Butterflies & Waterlilies at Duke Gardens

This past Wednesday I helped Meg's second grade class with a field trip to Sara P Duke Gardens. As you know they are raising butterflies, Black Swallowtails. So far as of yesterday 5 have emerged and have been released. Many classrooms raise and release butterflies, usually I do not recommend releasing butterflies raised from kits shipped from across the country. Releasing butterflies from local wild sources is a very good thing to do.

Female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on penta.

We found maybe 30 species of butterflies at Duke Gardens, the best ones were Painted Ladies, Long-tailed Skippers and a Delaware Skipper. About half the class witnessed a female Monarch laying eggs on Swamp Milkweed.

I had fun getting photos of the water gardens, every year the tropical water lilies get better. Still early in the water lily season I hope to go back and investigate further.

The lower terraces water garden looking from the right side.

The lower terraces water garden looking from the left side.

Burgundy water lilies so cool, hard to capture the color correctly on these beauties!

Lotus flower, this might have been a dwarf lotus, very small.

This is Autumn Clematis, it is having a great year here. Last spring I found a plant in the garden that the birds planted. I moved it to a better spot and it is already blooming. I saw honey bees gathering white nectar from it. We have a large mass of this going along the roadside about 1 1/2 miles from the house.

Waiting on these flowers!

Yes Tulip Poplar, Liriodendron tulipifera this is the flowers our honey bees make most of their honey with. Normally one can not see the buds or the flowers because they are high up in the trees. Our ponds edge has poplar saplings with buds so we can watch them develop.

Tulip Poplar bud, I knew they were starting budding this morning because the porch had lots of those leaves at the bottom of the buds on it. My guess is another one to two weeks before the bees get to enjoy them.

I saw my first blackberry bloom today, they can be a great food source for bees as well. The recent rains has helped the white clover bloom profusely along the roads around here as well. Of course the bees were very busy today.

Today Meg and I worked on the garden. Yesterday we went to Big Bloomers and bought a lot of new plants! A lot of them got planted today. My favorite is the 'Elizabeth' Ginger saw it at Duke Gardens and had to get it. Planted Moon Flower Vines and Cardinal Climbers to cover one end of the screened porch. We bought 4 kinds of ornamental sweet potatoes too, entirely new to the garden. Since we thought these would go great in pots, back to Ollie's to get some of those earthenware they are selling for cheap. We picked out 6 big pots for $75. The big blue ones I bought last time were gone..

 Meg was again in a panic about mice in the house. For weeks she has had 3 doors open to the outside all day. So either the mice wander in or Valentine (on top of our cloths line) brings them in alive and lets them go. Anyway Meg found a mouse in our pantry, it hid in a box of home made pickles. I carried the box out of the house, she got Valentine. She held her over the box and she got scratched, Valentines does not like to be told what to do.  The mouse jumped out of the box, Valentine assumed a play chase and shortly after waltz away with it in her mouth.

Dr Ruppel a full two weeks ahead of schedule.

Never would have dreamed!

We could grow carrots this big! These carrots are on a 2 x 6 railing to give you perspective on the size. The taste, well a lot better than store bought. You know those pre washed baby carrots that everyone buys these days, no taste at all when compared to freshly grown organic carrots. If you can't grown them, try buying some at your local farmers market, worth every penny trust me.

Our trick on these? We, OK Meg planted them in late fall and they were in the cold frame. We mixed lots of compost in the soil every year for the the past several years.  We also have spring planted carrots that are tiny right now, but growing every week. Just ate one of these so hard to resist.

 Here is the labyrinth bed of potatoes planted a few weeks ago. It starts on the lower left with a basil plant then potatoes go almost to the center. The after the potatoes pea greens in the center.

 Our larger garlic bed. You can see our onions on the left of the garlic, they are huge. The lettuce in the front is almost past prime at this point. The pepper plants on the lower left were grown from seed.

