If my home life was a sit com, and we had a theme song, it would be the Pointer Sisters singing “I’m So Excited”.

I’m so excited, I just can’t hide it

I’m about to lose control and I think I like it

I’m so excited, I just can’t hide it

I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I want it.

We run for the pure joy of running

If you have dogs, you know what I mean.  Every little thing is a huge, exciting, adventure for a dog.  Meal times always begin with dancing and singing.  MacDuff, the little sheltie twirls and woo, woo, woos.  Foxfire the German shepherd has been told to sit/stay but she moos like a steer and bounces on her butt.  Tempest the soprano is singing in a range that will one day shatter all my windows. 

Come

 To a dog, car rides are pure science fiction, something akin to the transporter on the old Star Trek series.  We all climb into a box, the world rushes past the windows with a woosh.  Then the box opens and we all jump out into another time and place.  Magic stuff.

A car sitting in the drive is an invitation to ride.  I came home with groceries Tuesday and the dogs ran and barked while I unloaded.  It must have been frustrating that the car doors were all closed and the dogs couldn’t enter the transporter.  Tempest decided to hop in the trunk for his ride.  I laughed, just couldn’t help it.  Mistake.  My ‘out’ command didn’t sound convincing when it was said through laughter.  We had a tug of war before he finally jumped down.

Fox with her jug, an old Arizona ice tea container she carries everywhere.

 And then there are the treats.  We all give our dogs treats they don’t need because it makes them so darn happy.  They will do anything--anything for a treat.  A treat can be the size of a pea, doesn’t matter.  Dogs don’t taste treats, they just inhale them.  The German shepherds are very delicate when they take their treats but I have to remember to be careful of the sheltie.  He will remove fingers along with the treat.   For the sheltie, I have to show him the fist and then slowly reveal the tiny treat so those sharp little teeth don’t snap down on flesh. 

A few days ago, I told the dogs we were going for a walk.  That word triggers the twirling and wooing, singing and mooing.  Then the phone rang.  It was my health insurance provider with questions.  Three dogs sat down in front of me while I talked.  Then the soprano started warbling.  The low mooing joined in, and sharp barks made up the beat.  The woman on the other end of the line started giggling.  “What is that”, she asked.  I had to stop twice to shush the dogs while the insurance lady giggled. Finally she said, “Good news, tell the dogs they can go for their walk now”. 

 We are going outside for a walk now.  Shh, don’t say it out loud.  It’s a secrete until I put on my coat.  I have a new camera and we’re going to take some photos.  The shepherds will run around and play-fight but the sheltie will get upset when I point the camera at him.  He thinks the camera is another Star Trek gadget—the death ray.  He’s pretty sure cameras vaporize dogs.  Good thing I have a zoom lens.  He won’t notice it so much from a telephoto distance. 

Tempest waits for me to catch up.

By the way, I really like my new Panasonic DMC-FX40 24X zoom lens camera.  These photos were taken with the camera just out of the box, no time to study the manual.   The above pix are long zooms on a gloomy day shot at ia mode.  I'm going to enjoy working with it.  

The Stand Off

It's a standoff.  Dog vs cat.  The cat set the tone at their first meeting.  The dog entered the house for the first time and the cat jumped on his head, yowling a growling.   Poor pup, wonderful welcome committee.

Now they watch each other from a distance.  Unfortunately, I think the dog is plotting revenge.  Toby, the cat, gets a lick or two in whenever possible and, so far, Tempest, the dog hasn't retaliated, but Temp is way too interested in the cat.   In any case, I'm watching them carefully and they won't  be alone together.

Tempest is one of three dogs I rescued recently from the county shelter.  Temp was maybe six months old when he came here.  He's mostly grown now and weighs in at about 80 pounds.  Toby, of course is my twelve pound demolition machine.

I've been offline so long, forgot how to
use blogger.  Struggling through all the changes Google has made.

Missed blogging but sometimes life is at
a place you don't really want to memorialize in print or pictures.

Wasting some time on Pinterest today and these two photos popped up beside each other.  Talk about extremes.  Makes you wonder.

The castle looks cold but I'm sure the folks who live there were vacationing on a beach in the south of France.  Why would anyone stay in a drafty old castle in the winter when they can afford the Riviera?

I wonder about the little trailer.  Maybe it's a house or maybe it's a lawn ornament.   Whoever owns it must love it, look at how much time they spend tending it.

"Look at that sea, girls--all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen.  We couldn't enjoy its 
loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds."
L. M. Montgomery, Anne of green Gables

The February 2011 Blizzard

40 mph winds pushing snow into 5-foot drifts across roadsways.

Off work today. Enjoying (and I'm using that term in a humorous way) the effects of the fourth worst blizzard in this county's recorded history. Luckily I wasn't around for the first three.

