Redefining the Beauty of Nature and Wildlife in Our Gardens
Well it’s a New Year and I hope your New Year’s Day was wonderful. In thinking about planning for the new year’s garden, I offer you Part 2 of my fall favorite native plants. You can read about Part 1 if you missed the post. There are some tried and true natives in the list,… [Continue Reading]
Recently team member Ellen Sousa did an interesting piece on Leafcutter Bees. Ironically, I had just seen a bee with a circle of leaf attached to it’s bottom, so the article was timely and cleared up the mystery of this platform-toting pollinator. In my quest for information on this type of bee as they appear… [Continue Reading]
Cruising at 1000 ft.. searching for “that tree”.. ascending to a height where land could only be a dark blur.. Orange-gold wings against blue sky.. Every October I think about the Monarch migration to Mexico. And I wonder: where do the West Coast Monarchs go? Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) Photo Courtesy of Las… [Continue Reading]
Have you ever noticed holes in your plant leaves and assumed they were the work of a hungry caterpillar or beetle? Perfectly rounded or oval holes on the edges of a leaf are usually the sign of a nearby nesting leafcutter bee (Megachile spp): Unlike butterfly and moth caterpillars, or herbivorous beetles such as the… [Continue Reading]
In central MA, we veggie gardeners have been blessed with an extended growing season this year, with temperatures dipping below the 40′s only for the first time last week. This means I harvested ‘Cherry Bomb’ hot peppers and green bell peppers right into October – the latest ever in memory. This is good news for… [Continue Reading]
You won’t be sorry. Not only are there an amazing number of beautiful natives to light up your garden from spring through frost~The pollinators and other critters will love them. Asteraceae is one of the largest plant families and is found growing all over the world. So vast that it is subdivided into tribes which… [Continue Reading]
If you know anything about my garden, Clay and Limestone, you already know that I adore rough and tumble wildflowers. Wildflowers that many have called roadside weeds. Wildflowers with no known pedigree. Species wildflowers that haven’t had the wild or good bred out of them. Native species that do exactly what they are supposed to do:… [Continue Reading]
It’s late summer and the topiary buffalo are still roaming in Bison Meadow. You have to walk the paths to find them grazing amidst the wildflowers that have been growing all summer. Last winter when I introduced you to this two acre prairie, all that you could see were the bison, Junipers that dotted the… [Continue Reading]
While observing the bees one morning in my mom’s country garden, I noticed that the carpenter bees weren’t bothering to enter the flowers the way their cousins the bumblebees and sweat bees were. Instead, the carpenter bees would land on a flower and then crawl over it to get to the base of the corolla…. [Continue Reading]
I adore butterflies. Bumbles make me happy. But, my favorite of all the pollinators visiting or living in my garden are the Skippers. How could they fail to make you smile or delight you with their flitting about the garden as they try to attract a mate. Skippers are members of the Superfamily Hesperioidea…. [Continue Reading]
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