A cradle, some angels and a baby

This is the old cradle that I picked up from a free cycler earlier in the season.


It has worked out great for the angels in my Memorial Garden. They had become dwarfed by the Hostas as they have grown from year to year. This really showcases these wonderful cherubs. In the lower left corner you can see my headless little boy! This fellow was added here when my grandson was born! Then over the course of a few years, he got bumped around by Ryan, and lost his head!! Maybe some one of these days I'll remember it needs to be fixed. Well, it is already coming up on October and I didn't get it done this season, --YET! Unfortunately, for me, out of sight, definitely means out of mind. And that garden is on the other side of the house!! So when I take them in for the season, then I will remember to do it, not that that means I will actually follow through and do it, but who knows, maybe......
So one day as I was gazing out the window at the newly ensconced cradle with the angels glowing bright from within, I noticed movement on the side of the cradle! What could it be. Had to get my glasses to be able to clearly see the area!!



Oh, MY!! It was a baby bird!!




And it rested there for a while, got up and moved around and rested a bit more!



Oh, how sweet!! A baby with my babies!!

A new butterfly

We had an amazing butterfly hatch recently. It was the largest of its kind that we have had. This is the Spicebush Swallowtail, which I have had in other posts. Our Spicebush was host to so many caterpillars this season that I lost count.



This caterpillar is remarkable in that it changes color and texture as it grows. It starts out rough and bumpy, brown and white,




and develops into a smooth, bright green critter with huge fake eyes, to fool its predators.




Then as it gets ready to change, it turns yellowish,




arches its back,



and then becomes a brown chrysalis.




Mia was so happy to have been here for the unveiling of this huge specimen.




And it was also unusual as it was a very calm one. Usually this species won't sit still for a picture.



On this day we were able to have lots of quality time with it before Mia released it. I often wonder where the different colors come from. Here the caterpillar went from brown and white to green and yellow, with a brown chrysalis. Where did it get its orange spots??

Poison ivy can make friends too

This was indeed a great year for poison ivy. I was reminded of how quickly it can affect people when a friend got attacked while collecting firewood from our woods. Early every spring I go out, with can in hand to attack all the poison ivy I can find. It is the one plant I can not take a chance on. I have ended up in the emergency room due to attacks by this species. So I always have plenty of Poison Ivy spray on hand at all times. I also keep a supply of two products I could not be without. One is Poison Ivy Soap by Technu, which you use after exposure or as soon as a breakout occurs. It has cut my emergency room visits down to zero!! The other product which I use freely when working anywhere near potential poison ivy plants is Ivy Block, by Hylands. It is a lotion you apply to all skin exposed before you do your gardening. We all used in when we cleared out the seed bed, as there was Poison Ivy in the area. No one got any rashes!
The difficult thing about Poison Ivy is that it can take on many different forms. In the early spring it is very easy to identify it. That is the best time to see the three shiny reddish leaves beginning to form. Here is a typical established plant with the tell tale three leaves. If you look closely you can see that the leaves are all smooth around the edges.




In this photo this specimen has irregular edges on some of the leaves. This is also Poison Ivy.



Poison Ivy likes to blend into the landscape and hide among other plants.




I found it in several different plant groupings throughout our woods. It can grow as a vine up a tree or as a shrub, which can make it hard to identify.




I find by going out first thing in the spring gives me a head start on eradicating it. Often that's all it takes around here, unless we have a wet summer as we did this year. I am still finding it in my gardens all over the yard.


I happened upon this grouping of Clubmoss, Canada Mayflower, and Poison Ivy. It sure does look like they are all quite chummy!!



For information and pictures on Poison Sumac, check out the Clueless Gardeners recent post on the subject.

A new azalea

It is an always interesting process when you get the opportunity to save any living thing, be it a child, an insect, or a plant. Over the summer we had the opportunity to get two free shrubs, if we were willing to go dig up and move them. I already did a post on the Japanese Andromeda that we transplanted. This is the Azalea that we got from the same family.


When transplanting an older shrub it can be a daunting task. The root, having been established for many years are often very large and deep seated. It becomes necessary to do a full root pruning even before you can start to dig. For these shrubs the people we got them from had done a lot of branch pruning before we even saw them for the first time. For this Azalea I had to do additional pruning in order for us to even reach below it to start digging. Then there was considerable root pruning before we were able to get under the root ball to get it out of the ground. This required so much pruning, that I was not sure how well it would transfer. We had dug the new hole prior to getting it, having learned that from the last transplant, which had to sit in the open air for several hours while we got the location cleared out and the new hole dug. But as you can see from these photos, she has settled in so well, and just loves here new location right outside our dining room.




We will supply her with new companions in the spring when we can get in to the area where we had moved two smaller Azaleas some years back when they had to be moved due to overcrowding. Also here is a great shot of all the new growth on the Andromeda in just tow months since she was moved.


It is a huge and physically draining process to transplant older shrubs, but so worth the effort and time involved.

Blue False Indigo

When you get to a certain age, you start to realize that you do not remember all things as you used to. In clearing out an area that was being way too overgrown by an ever expanding white Hydrangea, I rediscovered another plant that I had all but forgotten. In this photo it is hard to recognize anything specific growing in this tangle.


But, as I was in there while this plant was in bloom initially, I knew that it was a gem I had forgotten. Also, I knew that this plant had properties I had not realized until I started on this new journey of learning about Permaculture. This is the blue False Indigo, Baptisia australis,a native plant usually found in woods and thickets.


I had gotten the seeds years ago and had one plant develop and then forgot all about it. It produces a lovely blue flower spike, and numerous seeds.