A weather emergency has been declared. Police are asking everyone to stay off the streets. The snowplows are clearing the roadways but the 40mph winds are driving the snow back onto cleared roads very quickly. Hundreds of motorists were stranded in snow drifts overnight, many had to be rescued with snow mobiles. Neighboring Boone County, which is very rural, has closed its roads. Anyone driving in Boone County will be issued a $200 ticket. Sounds harsh but the police just don't have the resources to rescue any more drivers stuck in drifts. Tow trucks are out pulling abandoned vehicles out of ditches and taking them to Woodman's parking lot to be picked up later by the owners.

Tonight the temperatures will be dropping to 10 degrees below zero. Things can't get much worse--I hope.

Trucks are loaded with salt and sand and ready to go.

As soon as it was light enough to see, I ventured out to feed the birds. The weatherman wasn't kidding when he said there were 5-foot drifts out there. Two feet of snow piled against my back door made it a challenge open.

Had to push Aggie out the door, she wasn't going out there if she could help it. Now she is watching me with huge, accusing eyes, afraid I'll make her go outside again. I'll let Toby out in a little while. He will love it. Wish I had Toby's outlook on life. He sees every day as a gift and finds fun in every situation.

Later today or tomorrow, Mark from the shop will come and plow me out. Meanwhile, I'm stocked up on comfort food and good books. Maybe a nap this afternoon...

Offline for a while

Due to an illness in the family, I will remain offline for a time. I miss all my blogging friends and hope to be back soon.

Marnie

The only good thing about high humidity is foggy mornings. I know, fog is dangerous if you're driving but it's also very beautiful. It changes the landscape, makes familiar scenes look strange and other worldly. Beyond a visible circle, things become mysterious. Anything is possible.







Today, I'm in the middle of a bathroom remodel so I set blogger to publish this post automatically. Fingers crossed blogger works. And fingers crossed that the remodel goes well. In the past I've found that doing anything to an old house can result in disaster and chaos. We'll see.

Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul. ~ Luther Burbank

I planted Joe Pye in my garden three years ago. This year it has finally come into its own. The first two years, it made a disappointing showing and I considered taking it out. This year, it has more than made up for the failings of the past.



Maybe I better qualify that statement. I have two Joe Pyes, one is Little Joe pictured above. Right now, Little Joe is the star of my garden. I also have Chocolate Joe Pye which was planted at the same time. So far, Chocolate hasn't done much to repay my investment of time and real estate. For now, I'm forgetting about Chocolate and concentrating on Little Joe.

Joe Pye is usually a very large garden plant reaching eight feet in height. Tina at IN THE GARDEN featured the taller Joe Pye on her blog Wednesday. Little Joe is a smaller cultivar, which tops out a little over four feet tall and about four feet wide in my garden. I like its compact and rounded habit. There is at least one other dwarf cultivar called Phantom which is supposed to be around three feet tall. The photo below shows Little Joe blooming behind the rudbeckia and cleome.



Airy clusters of tiny lavender flowers remind me of a cross between lilacs and a smoke tree. So far there have been no pests or disease problems with my plants. I debated with myself for a while before adding these plants because of their moisture requirements. Over the last five years, I've tried to eliminate water wasters and concentrate on more xeric plants but every now and then something slips past my better judgment. Our weather was pretty dry in late May and June and Joe, who is planted in full sun, showed some wilting and required watering once a week.

Even though Joe Pye is not xeric, it was a good choice. It is both beautiful and loved by butterflies. Joe Pye begins to bloom just as the agastache and the purple coneflowers are fading so the butterflies can remain in my garden for a longer period.



The photo below is Little Joe in tight bud in early July.

Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above,
Like a limp rose-wreath in a fairy dance.

Thou didst not know, who tottered, wandering on high,
That fate had made thee for the pleasure of the wind,
With those great careless wings,
Nor yet did I.
~ Robert Frost from this Butterfly poem

Spotlighting Agastache

Can't say enough good things about agastache or anise hyssop. It's one of the most important plants in my garden. Beautiful, carefree and extremely popular with many varieties of butterflies. Its muted lavender spires make a lovely contrast to any of the brighter colored blooms like rudbeckia, heliopsis, helenium, etc.


I have experience with two cultivars of agastache. Both seem to be hardy in my zone 5a-4b garden. Blue Fortune has recently become very popular with gardeners everywhere, and with good reason. I see it locally in most garden centers. No pests, drought tolerant, licorice scented foliage, with an extended bloom period, these plants requires no care at all and butterflies are the big bonus. There are many other varieties of agastache but most are not reliably hardy in my cold winter zone.



Golden Jubilee is the only other agastache I grow. It is very similar to Blue Fortune but has red tinged, chartreuse spring foliage. In my garden, both are middle of the border plants reaching about three feet tall (can be cut back in spring to reduce height). Golden Jubilee can be started from seed.




