Butterfly Flutter By

A Monarch butterfly visitor in my cutting garden

One of the fun things about gardening is enjoying all the visitors who drop by, especially lovely butterflies like this one. The neighbor who lives behind our back fence has told me more than once how she has noticed that many birds and butterflies came back to our area after I started my garden.  While many different butterflies enjoy the herbs and flowers I’ve planted, I’m interested in planting native plants to encourage many more such visitors. Native plants are, of course, THE way to go if you want to attract and nourish local fauna as Doug Tellamy and others have demonstrated.

Here is a list I recently put together of plants for a butterfly garden composed of plants native to the Illinois area. This list is arranged in the approximate order of the plants’ bloom periods, plus a lovely shrub suggestion. I’ve included links to each plant’s description on the Illinois Wildflowers website because that has beautiful pictures as well as very detailed information. The Possibility Place Nursery is an excellent source for native plants, and they just might have a plant sale coming to a place near you.

Prairie Violet, 3-6″ (spring and perhaps fall, too)  Nectar: small butterflies (inc. Spring Azure), and Duskywing skippers. Host: various Fritillary caterpillars.

Golden Alexanders, 1-2′ spring-early summer, 4 weeks and then has decorative seed heads) Host: caterpillars of Black Swallowtail

Cream Wild Indigo, 2′ (summer–May-June, 3 weeks) – or perhaps White Wild Indigo if you’d like something much taller (and a longer bloom period–summer, 4-6 weeks). Host: caterpillars of the butterflies Southern Dogface and Orange Sulfur, the skippers Hoary Edge and Wild Indigo Duskywing, and the moth Black-Spotted Prominent.

Butterfly Milkweed, 2-3′ (summer–June-Aug.). Nectar: various butterflies, including Swallowtails and Fritillaries. Host: Monarch butterfly caterpillars.

Hoary Vervain, 2-3′ (summer–June-Sep., 6 weeks). Host: Buckeye butterfly caterpillar.

Flax-Leaved Aster, 1-2′ (fall–July-Sept). Nectar: butterflies including Checkered White, Clouded Sulpher, Painted Lady, Comma, and Viceroy and skippers including Checkered Skipper. Host: caterpillars of Silvery Checkerspot butterfly, Pearl Crescent butterfly, and many moth species.

Prairie Blazing Star, 2-4′ (summer–July-Sep., 4 weeks) Nectar: Monarchs, Swallowtails, Painted Ladies, Sulfurs, Whites, and others. Host: caterpillars of the rare Schinia gloriosa (Glorious Flower Moth).

Wild Bergamot, 2-4′ (mid-summer–July-Sep., 4 weeks) Nectar: butterflies and skippers.

New England Aster, 2-5′ (fall–Aug.-Oct, 8 weeks) Nectar: butterflies, including Checkered White, Clouded Sulpher, Painted Lady, Comma, and Viceroy and skippers, including Checkered Skipper. Host: Pearl Crescent butterfly caterpillar

SHRUB: New Jersey Tea, 2-3′ (summer – 1 month), Nectar: some butterflies and moths. Host: Spring/Summer Azure butterfly, Mottled Duskywing skipper, and some moth caterpillars.

Site of the future butterfly garden at Lake Katherine

The Rosemary Challenge

Rosemary in a Terrarium – 1/23/13

Ah, rosemary! 9 winters out of 10 I fail to get it to survive in my house. I’ve tried it all–keeping its pot over a tray of water, covering it loosely with a plastic bag, and parking it by a basement window, where the poor insulation allows more moisture in. In fact, I have one plant in that window now, sitting over a pie plate filled with water. We’ll see how that one survives.

Oops! I need to add some water to that pie plate.

Fortunately, I have a friend, April, who is the Queen of Rosemary. She bought a small plant from Ace Hardware several years ago, and now it fills a 12-inch pot and served her family as a small Christmas tree this holiday season. Therefore, my backup plan for this winter is leaving several little rosemary plants at April’s house; these happen to be cuttings she took from her plant last year and which she brought to my yard this summer. Apparently rosemary grows better here in the summertime and stays alive better at April’s in the winter.

In addition I’m trying something new this year: putting a couple plants in a terrarium (pictured above).  I discovered that the beautiful terrarium my sister Ann gave me is quite practical for growing small moisture loving plants when I managed to keep a frosted fern alive in there for a good while.  So now we’ll see how these two rosemary plants survive there. One has started to bloom!

One way or another, I hope to succeed in overwintering some rosemary this year.

Falling with Style

Best Fall Ever

Summer may be my favorite season, but this fall–2012–is my favorite fall ever.

Hiking around Starved Rock – 10/8/12

For one thing, the beautiful colors have lasted longer here than usual. Usually it seems like autumn comes and goes in about two days, but we’ve been enjoying vibrant foliage and pretty good weather for several weeks now.  Perhaps I’ve been more aware of that because my family went to Starved Rock State Park on Columbus Day. It was my first time there, and it was a perfect day. The weather was sunny and cool, and several trees had already put on their fall fashions.

