Cantaloupe, oh so tasty! The Butterflies...

I picked it today, the stray cantaloupe next to our compost bins. Thanks to those who gave us suggestions on how to tell when it was ripe. Yesterday I noted it looked orange and ripe, got down and smelled it, sweet and just right. Pulled on the stem it did not come loose. Tonight I smelled it again and went for it. Good thing as the underside was splitting apart and bugs were in the tiny cracks. So I cut it where it was splitting open and got rid of the split rind and cut out some very sweet cantaloupe to eat fresh from the garden....

Those are 3/4 liter wine bottles next to the cantaloupe to give you a sense of how big this beauty is! Looks ripe to me! We'll cut this for 3 days each morning for a snack during the work day, oh my. And I have a store bought watermelon to eat also.

An update about the Durham Butterfly count. It rained most of the night Saturday, then cleared just in time for 15 diehards to meet and form groups to go out counting butterflies, gray skies and all. Our organizer Jeff went to Duke Gardens, got poured on as soon as they arrived, saw one Painted lady from a pavilion where they sat for 3 hours in waiting for it to dry up.

Mean while Meg, Owen and I drove over to the Flat River Impoundment. One parks their car and walks in on a gravel road leaving the car behind. We managed to walk for 37 minutes before we were rained on. We walked back in the rain wearing rain coats and umbrellas. Tallied up 15 species of butterflies despite the weather in an hour. Four of those were seen in the rain walking back to the car.

We drove to our place and hung out on the porch until the rain
slowed. Jeff called and cancelled the count. Owen and I decided
what the heck we'd get back out there. Ended up at Quail Roost and
found three old guys (Tom, Gene and Carl) in rain coats counting
butterflies. So we weren't the only crazy old guys counting
butterflies and we had umbrellas! Tom and crew had complied a
pretty good list.

So Owen and I poked around Quail Roost and added a few butterflies
to our list.

So here is our rainy day list of 24 species from both the Flat River Impoundment
and Quail Roost

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail 10
Spicebush Swallowtail 2
Clouded Sulphur 1 outer wing margins clearly behind the dot, tough ID in our parts
Orange Sulphur 8
Sleepy Orange  1 (found in the rain)
Eastern-tailed Blue 120 everywhere
Variegated Fritillary 10
Silvery Checkerspot 2
Pearl Crescent 18
Red Admiral 2
Common Buckeye 25
Red-spotted Purple 2
Viceroy 1 (found in the rain)
Carolina Satyr 18
Monarch 7
Clouded Skipper 60
Least Skipper 7
Fiery Skipper 5
Crossline Skipper 2
Sachem 18
Zabulon Skipper 4
Dun Skipper 5
Ocola Skipper 2

And 45 Black Swallowtail cats in our garden and 25 more cats at
Meg's school(transferred from our garden days ago) + one
chrysalis

One of the highlights of checking out Quail Roost was the Devil's-walkingstick (Aralia spinosa) growing wild along a fence line. When the rain would slow the butterflies would be on it, saw 5 Eastern Tiger Swallowtails enjoying it. These have huge flowers and they are not common here at all, I now know of two places it grows in Durham.

Below is a portion of the Devil's-walkingstick (Aralia spinosa)
patch, it is as always around 15 foot tall (5 meters). See Will Cook's page about Devil's-walkingstick

An update on Meg's butterfly house at school. As of today they have 13 chrysalis and should have more tomorrow. Our garden has a lot of big 5th instar caterpillars and 2  chrysalis, tomorrow should be another story. Don't tell the kids but Black Swallowtail chrysalis usually take about 10 days to emerge.

The garden mid August

I've been cutting Bronze Fennel for Meg the past few mornings for her class room caterpillars. We decided they had enough fennel this morning. I did a quick count of the cats in our garden, 31 was what I came up with, Meg has 22 in her class room. So 31 cats here eating up the fennel like crazy, I think we have enough. In past years we have had 4-5 dozen cats on our fennel. Those of you growing dill or parsley for Black Swallowtails, you never have enough, Bronze Fennel grows to 6 foot lots of food get some.

These Black Swallowtail cats were not posed in the garden, lots and lots.

Donkey, he's some very cool yard art Meg bought me for my birthday last month.

Stray cantaloupe from our compost. It is huge. Please tell me how does one know when these are ripe? Alice?

The stray Butternut Squash, we have 4 huge ones like the one shown above, note it is 3 inches wide at the base to give you a sense of scale. We have 4 more coming o n like the one shown below, it is 6 foot up in a willow tree. This is a monster plant.