On my July 26 post I showed a photo of Blue Fortune with about 50 Clouded Sulfur butterflies nectaring on the blooms. Agastache blooms from late June through July and into August.

Agastache prefers well drained soil but it does not seem to be bothered by my heavy clay even during some very wet springs and summers we have had in the past. It is perfect for hills and slopes and raised beds that drain too quickly for many plants.

The long, hot summer

"Dirty hands, iced tea, garden fragrances thick in the air and a blanket of color before me, who could ask for more?" ~ Bev Adams



We had a very dry month sandwiched between a wet spring and a flood in late July. The heat began in March and has continued to grow worse with no end in sight. It's very surprising that the garden is not suffering a lot more than it seems to be.

The phlox are all dead headed and getting ready for another bloom cycle. The coneflowers are looking shabby so the swallowtail butterflies are finally noticing the pentas in the butterfly pots. This is a black female Eastern tiger swallowtail. Thanks to the folks on GardenWeb's Butterfly garden forum, I learned to easily tell the difference between her and her Eastern black swallowtail cousins. My July 19 post shows an Eastern Black Swallowtail male.



In the photo below Mardi Gras, a hot colored and long blooming plant that thrives in hot weather--as long as it gets plenty of moisture. In my garden it's surrounded by Rozanne which helps cool down its hot colors. So far none of the butterflies in this area have been at all interested in Mardi Gras.




This was a good year for lilies both Asiatics and Orientals. The last Oriental to bloom is always Stargazer. This year Stargazer is over six feet tall, a little unusual since they usually top out at about four feet in my garden.



This is the first bloom of Siloam Peony Display which was planted last fall. Lots of ruffled petals packed tightly into this golden daylily.


The more austere Joan Sr's first blooms create the illusion of cool. Rozanne geranium makes a good backdrop for the white flowers. Judging by the number of buds on Joan in her first year here, she will be a prolific bloomer. There aren't many blooms left on the daylilies. I always hate to see them go, the absence of their bright colors will leave holes in the late summer garden.



White Waves aren't bothered by heat or dry conditions. Petunias make the most of their brief time in the garden, never complaining they always give a hundred percent. This is my first year using Wave Petunias. They are tireless flowering machines but the colors are uninspired. Hopefully in a few more years the hybridizers will introduce some pretty shading, veining and variety.


The swamp milkweed beetle below has somehow gotten several miles from the nearest swamp:) His coloration is called 'milkweed mimicry" and it is shared by butterflies (monarchs and viceroys) and other insects that eat milkweed. Predators such as birds learn early in life that this color combination is poisonous and will make them sick if eaten.

OOPS, just realized I published this a day ahead of my usual Thursday posting day. Oh well:)

Hope you are having better gardening weather than we are here in northern Illinois. Have a great weekend.

Summer of the Sulfurs

Click on this photo to see her pretty face

This has not been an especially pleasant summer. Extreme heat and now flooding over much of the area has made life a challenge for most of us. Still, this summer has brought many wonderful moments. When I look back on the summer of 2010, I want to remember it as the summer of the sulfur butterflies.




In her own mysterious way, nature somehow brought together just the right series of events to create the perfect conditions for the clouded sulfur butterfly. I have never seen anything like the number of sulfurs in my garden this year. Hundreds! Three or four butterflies on the tops of each coneflower, more on each spire of the agastache. They are on every flower and the air is filled with their yellow fluttering.



Sulfurs always keep their wings folded showing only the undersides when at rest. When in flight, the pretty black markings on the top of the wings can be seen. In the first photo, the sun shining through the delicate wing tissue gives us a hint of the black pattern.



Not the largest or the most brightly colored butterfly sulfurs are often overlooked, but when their numbers reach into the hundreds, they are an amazing sight.

Heat, ma'am! it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones. ~Sydney Smith, Lady Holland's Memoir

The silver spotted skipper spends hot summer days on the Blue Fortune blooms.

Cool blue sea holly makes a nice contrast to the hotter colors of the summer garden.

While web surfing for cage ideas to hold up my new baptisia, I found a really cute photo on a GardenWeb forum. The poster used old chairs with seats removed for peony cages. I know it sounds strange, but check out her pictures to see how well it works. Do a quick scroll down the page for the photos.

Another idea I've been researching is trellising for gourds. Found a page of photos on GardenWeb with lots of cattle panel tresses. My gourds are taking up way too much room. Next year they will be grown vertically to save space.

Below is the largest gourd on my birdhouse vine. There are lots of small gourds on this vine and there should be--the thing is 15' x 15', thats 225 square feet. It's climbing the viburnums and lilacs and threatening to cut off the driveway:) This weekend I will definitely have to muscle this bully back under control.