It is in the Pea family, and as such provides a great service to surrounding plants. It produces nitrogen in the soil. So this makes it a major player in the Permaculture process. Also, in walking around the edge of the woods, I found another one of these plants struggling to survive mixed in with the thicket at the edge of the woods by the road. Need to get that one moved, too.


So I cleared out the area with the hydrangea in preparation to move it. It will be going into the Spruce bed to supply nitrogen to all the vegetables I will be growing there from now on.

Wand flower

Received this beautiful plant from one of my frequent helpers in the gardens. It is a Wand Flower, Gaura linaheimeri, "Siskiyou Pink".


This is a native plant which has been recently introduced into perennial gardens. This is just a spectacular plant. The flower is so unique. I can't wait to find just the right spot for its permanent spot. Right now I'm just letting it get used to my gardens in a temporary location.




Wonder who she would like to reside with?? She likes full sun to partial shade, and is tolerant of heat, humidity and drought . Sounds like she'd do great anywhere around this place!


I'll have to give it thought over the winter.

Pruning Butterfly Bush

In order to prolong the blooming season for Butterfly bush, it is necessary to deadhead (cut off) the dead flower heads. A caution here, though; if you are interested in propagating these beautiful bushes you need to leave a few spent flower heads on the bush to go to seed. These bushes do seed themselves if left to their own devices and not mulched below.

This is a flower head ready to be deadheaded. It can be a time consuming process, as there are so many on a mature bush, but one that is well worth the effort. It is now late in September and I still have a few butterflies who continue to visit my bush every day, not to mention all the other insects residing within.


You just snip the stem just below the flower head, and new growth will be seen very soon. In the case of the small blossoms beneath the main shoot, cut just below them.



Here is what the new growth will look like.

Indian Cucumber Root

So I have finally gotten all the pictures downloaded from my woods and from the foraging hike. My back is feeling a bit better, so I am getting back to the surprise I alluded to in the walk through the woods post. I posted the Flat Topped Asters that I had found on this walk. There were two other plants I did not recognize. One was just the foliage and the other was another startling plant that I discovered and was unable to identify for several days. Part of the problem was that the plant was so unusual that I could not tell if it was flowering or not.

The one with just the foliage looks like it could be Wild Sarsaparilla, Aralia nudicaulis, a member of the Ginger family. It will have to wait til next spring to be identified, as that is when it will be in bloom. It just blends in with all the other undergrowth at this time of year, so I hardly even noticed it.



This is the plant I was so surprised by.




It is growing in a little colony, with about 10-15 plants surrounding a tree near the brook.




When I first saw it the tendrils coming out of the top were green with red tips.



I wasn't sure if it was a bud forming or what. When I tried to look it up, as the guidebooks are sorted by flower color I had no luck in checking out all the red flowers. The next time I went out the tendrils and part of the top cluster of leaves had turned red.









Also, one of the plants had a berry on it!



So now I looked in the red/pink flower section and still no luck. I just got frustrated and decide to wait to look into it another time. Tried again, to no avail. Then I just got so impatient with trying to identify it that I went through the guide book from the first page of pictures and started to work my way through the guidebook. Luckily, it was on page 2, the 3rd photo in the book!! And this is the section with green flowers!! This plant has flowers early in the spring, so what I though was a bud was the stem for the fruit. And on top of one of them was a great berry!



I thought the double layer of whorled leaves just so striking. Only the more mature plants have the double level of leaves. This is Indian Cucumber Root, Medeola virginiana, a member of the Lily family. In researching it, I discovered that the root is edible, having been a mainstay for American Indians (thus the name). And on my foraging hike there were several patches with lots of these plants so we got to taste the root. Only the double decker plants have a large enough root to make it worth the taste. As they are scarce plants, the guide took one with a berry so that the berry could be planted to produce a new plant for next year. The root itself was only one inch long, but it did taste like cucumber! I would not take the ones up from my woods as there are so few. It was fun to taste it. I might get more from the wild some day if I come across a large enough patch. Don't want to use up any plant that is not plentiful.

A frog and Zebra Caterpillars

While walking around the gardens with Jeannie, we noticed the Bindweed was back in full force, even after all her work at cutting so much of it out earlier in the season. We spied a small lump on a Bindweed leaf. It was a little frog, so very tiny, just basking in the sun.



SO, later in the day, when the grandkids were here, we checked out the spot and guess, what? It was still there! The kids were so excited to find this tiny frog. As they are both very used to all things nature around here, Ryan easily picked up the frog and immediately went to get a pail to put it into so it wouldn't jump away.




He very carefully picked it up and was amazed at how tiny it was. He could hold it on one finger!



Katelyn even gave holding it a try, but needed help keeping it there as it kept wanting to jump off her jittery hand!


Ryan got a leaf for it and insisted we get a picture of it inside the pail to show everyone how happy it was in there! (by the way, the pail is red)




On another jaunt in the gardens I noticed my Red twig Dogwood bush had holes in a lot of the leaves. Upon closer inspection I discovered these caterpillars enjoying a feast all over the bush.



These are Zebra Caterpillars, Veramica picta. They show up throughout North America. They love many garden vebgetables and orchard crops, and obviously my Dogwood. They chew the foliage but as they rarly do serious damage, with controls not necessary, I decide to leave them to their meal and just enjoy their colors and curling positions.



Isn't it interesting how they clump together in a tight family group? Other species are definitely loner types.



As to insects, it is an individual preference as to how to deal with them. Some are beneficial, others harmful/destructive and then there are some that are in between. It is up to each person to decide which to deal with and which to just sit back and enjoy.