A few local notes about local things going on.

 First Paperhand Puppets are having weekend shows in Chapel Hill, we plan on going Saturday. This year it is "City of Frogs" can't wait to go, we'll do a post on it for sure. They'll be preforming every Friday Saturday and Sunday until September 9th at the Forest Theater. And the following weekend(Sept 14,15and 16) at the Museum of Art in Raleigh. Please don't miss it.

This coming Sunday is the Durham Butterfly Count, I'll be leading a group looking for butterflies. We'll have 6-7 parties of people out looking for butterflies. Contact me if you want to go.

Oh, the last thing public schools teachers just sign new contracts for less money, longer hours and smaller class budgets. Way to go Republicans, tax the rich and make sure teachers, policemen and firemen get paid what they deserve!

101 degree day in the Carolinas!

Here is our bee hive on an 101 degree day! This is the first beards (the other beard is under the boardman feeder) I have seen our bees make. I got worried later that night the hive was covered in bees, I thought they were going to swarm, just cooling off. Bees like the temperature to be 93 degrees in the hive. I stopped by Jan's and his big hive had two 6 inch beards on it. After two days in the 100s we had two days in the 80s, the bees looked to have packed up and left as maybe 1/5th as many were outside the hive.

 This Pipevine Swallowtail, Battus philenor  caterpillar was found near our road, I have seen these about every year, but have never located any Aristolochia the host plant. Some beautiful photos and more on the Pipevine Swallowtail on my website here.

 The black-eyed susans are looking pretty good despite the heat.

 Green June Beetle, Cotinus nitida mating on our deck. The grubs of this species are supposed to be bad on your lawn. Good thing we hardly have a lawn.

 Grumpy doing what he does best....

 Remember the cone flower photo I posted a few weeks ago, this is the entire plant!

 Today I was at Southern States, the coreopsis venticillata Moon Beam'were covered in bees. They had an end cap on 4-5 large plants that must have had 100 bees on them.  So I purchased one Moonbeam and one Zagreb for our bees. This bee is on sneezeweed I believe.

 This male Fiery Skipper was cooperative in letting me get a photo of it today at Southern States. These are one of the most common skippers in most gardens in the southern US.

The changing seasons

We have now had 90 days this year with 90 degree temps, it is getting real old. It might be over, the past 32 days we have had .13 inches of rain, it looks bad here. Summer gardening seems useless.... We have some rain on the way in the next 4 days of forecasts, lets hope it actually gets here.

Many of you might recall our getting a bunch of hellebores and a cyclamen last fall. Well the cyclamen has 2 blooms on it, the first in our garden. We suffered a good number of plant casualties this summer including Yuletide Camellia, 2 of the 3 discount camellias from Home Depot, 2 hellebores from Pineknot Farms and several other perennials.

Cyclamen hidden in our garden!

This Night Blooming Cereus from our porch two nights ago. It is a tropical catus Meg's daughter got in a yard sale for 15 cents over 12 years ago. We have had 2 other nights of blooming earlier in the season, this night we had 2 blooms. The blooms only last one night by the way. These photos were taken at 11 pm with my Canon G11 set to manual using the camera flash.

Pretty amazing this 8 inch very fragrant flower isn't it?

This is a Sleepy Orange caterpillar on Sicklepod. I found this last week while on a hike. The 10 x 10 patch of Sicklepod was pretty eaten up, in all there were at least 10-12 cats  there in various stages.

Stinging Caterpillars!

I found 5 of these saddleback caterpillars, Sibine stimulea on my Zebrine Banana on Sunday. They will sting you real good, just ask Meg. Meg sat on one once and another time touched one on Eastern Redbud by mistake. I have found them here on redbud several times, it grows like a weed here. Those horns have a venom and the pain can last for days so please stay clear of them when ever possible. These are about 3/4 inches long BTY.

This Saddleback Caterpillar is covered in wasp larva! Doubt it will live long enough to become a moth.

Below is an Gray Hairstreak butterfly on cantaloupe blossoms from our garden. I had the tiny camera one half inch from it for 3-4 minutes to get this photo, sometimes they do pose for you, it never flew off either.

Black Swallowtail news from Meg's Classroom. The 19 Black Swallowtail cats taken in are now 16 chrysalises and two of the eggs that hatched are still cats. She has 16 children in the class so one butterfly for each child to release back into nature.