Now Blooming!

Surprise lilies

The surprise lilies hardly bloomed last year, with the drought, so it was great to see them back again this year. 

Core Aerating Your Lawn

Q.  What does a core aerator want to be when it grows up?

Favorite Flowers: Liriope

Liriope in bloom

Allergy Index Scale:  3
Perennial, zones 5-9
Full sun-partial shade, 10-15" tall

My liriope has just started to bloom.  The flowers look a bit like those of grape hyacinths. Later they will become clusters of dark blue-black berries. Liriope, commonly called lilyturf, is a great tough, low-maintenance plant that does well here in semi-shade, though it tolerates quite a range of light and soil conditions. 

Clover Lawn

White clover

Once, most lawns had at least some white clover growing in them. Clover has little nodules on its roots that fix the nitrogen pulled from the air into the soil. This nitrogen then helps feed surrounding plants. Until the 1960s, clover was routinely included in grass seed mixtures to help lawns get established faster. When broad-spectrum herbicides came into common use, this changed.  The ideal became an all-grass lawn, and clover was seen as a weed. 

Feeding Hummingbirds

If you've been wishing you'd started feeding hummingbirds earlier this year, now might be a good time to start.  By this point, they are done with nesting, and are feeding a lot as they get ready for migration. It's an incredibly long flight for these tiny birds, and they need to double their body weight before they begin.  Putting up a hummingbird feeder now might get them started visiting your yard.

Caterpillars on the Parsley

Black swallowtail larvae on parsley

This evening I found eight little caterpillars on one parsley plant that I am growing in a mixed container out on the patio, and fifteen more on another plant out in the veggie garden. They are fascinating-looking little guys, mostly black with white stripes. Even though I hate to lose the parsley, I'm leaving them alone to enjoy their meal. I hope that at least some of them make it to adulthood, as they are the larval stage of a really lovely butterfly, the black swallowtail.

Hair for the Garden

My dog is right in the middle of shedding his coat, and I comb out huge handfuls of fuzz every day.  Then there's the hair from my brush, and of course the cat and two rabbits all shed as well, so we end up with LOTS of hair.  Instead of throwing it all away, I add it to my compost bin.