Fall in the Front Yard Garden – 10/25/12

Perhaps I’m more aware of this year’s fall colors because my own front yard garden is displaying them wonderfully, from the bright red burning bush on the north side (left of house) to the deep reds of the dwarf oakleaf hydrangea at the southern edge (right side). I don’t think I’ve ever seen the leaves on that hydrangea turn so beautifully. (I should press and dry some!) It looks great with the purple dome aster blooming by it, and the miscanthus has finally put some plumes up behind them. Meanwhile, the roses and Rosanne geraniums are still blooming away in other parts of the garden because we have not been hit by a hard frost yet.

Best Fall Containers Ever

As early frosts come and go, I keep rearranging the containers on the deck to keep the best looking summer ones out as long as I can. 10/1/12

Another reason this is the best fall ever is that I have the best fall containers ever, too. I used to think that changing container plantings with the seasons would cost too much time and money. However, I have found that changing just a few makes a great impact because I spend so much time viewing the deck from our kitchen as I work as well as enjoying the occasional evening by the fire out there.

View from kitchen door – 10/15/12

Ready for a relaxing evening! – 9/27/12

I have also discovered how to get a lot of bang for the buck on those container plantings. The four large ornamental kale started out as a $1 cell-pack that I bought in the spring. I planted them in the four corners of a salad bed in the garden, and look what was ready to transplant into my containers this fall–for just 25 cents each!

I transplanted this kale from the kitchen garden into its own container on the deck. The other three, two purple and one white, were combined with mums in other containers. 9/28/12

I also discovered a good source for nice BIG mums a few years ago when I happened to be working at the master gardener office on the day of the Farm Bureau‘s fall flower sale. These shrub-size beauties, which they get from Sunrise Greenhouse, sell for just $7 apiece. This year I got three in three different colors: orange, purple, and yellow.

The purple mum got its own container on the deck.

I put the yellow mum in a large container on the deck with two purple kale and a couple other transplants from the kitchen garden, some marigolds and amaranthus.

My favorite container is in the front yard. I combined the orange mum with white kale and added asparagus fern for filler/spiller.

Summer has not left me. It’s just falling with style!

Still Growing and Growing and Growing

Today's harvest. I'm not doing much in the garden besides harvesting it these days and then trying use or preserve it. http://t.co/4GfcUYaX

—
Debbie Rea (@SunshineRea1) September 11, 2012

Aw, Twitter turned my harvest picture sideways.

The zucchini plants have completely succumbed to the squash vine borer, so I won’t be getting any more zucchini. The cucumber vines are also shriveling up, hit–as always–by that bacterial wilt spread by cucumber beetles. (I kept them at bay with insect barrier row cover until blooms appeared. But I don’t have a good organic solution for what to do after that.) Nevertheless, I managed to snag a couple more cucumbers today.

Of course, I’m very pleased with the harvest of broccoli side shoots that I’m getting every few days. And the wax beans are coming in very nicely, too; this is especially good since most of my green beans didn’t even germinate this year.

The tomatoes are doing better than ever I think. The plants are certainly taller/longer than ever before. They’ve grown even more since this plcture was taken about a month ago.

Towering Tomatoes!

While there were only two tomatillos in today’s harvest, I had so many already harvested that today I made another round of tomatillo salsas, both raw and roasted chipotle.  This time I put half in the freezer to see how that’ll come out.

I did catch a good shot of a hummingbird right after I took that harvest picture on my deck this morning. Every time we see one of these amazing little birds at Chez Rea, we stop whatever we’re doing to watch it.  That’s a “hummingbird break.” I have another feeder attached to my kitchen window so I get to enjoy these visits even while I’m working at the sink.

One of Today’s Visitors

Rain and Harvest

Two updates from Thursday, 7/19/12:

WooHoo!! Lots of rain last night, and my four rain barrels are full. #rainblessings http://t.co/V6XCwKOc

—
Debbie Rea (@SunshineRea1) July 20, 2012

Here they come! The Chez Rea tomato harvest has begun. #harvestblessings http://t.co/3xuHYgOH

—
Debbie Rea (@SunshineRea1) July 20, 2012

My Glamorous Garden

Why yes, that IS my shed pictured in CHICAGOLAND GARDENING MAGAZINE!! http://t.co/G67NgtK0

—
Debbie Rea (@SunshineRea1) July 18, 2012

These tweets are nice way to put quick updates into this garden journal, especially when I don’t have time to write a longer post. Someday I’ll write more about how I came up with those colors for our shed.

Zucchini Zurprise

First zucchini caught me by surprise this morning as it had grown a bit too big over the weekend. #HarvestBlessings http://t.co/UyNbvMl0

—
Debbie Rea (@SunshineRea1) July 17, 2012

This is the first time I’ve grown zucchini in years. I had given up on it long ago because I couldn’t stand the squash bugs it was attracting back when I tried growing pumpkins. I decided to give it another try this year because I picked up some free seeds a year or two ago at a seed swap and because I was hoping the squash bugs would be long gone by now. So far so good–no squash bugs yet!