July: Milkweed

I've spent the last two days sitting at my computer at home, making numbers do my bidding. I even did some trigonometry! What a strange job I have. I went to the garden after dinner tonight hoping for some magic. The theme of the hour turned out to be milkweed...


Red milkweed beetle; close-up of common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca


I am VERY excited to have my first monarch caterpillar! I've had milkweed naturalized in my garden for many years and the monarchs are rampant, but this is the first caterpillar I've seen. He's so tiny! I named him Scooter and will be looking for him every day. Yes I know I could put him in a protected spot and feed him but I want to see him grow up on his own. Scooter is the reason I planted so many natives in my yard.

Those nasty earwigs had better leave my Scooter alone! I had to pull four of them out of that inflorescence with tweezers just to take the picture. *shudder*


Hey, Foley, move your big head! You're blocking the butterfly weed!

July: Procrastination begins at home

Working at home is difficult. The garden, TV, and fridge beckon. I obey 2 of the 3 siren songs and wander outside with a cup of tea to find:


My first-ever balloon flower! Platycodon grandiflorus 'Sentimental Blue', planted last fall. SO cute!


My hibiscus thankfully turned out not to have ugly peach flowers. Instead it has foofy double flowers. I will learn to like it. It definitely makes a dramatic statement!

Okay, bintie, get back to work!!

July: GGW's July Photo Contest

This month's Gardening Gone Wild photo contest is all about flowering trees. I have dug through my archive of American basswood photos and it is official: I have ZERO good pictures of a basswood in flower. How embarrassing! It's not entirely my fault; basswood flowers are kind of sloppy and mushy looking, and since they hang below the branches the photos must be taken pointed up, which gives no perspective on the rest of the tree. Plus, in all honesty, I prefer the trees for their foliage (and of course for their genetic and biogeographic mysteries, soon to be clarified by the Future Dr. Bintie!) and their nifty leafy bracts.

For example, here's a Carolina basswood in southeastern Alabama:

The flowers are just opening, already mobbed with bees. They look like they've been stepped on. (But aren't the leaves gorgeous?)

However, that is not my entry for the contest! Instead I will go conventional and show a magnolia on the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago. UIC is an architecturally unfriendly place that only recently was partially deconstructed and made more lush and green, and I applaud the efforts to transform the campus into a more traditional American park-like setting. This particular tree is planted in the UIC Memorial Grove, an odd open space at the corner of campus that was designed by Walter Netsch, the campus architect, in the 1960s. It makes for a pleasant getaway when the lab and office feel too constraining, and the magnolias for their brief moment in a Chicago April are mesmerizing...

July: Recycling in the garden

I finally planted my plants from the Native Seed Gardeners project. I put the Baptisia leucantha in the ground before I left on my field trip, but I didn't have time to plant the shade plants (Polygala senega and Oxalis violacea) until today. The difficulty was finding a way to mark plants that have already died back for the season or are very teensy. My haphazard gardening methods don't lend themselves to keeping track of four tiny, important plants! and plant markers are imprecise.

Here's my solution: rings made from margarine tubs. If something grows inside the ring, it's probably the important plant.

Now I just have to keep them alive until they produce seeds! Wish me luck!

July: Happy 4th!

Hubby and I rebuilt the fence between yard and alley this weekend. It looks fabulous and solid and we are so proud of ourselves!

Just a handful of photos of what's in the garden right now. It really popped while I was on my trip and it's so much fun to explore!

An adorable green bee with yellow pollen leggings; red lilies

Lilies and butterfly weed; when did I plant an orange coneflower?! (ETA: Last August, apparently! It's an Echinacea 'Sunset'. Yay for blogs as searchable records!)


Foley felt left out during fence construction.