Meg you need to pick these Sugar Snap Peas! This is half on one of our three trellises of peas.

 Our latest blooming clematis, forgot the name of this one. Last year we had more blooms...

 Meg finally got some Comfrey. As you can see it is doing great in our garden. More on comfrey.

 Black Cohosh, Actaea racemosa Meg brought this home from an Women's Herbal Conference last year. Doing very well.

Self sown larkspur in the cold frame.

 In the past few years I have been taken in by spiderworts. I think this is the one I got from SweetBay. Just love it!

 Oh so beautiful.

 This one is the largest flowering one I have. It has been here for 10 years or so, my one plant in now 4 plants, not a fast spreader by any means.

This spiderwort is pale blue, the camera lost the blue in the petals. Saw an alba "white" spiderwort yesterday on a blog...

More on the 13 year cicadas, I found one casing on the deck earlier in the week and a confirmed one dead in a pan of water here in the yard this morning. We must be slightly out of the main brood. . I read a report of hundreds of thousands of them being seen and heard at Jordan Lake an hour from here.

Bees and Peas

The time is finally almost here, my bees are due very soon. Not sure I'm ready, we'll see. The hive is in the screened porch. I need to level in 2 concrete blocks over looking to pond for the bees and place the hive on it.

 Not sure  many of you know that Tulip Poplar flowers are the main bee pollen source right now in our area. Followed by blackberry flowers. This Tulip Poplar flower was one of many that were on the ground after high winds the other night. If not for the fallen flowers many of us would not even know the poplar was flowering high up in the trees.

 Here is 'Carolina Moonlight' baptisia, doing very well for a three year old plant. To the right of it is Meg's Sugar Snap Peas, just started flowering two days ago. Oh and that is the garden watch kitty Grumpy on the railing.

Here is another trellis of Sugar Snap Peas nearly 4 foot tall. I see peas on lots of blogs nobody seems to know the best way to plant them. I don't mean to insult anyone by that. This is how Meg plants them. Two rows about 1 foot apart plant the peas thick almost next to each other. Yes I said almost next to each other. You got to plant lots of peas as birds and other varmints will get them, other wise after they get what they can your left with very little pea plants. The yellow flowers at the top of the peas is our kale flowering in the cold frame.

This iris I have had for years, I used to know the name, great showing with three flowers at a time.

Clematis henrii in full bloom. I have had this plant for nearly 15 years. I counted 32 blooms this morning, once fully open maybe 60 flowers will open. Wish I knew how to control it better?

Spiderworts in bloom. I know many of you further south hate these as they are so invasive. Our hard clay and dry summers makes them stay put, so far.

Here is part of the garden. Fava beans in flower in the lower front center, peas at the back left side, the cold frame has bolting kale, to the right of the cold frame bolting mustard greens and rape. The dark green mass in the enter is Swamp Sunflower, massive isn't it. I trimmed it back a lot too!

 This peony I just happened to have a tape measure with me when I took this photo. The tape measure read 6 - 7/8 inches across! I believe the clematis henrii would match this in size too. Hard to believe we get 7 inch blooms in our garden!

Back in the fall when I planted these pansies I never imagined they would look this good in the garden. The pansies will falter once it gets in the 90s here and they will be pulled out. These were grown locally from seed less than a mile from here. The primrose next to it is my oldest primrose over 12 years old, it barely flowered this year and the flowers were stunted.

Sometime this weekend we have to pull up the kale, rape, mustard greens, arugula, muzuna all of which are bolting. And we need to plant potatoes (very late) tomatoes, peppers, basil and other plants we grew from seed.

A Sea of Blue

Last year we thought the Dwarf Crested Iris did very well in the shade garden. This patch was 10 ft x 10 ft and native when I moved in years ago. In 2008 the new septic field was put in and the irises were left to fend for themselves. Here is last years blooming photo of about half of them.

