July 6, 2023
How fast the garden changes at this time of year! It seems like just yesterday that I posted the Memorial Day tour. A month later it all looks so different.
Let’s take a quick walk around and see what’s in bloom.
Coneflowers are coloring up everywhere, with new ones coming on each day. I’ve replaced so many their names have become a blur; forgive me if I don’t recall which is which.
Drumstick alliums are capped with pert raspberry-lime marbles. I love the blowsy informal quality they bring, despite their scribbly, “wild garlic” look the rest of the year. Pollinators adore them too.
This delicate beauty is our native coneflower Echinacea pallida, the original great-grandparent of dozens of hybrids. After 3 nail-biting years I’m relieved to see my small patch has made it from plug to flower. Thin petals droop fetchingly above lanky stems, like a couple of tweens in dance class tutus.
It’s taken this long because pallida needs 3 years to develop its extraordinarily long tap root. Now mature, it will likely come back every year and outlast all the other coneflowers in the garden.
The yellow form, paradoxa, is below. It’s nearly identical except for color.
Moving on, the hydrangeas are changing faster than I can keep track. The top three photos below are all the same cultivar, Preziosa. It opened a luscious yellow-green, then pistachio-blush and now rich pink. It will keep evolving into burgundy-olive as the weeks go by.
On the bottom is Gatsby Pink, lacy white Quickfire, and Haas Halo, with massive flat flowerheads the size of dinner plates. They act as helipads for all the bee traffic.
A favorite activity of mine is photographing pollinators. Recently the bumblebees became the subject of my focus. According to Bumblebee Watch, a nonprofit organization tracking bee populations, many species of native bumblebees are in decline, and identifying them can be tricky.
I happened to notice a different-looking bee at my pink betony, hovering and mating. A quick Google search identified it as a wool carder bee, a non-native accidentally introduced from Europe around 1963. The male is aggressively territorial around its preferred plant family, Stachys …which explains why it was at the betony (Stachys officinalis).
Then I noticed spotted lanternfly nymphs on my rose. Ugh!
All these foreign invaders bullying our native bees gets depressing. Just think, if we feel under siege from them, imagine what the bumblebees are up against. A bee’s life is anything but a stop to smell the roses these days.
Milkweeds were slow to emerge in spring but they’re at their peak right now. A single monarch wandered by in May, much too early for egg laying. Since then I haven’t spotted a single one; to prove my point, the milkweed leaves remain uncharacteristically pristine.
I’m hoping at least a few monarchs and swallowtails eventually show up, but the odds aren’t great. My yard is small. Plus, I can’t imagine what wildfire smoke does to a butterfly, or to any insect for that matter. Their survival becomes ever more tenuous. Meanwhile, the milkweeds await their elusive dependents.
I will end with some phlox, a lily, a cleome and veronicastrum.
That’s it for today. Don’t forget to take time to enjoy your own special plant and insect community!
