" that is present in every soil, adds in seeds for species that will help succession move in preferred directions, plants small clumps of wildflowers as seed sources to allow for natural spread, and has many other techniques to nudge natural processes in ways helpful to gardeners and landscapers.

Presented in large format with lots of photos, Garden Revolution at first gives off a vibe almost like a "coffeetable book", but it's much more than that.  There is background information, both historical and biological, presented conversationally so that it doesn't overwhelm.  From Weaner's decades of work, there are examples of gardens from large estates to small suburban gardens, discussed in the text as well as illustrated by gorgeous photography.

Using aggressive native species to outcompete problematic invasive species.  Planning and planting for seasonal and successional niches instead of just planting a "once in time" landscape plan.  Cutting weeds off just below the surface instead of pulling them out by the roots and disturbing the soil.  The new ways of thinking about garden design, preparation, planting, and maintenance just keep coming in this book.

Want to help nature and our planet's ecosystems in a very basic, personal, and satisfying way?  Want to help yourself have a thriving landscape with less work?   Want to attract wildlife to your surroundings?  Read this book.  You'll be glad you did.

Tolerate the Uglies!!!

After carefully watching my larval plants for several months (which felt like years!), I'm finally seeing caterpillars on them. 

There are monarch caterpillars on the milkweed,

black swallowtail caterpillars on the parsley,

gulf fritillary caterpillars on the maypop vines,

and - based on the foliage - probably phaon crescent caterpillars on the fogfruit. 

YEAH!!! My plants are starting to get ugly!  They are making butterflies!!!

As much as I love seeing the caterpillars, though, I find that I do cringe at how ragged my plants start to look at this point of the summer.  Not only is the heat taking a toll, the plants are so large that any dry spells can cause wilting and brown edges, even partial leaf drop.  By the time the caterpillars show up and start eating the leaves, the plants can start looking like I should yank them out of the garden at the first possible moment.

Of course I don't pull them out.  I chose and planted these plants especially as butterfly food.  Why would I pull them out just as they are starting to actually produce butterflies?  Even if I do "mentally hear" my neighbors gossiping about how ragged my garden is looking these days.

Honestly, couldn't these plants be a little NEATER and PRETTIER while they go through this stage of their life cycle?!

My own phrase for this is "Tolerate the uglies!"  Benjamin Vogt of Monarch Gardens shares the same concept with his phrase of "Redefine pretty."  In a world saturated with television ads showing happy, beautiful people in manicured yards that don't have a single tattered leaf or brown spot in the lawn, it feels subversive to allow caterpillars to actually eat the leaves on your plants.  Seriously, shouldn't this be done behind closed doors, people?!

To be even more subversive, this summer I've noticed that my monarch caterpillars seemed to purposefully deflower the milkweed they are feeding upon. 

First, mama monarch laid quite a few eggs underneath flower bud clusters, so the caterpillars have been eating the flowers and buds from the moment they hatched.

Secondly, as the caterpillars reached one of their later, larger instars, I noticed that 3 of them had cut the stem of the entire flower cluster partway through, resulting in the entire bloom head hanging upside down and dying.  Seriously, what's up with that?!  The only thing I can figure out is that, evolutionarily, this decreases the chances of parasites being attracted to the plant for nectar and thereby finding the caterpillar(s) nearby to host their offspring on.  I've never heard of this as a "thing" before, though, so I don't know if my imagination is just running away with me - or if, maybe, I'm on to something.  Any monarch researchers out there that might want to look into this idea?

Along the same lines, is it coincidence that the eggs were laid shortly after the buds started opening and the plants started blooming?  Evolutionarily, could it be that so many eggs were laid on these newly opening flower buds to decrease the overall numbers of blooms, decreasing the seed production, and thus moving the plant energies into leaf production, thereby providing more food for more baby monarchs?

Or is this egg placement just a way to hide the caterpillars until they get a little bigger and less attractive to wasps and other caterpillar parasites who might not care that they don't taste good?  See how well that monarch caterpillar is hidden?

Can you see it now???

How about now?  Pretty safe hiding place, isn't it?

WHY the timing and placement for egg laying?  Coincidence or evolutionary plan?  Inquiring minds want to know.

While I contemplate these possibilities, I meander my garden enjoying the new life chomping hungrily on my plants and try not to cringe at the blooms being cut short and the leaves disappearing in the process.  Life is a balance - and never more so than in a garden.

A Recent Cast of Characters in My Gardens: Pollinators and Predators

With the initiation of several days of rain, it seems like a good time to share a few garden photos from the plethora I've taken over the last few weeks.  Since I'm obsessed with pollinators and other wildlife, that's what I'll generally be showing you!

Gaillardia (Gaillardia pulchella) brings in a lot of insect activity.  I have several pots of gaillardia on our back patio, as well as a few plants along the street by our mailbox.  Not surprisingly, most of my photos are from the plants I see most often - the ones near my back door.

This is a lousy photo, but I wanted to share the single bumble bee (Bombus sp.) I've seen in my gardens so far this summer.  Gaillardia is the ONLY flower I've seen her on so far.

A female monarch (Danaus plexippus) finally visited the yard for several days last week and she left several eggs behind.  Here's she's ovipositing on a swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) I planted a couple months ago.  I'm a "survival of the fittest" biologist, so I don't collect the eggs and raise the caterpillars inside;  I'm waiting to see if I see any caterpillars - this photo was taken on the 28th, so there should be a couple tiny babies out there munching away, but I haven't gone looking yet.  (Update:  my grandson and I went out in the rain this afternoon and found at least 3 tiny new monarch caterpillars!  Yeah!)