If you are trying to garden organically, you know that this little wasp is your friend because he kills caterpillars that eat your crops. But if you're trying to attract butterflies and growing plants that host butterfly caterpillars, take precautions. The wasp is public enemy number one for butterfly caterpillars. I noticed yesterday evening that my bronze fennel blooms have attracted hundreds of wasps. This would be great if I had problems with tomato hornworms or sawfly larva eating my roses. At the same time I noticed that I have no caterpillars on my butterfly weed. One or the other should go and I will be removing the blooms from the fennel tonight.

I would recommend growing fennel and letting it bloom if you have caterpillar problems. Fennel is perennial even in my zone 5a/4b garden so one plant near your tomato garden should take care of the hornworms. Butterfly host plants should be far away from the fennel or the fennel blooms should be cut off.

Finally, the long awaited tomatoes are turning red. Last year was a disaster for tomatoes all over my area but this year my plants look better than ever. For the first time in ten years I didn't plant a single heirloom tomato because they have less resistance to disease than the newer hybrids. This tomato is Celebrity, not the best tasting tomato but one of the most disease tolerant and a heavy producer. So far the leaves are perfect, no sign of spots or wilting. I have a few cut up paper leaf bags covering the ground under the tomatoes to prevent the soil from splashing onto the leaves when it rains. It's debatable if this technique helps prevent disease but it doesn't hurt and serves as a barrier against water evaporation on hot, sunny days.

Speaking of hot, sunny days.

My father is suffering from dehydration. A very serious condition that creeps up on you and makes you very, very sick. Our bodies need a lot of fluid to keep us going through this heat. Don't take chances, please drink large amounts of fluid and stay well.

The shepherd tended her phlox

Every year more tall garden phlox find their way into my garden. Hybridizers have done so much with phlox in the last few years. No longer do we need to put up with the mildew that plagues the species and earlier cultivars. The reason I like phlox so well is its long bloom period, drought tolerance, impact, and of course butterflies.

I was thrilled to find this black swallowtail in my garden Sunday afternoon.

Here are some of the phlox blooming this summer.

Volcano White

Volcano Purple

Volcano Red

Volcano Pink

Blue Paradise

Unknown

And David who is a four foot tall four foot wide, snow capped presence in the garden.

There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothng is a miracle. The other is as if everything is. ~ Albert Einstein

There is a garden where lilies
And roses grow side by side;
And all day between them in silence,
The silken butterflies glide.
~ Francis Turner Palgrave

Yesterday the county to the west of us had some bad storms and a tornado siting. Our county's emergency managers got ready in case the storms came our way. Someone got a little carried away and turned on the tornado sirens. There was no storm on the horizon so some people thought we were under attack. Could have been a dangerous situation if people had panicked.

Meanwhile, as the sirens were blaring, I was following this Tawny Emperor butterfly. I have a couple hackberry trees on the farm which are the hosts for these butterflies. I've read they almost never visit flowers but this one obviously didn't read that memo.




I was told by the butterfly folks at Garden Web (who know a whole lot more than I do) that these and other butterflies will come to a plate of rotting fruit (set atop something to discourage ants and other insects). Thought I'd try setting out a plate of fruit in some sunny spot. I usually have overripe bananas, strawberries and apples.



Daylily Moses' Fire caught my eye showing some blazing red color in the late afternoon sun. This is one of those daylilies that is a little hard to place in the garden. I have it with purple coneflowers now and I can certainly testify that those two do not make a good combination:) Next year I'll move it into an area of yellows and golds to see if that is more pleasing to the eye.



About one third of my double daylily blooms, including Moses' Fire, are opening as single blooms this year. I've read other daylily growers are having the same problem but no one seems to know exactly why.


Found a garden center with three varieties of blue sage. Thought I'd try them all and see which I like the best.


Blue Frost and Black and Blue are being used as fillers in containers. They don't require a lot of space and they drape gracefully over the container rims. Last year Victoria Blue was planted directly into the garden and seemed to fade into the background. Not enough presence to stand out among the other garden plants.

So far I have seen very few bees or butterflies on any of these sages or pentas which makes me wonder... Do the growers treat their plants with systemic insecticides? They don't want chewing insects making holes in the leaves of the plants they plan to sell. They also probably don't want bees hanging around the garden centers and frightening the customers. Has anyone else noticed pollinators avoiding annuals grown and sold at large garden centers?



This is an unusually good year for coneflowers. In the past a few of them have been plagued with some type of wilting disease but this year they are healthy and thriving. Coneflowers, phlox and agastache are the three main butterfly attractors in my garden so I wouldn't be without any of them.








These tomatoes have been just sitting like this for weeks. I always get so impatient for homegrown tomatoes this time of year. Every morning I carefully study them for signs of blushing. I'm buying some at the local farmer's market tonight. Can't stand this waiting any longer.




Could it be true a watched pot never boils and a watched tomato never ripens:)

Have a wonderful weekend everyone and try to stay cool.