A noun. A verb. A blog.
No matter how much I learn about the garden, there’s always more to know. To plug the (many!) gaps in my knowledge, I often designate my own “Year of the [Fill in the Blank]” to zoom in on a single subject. One was The Year of Ornamental Grasses. At the start, I knew almost zip. Except […]
Days after I was moaning about seeing no butterflies in my garden, a big rain came – and soon afterwards came three butterflies. One was an Eastern Black Swallowtail, and I watched her lay eggs in a small pot of parsley. My first thought was: I’m gonna need a bigger parsley! Because, last year, I got […]
Sheesh. It was one of those weeks. I would’ve needed a whole hive of mees to cover all my bases in the last few days. Just know that we have posts in the works, including some honeys, so do stay tuned! Till then, this worker bee will get Bzzzzzzzzzzy…
A post-Christmas celebration of some of Nature’s busiest creatures, bees and bumblebees (and wasps) in the great big Apidae family. Let’s recognize how essential pollinators like bees are to our planet. Please join me in a wish that human bee-ings do everything in our power to serve and protect them in 2018 and beyond. Click any image for the full-size slideshow.
Wherever I travel, my eyes are sharply on the lookout for housing. Housing for birds and bees and butterflies, that is. This summer, my little eye spied this big bee and, perhaps, butterfly condo in the Smithsonian Gardens in Washington, D.C.. With all those living options, it would be the perfect home for all kinds of solitary, […]
Odd events can lead us to new passions. A car detour in Pennsylvania to visit the memorial site for the Flight 93 plane in the countryside, was the start of author and gardener Kylee Baumle’s obsession with Monarch butterflies. She and her mother discovered a dead monarch butterfly lying on the ground. Not only did the butterfly […]
Holy smoke, that’s a big spider! Take a look the maple key in the picture below for scale. Fat and furry, it surprised me in the garden yesterday. Naturally, I wanted to know: friend or foe? Friend, as it turns out! It’s the bold jumping spider (Phidippus audax), and it’s more interested in stalking the bugs […]