Ms. Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) here isn't a pollinator, but I love welcoming her and her relatives into the yard.  Every mosquito this mosquito hawk eats is a mosquito that doesn't bite me! Aren't her eyes particularly gorgeous?  The body of the male blue dasher is a beautiful powdery blue, but I've been seeing almost exclusively females lately.

This green treefrog (Hyla cinerea) seems to have decided that the outside corner of our gutter near the bright lights of the kitchen window makes a perfect home.  Over the past week, I've been seeing her (him?) frequently within just a few inches of this location.   Note:  nothing like a closeup photo to let you know the house badly needs a power washing!

Out front, the newly planted sweet pepperbush (Clethra alnifolia) has excited a lot of pollinator interest.  I shared the potter wasp and the 4 spotted scarab hunter wasp I've seen nectaring here in my recent post;  this is a carpenter-mimic leaf-cutter bee (Megachile xylocopoides) who also has seemed to enjoy the blooms. 

The deep velvet black of this bee's body and the iridescent blue-black of its wings are just stunning.  I wonder if this is the species that has been harvesting circles of dogwood leaves to make their nest cells waterproof?

Another little green treefrog was tucked away inside a Flyr's nemesis (Brickellia cordifolia), hoping against hope that I didn't actually see him as I looked around.  I let him pretend that I hadn't noticed him.....

With the spotted beebalm (Monarda punctata) beginning to bloom, I'm starting to see a little more activity in that section of the garden, including this small green anole (Anolis carolinensis).  I'm still not seeing many insects attracted to the spotted beebalm blossoms, but I did see a hummingbird feeding - even though I didn't have my camera with me so I could visually share with you.

Back to the anole for a moment, I've been seeing many tiny little green anoles for the last several weeks, which just makes me smile.  Obviously it's been a good year for anole love!

Another recent dragonfly visitor was the great blue skimmer (Libellula vibrans), who perched on top of the poles in our tomato pots for a while - and was lucky enough (and good enough) to capture a passing moth shortly after I took the top photo.  Those big, black-spotted blue eyes aren't just for show!

Out front, enjoying the turkey tangle fogfruit (Phyla nodiflora), there's been the phaon crescent (Phyciodes phaon), nectaring - and possibly laying eggs, since fogfruit is their larval plant.  Note:  I don't know if this individual is a male or female.

The fogfruit has also attracted many other insects, including a female blue dasher dragonfly, a carpenter-mimic leaf-cutter bee, several  different species of wasps, bees, and flies.  In fact, the fogfruit is active enough that it's probably worth a post just by itself.  I just wish it looked a little more "gardeny"....

Anoles have been out in the front gardens as well as in the back.  Here was one haunting a summer phlox (Phlox paniculata) blossom.  Sometimes I wonder if I don't see huge numbers of pollinators because I DO see lots and lots of predators around the blooms - and I'm sure it's not a coincidence that they are hanging out there!

Speaking of predators, whether nymphs (like this one) or adults, I'm seeing quite a few milkweed assassin bugs (Zelus longipes) this summer.  I thought they were so-named because they were part of the milkweed community, but recent reading suggests their name comes from their coloration.  I've certainly seen them on many, many plants, not just on milkweed.

The clustered mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) in the back yard has brought in quite a few unusual (for my garden) pollinators.  Besides several wasp species, there is this grapeleaf skeletonizer moth (Harrisina americana) which has both a common name and a color pattern that make it a perfect Halloween animal.

Believe it or not, this small, colorful, Halloween themed moth, also nectaring on the mountain mint, is from the a group of moths known as bird dropping moths.  Yes, that's an actual common name for moths in the subfamily Acontiinae .  This moth goes by the hard-to-remember name of black-dotted spragueia moth (Spragueia onagrus)  and is an animal I've never seen before in my life.  Kudos to the helpful folks at BugGuide.net for helping me identify this one!

Lacewing larvae, looking for all the world like prehistoric monsters or like some less glittery version of Tamatoa, the Crab, on Moana, are hard to see unless you look closely, but they are great allies in garden pest control.  This photo is blurry (the entire "mound" is barely 1/4" across and I wasn't using a tripod) but, if you look carefully, you can see the huge jaws under the front edge as well as a wing from one of its dinners right above the jaws.

In all, this lineup of characters from my garden highlights 6 garden predators (green anole, green treefrog, milkweed assassin bug, lacewing larva, blue dasher dragonfly, great blue skimmer dragonfly) and 6 pollinators (monarch, bumblebee, carpenter-mimic  leaf-cutter bee, phaon crescent butterfly, grapevine skeletonizer moth, and black-spotted spragueia moth).  During the 10 days that I photographed these animals, I saw many other animals, too.  Some, like the 5 species of wasps that I talked about in my last post, I've shared with you.  Others, like bluebirds, cardinals, bluejays, gray squirrels, chickadees, tufted titmice, house finch, mockingbirds, red-shouldered hawk, brown skinks, southern toads, and Eastern box turtle, I haven't shared.

How can anyone be happy with a statically "pretty" landscape, when a garden filled with wildlife changes minute by minute?!  I love the surprise of going out into my yard and meeting a new insect neighbor.  I love the pleasure of looking at a flower cluster and realizing that I'm looking into the eyes of a little lizard or camouflaged frog.  Each new animal I see adds a layer of richness to the world around me that delights and soothes me.  What an honor to be sharing my yard and gardens with all these other forms of life here on Earth.