Observations of the Weekend June 10 - 11, 2017

My dear friend Jack Doran's father passed away.  He was a very sweet, cheerful, happy man.  He will be sorely missed by all those who knew him.

I found a praying mantis egg sac on one of my roses this morning.  It was empty - there was a hole in it which indicates all the babies have left the nest.  They are very recognizable - oval, about two inches long, and made of paper like wasp nests.  And while I was weeding in the Rose Garden I found an abandoned bird nest in one of the Noisettes with two little beige eggs with brown speckles.  It's my weekend for finding cool things I guess.

I noticed there are buds on my Montbretia.  Great!  I dug up many, many of the tiny bulbs last winter and moved them all over the place in the Orchard and in several places in the Star Garden.

This weekend I saw lots of Giant Swallowtails and Tiger Swallowtails.  These two varieties are some of the most beautiful and largest of all the butterflies in North America.  They are common around here, but I never grow tired of watching the pretty things.

On Sunday my neighbor Amy Thomeson invited me to go collecting seeds which I was very happy to do.  She is very knowledgeable about the natives around here, and she identified many things I've been curious about.  She also tells me which plants are invasive and which plants to encourage. We collected seeds along the small roads around here.

I gathered seed from Silver Bluestem, the seed heads are white and fluffy.   The plant is small but the seed heads grow about two feet tall.
Silver Bluestem:

 Below, this is Canada Wild Rye:

Below, this is Indian Tobacco:

Below, this is Illinois Bundleflower - in this picture the seed heads are not yet dried out.  But Amy knew of a big patch where they were all dried out.  The flowers are little puffballs.  This is excellent foraging for wildlife and cattle and is considered one of the most important native legumes.  The seed balls are really interesting-looking.

I also gathered a lot of giant thistle.  They are pink and grow about three feet tall.  They are prickly, but the butterflies love them.
Below, this is a patch of Basket Flower on the side of the road.  But the seed heads weren't quite dry so we left it.

 I also gathered some blanket flower because there were large patches of dried seed heads, but I was mostly looking for seeds from plants that aren't easy to find on seed websites.

What a great morning!  Thank you to Amy who is teaching me so much!