Now today's photo, many many more blooms. My guess would be 600-700 blooms! Certainly the largest patch of them I have ever seen. What do we do to them? Nothing they are wild, never watered or fertilized.

You can see why my estimate is 600-700 blooms, this is a square foot of them.

 Dr Ruppel clematis is doing better than ever, we have 5 blooms right now.

 Our first Fava Bean blooms, these plants are new to me. The Sugar Snap Peas are a good 2 foot tall, no blooms yet. Meg planted some at school a week or two before ours and she has tons of flowers right now.

Never showed you the bamboo border I did this winter. Here are 20 new daffodil bulbs. The ones on the left are Sir Winston Churchill. The woods behind the daffodils is the main hellebore garden. On Sunday I dug out a new bed and planted 5 of the new double hellebores and several of our own babies.

Here is my current job that I'd doing, another screened in porch. Today I spent all day on a ladder tearing off the little roof over the stairs and building a new roof. The new porch roof will link into the little roof. If I'm lucky I'll have it ready for my roofing guy by Monday. This photo was taken on Monday.

Oh notice the underside of the deck on the left swing mounts(the swings I brought home already), where should they go in our garden?

This is the deck three weeks ago before I started on it. The stairs were scary, very steep (8 1/4 inch rise and 10 inch treads). I have salvaged most of the decking boards and most of the lower deck which was made for kids.

Garden Goodies & More Daffodils

Meg pulled our first Carrot last week, here it is with one of the French Breakfast Radishes from the garden.

More of the French Breakfast Radishes. I think these are the best radishes we have grown, very tasty and not as hot as some radishes. I like eating 2-3 as a snack. Our garden is over run with them. The rain so far has made them extra big.

 As many of you might have recalled, I waited for Brent and Becky's end of season sale to get 50% off on daffodils and crocuses last year. For most of March I was thinking this was a mistake, as everything was so slow to come up having been planted so late. Now I have changed my mind.

Above is 'Falconet', I planted it on both sides of the back steps. It is very fragrant and has lots of flowers per stem, this is two stems. I'd rate this one very high on my list of favorites.

Above is 'Sound', it looks a bit like a slightly smaller Ice Follies to me, but is fragrant. The cup is supposed to be a sunset orange cup, to me it seems slightly orange. Wondering if the cone will turn orange as it ages?

 Not 100% sure but I think this is 'Ice Follies' it came in one of those mixed packages of daffodils. The cone should turn white with age.

Here is 'Misty Glen" I bought it locally and planted it in the fall on the dam to the pond. It is supposed to have a greenish cup, looks white to me.

Thought I'd revisit 'Pink Charms' I posted this 7 days ago and said I did not see any pink.  The flower in the front is about 7 days old and has turned slightly pink. The flower on the right is a fresh one and very yellow. These are planted along the driveway.

Above is 'Silver Chimes' it is fragrant and planted next to the gardenia bush in the back yard. I was able to take in the daffodil aromas standing in the backyard 15 foot from the daffodil plantings, misson accomplished! Another new favorite, just love the tazettas like 'Silver Charms' and 'Falconet'.

Here is 'Sir Winston Churchill' planted by the bamboo garden edging.

odorus flore pleno (plenus) Not looking very good, most bulbs did not bloom. Supposed to be a good naturalizer and is very fragrant. Still very unusual.


 Camellia Japonica 'April Dawn' we purchased at Camellia Forest two years ago in a gallon pot. This is the first and only bloom. We both really like this bloom!

 Japanese Roof Irises that I have had for a very long time. Meg brought over some blue ones they are almost ready to bloom.

Crested iris opened yesterday. We have maybe 25 blooms right now and expect 200-300. They are wild in the woods by our septic field.

Dr Ruppel our first clematis of the season. Clematis Armandii  'Snowdrift' did not survive the winter.

Last item. The new hydrangea I bought Meg at Costco. Looks like 4 plants in that pot and only $20.