Joe-Pye Weed with Bees

Because it's been so hot and humid lately I've not spent much time in the garden. The last couple of days have been much more tolerable, and this afternoon I wandered out with camera in hand to see what I would see.

My main backyard garden bed is a mix of vegetable space and perennial flowers, with a fair amount of weeds and grass in the mix.

Today I noticed that I have several tomato fruits developing, my peppers have pretty, bell-like flowers but no fruits yet, and my cucumber plants have been nibbled badly and are not faring well.

But mostly I noticed the flowers and the bees. On a mass of flowering thyme, tiny bees were in constant motion. Purple coneflowers are flowering in abundance, and the phlox is now in bloom. And on the giant Joe-Pye weed, standing well over five feet tall, there was a bee on almost every flower cluster. I saw one bumble bee, as well.

Joe-Pye weed (genus Eutrochium) is well known as a wonderful attractor for bees, butterflies and moths. It is native to the eastern United States. It's a pity that it has "weed" in its name (as quite a few valuable wildflowers do, including the milkweed so important to our monarch butterflies), as it may sound less appealing to add to gardens, but it's a terrific native plant for this area, supporting our pollinators. This page about gardening to support wildlife in Minnesota has a helpful list of other flowers, shrubs and trees that will encourage our native insects and birds.

I don't know whether any of the bees I saw today were standard European honeybees, whose mysterious declines we have read so much about, or whether they were all native bees. Whichever kinds they were, they were all busy with the vital work of pollination, and I thank them.

Gardening for Wildlife

This blog claims to be about nature and garden, but the garden side of it has not had a lot of attention since its first couple of years. And since I shifted my focus primarily to birds and other encounters with nature, any gardening posts I have written seem like an abrupt switch of topic.

But there's a reason I subtitled this blog "Nature and Garden in Northfield, MN." It's because I feel that the garden, in its largest sense (not just a vegetable patch or a flower bed, as in common American usage, but a plant-focused environment that we design and manage for our sensory pleasure and leisure use, as well as sometimes for growing food) is absolutely linked to nature. So are farming and the other ways we use or misuse land, and that's one of the reasons I'm passionate about sustainable agriculture and land use policy. Nature isn't something detached from everyday life and food production; they are inextricably linked, and gardens and farms are two of the main places where nature and culture intersect. (Michael Pollan's book Second Nature is a wonderful exploration of this truth.) I've always been repelled by the notion of a garden as completely under human control, where insects (beneficial as well as destructive) and weeds are ruthlessly poisoned for a more "perfect," blemish-free appearance. That's not perfect to me; that's the antithesis of what a garden should be, and in gardens like that the hum of bees and the singing of birds tend to be silenced.

On the page of this blog called The Bookcase that Became a Blog, I wrote:

Penelopedia, the blog, came to be when I realized I had a cluster of interests that seemed to me fundamentally related. The way I realized this? I had a special bookcase near the kitchen that housed all my cookbooks and food magazines, organic gardening books and magazines, frugal living guides, Mother Earth News magazines, and field guides for birds, insects, wildflowers, trees and regional wildlife. That bookcase was essentially a blog waiting to happen. And then I read Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, about the pleasures and values behind leaving behind much of the industrialized food system and eating locally and traditionally raised food, and everything seemed to come together: respect for nature, animals, natural and traditional foods, sustainable food production that preserves biodiversity and doesn't abuse animals, simpler ways of life including growing your own food, and the deep importance of place.

We feed birds year-round and have added to our feeding program over time to invite a greater variety of birds to our feeders. Watching birds and learning more about them so I can explain what I've seen have been an easy focus for my interest in noticing the intersections between our daily, distracted human lives and the natural world around us. It seems to me now that the natural evolution of our birdfeeding program is to take what we have learned about birds' needs to make our generously sized yard more of a garden: a place where nature and culture intersect for the benefit of both, where birds and other small creatures can find shelter and sustenance while we humans can enjoy a pleasing view, a peaceful respite, and some home-grown food.

So this year, while planning our most extensive vegetable garden in several years, we're also starting to think more creatively about how we might use our outdoor space in support of the birds I love to photograph and write about. We're already well along that path. There are good features in place, from purple coneflowers and some other native plants, to a few established shrubs (good shelter for birds); to medium-sized and mature trees (and more nearby). We've been using a heated birdbath to provide welcome water for wildlife throughout the winter. And we garden organically for the most part and we never use pesticides in our garden. But there is more we can do.

We're going to get some advice from our friend Mary, a master gardener, editor of Northern Garden magazine, and author of the My Northern Garden blog. And we've been looking at websites like Ecosystem Gardening and the National Wildlife Federation's Garden for Wildlife. I've also been collecting landscaping-for-wildlife ideas (and other gardening and birding links) on Pinterest.

We're leery of taking on a larger project than we can manage in a growing season, so our steps will be modest. But I'm feeling energized by this vision, and I look forward to reporting on our progress.

And so here at Penelopedia, along with plenty of continued birdwatching and phenology and the rest of my typical fare, I hope to weave in a greater focus on gardening for wildlife -- thinking purposefully about how to make our little portion of the outdoors more hospitable to birds, butterflies and other creatures that may pass through. I also welcome hearing about your experiences and any advice you have on creating a more nature-friendly garden.

Recent Observations (Early August Phenology)

I haven't been keeping systematic records, so what follows is a fairly random set of observations about what's been going on lately. My last report of general observations was made in mid-June.

Red-breasted Nuthatch last winter

I commented then that we had last seen a red-breasted nuthatch on May 29. I don't think we saw any in June, but we have spotted one several times since mid-July. Based on maps of historical sightings available on eBird.org, it looks as if June sightings of red-breasted nuthatches this far south in Minnesota are quite rare, while July and August sightings are somewhat more common. The red-breasteds mainly breed to our north, and not at all in the southwestern part of Minnesota.

Our 1987 edition of Robert Janssen's Birds in Minnesota shows the breeding range as extending no further south than the Twin Cities, with the fall migration period starting probably mid-August, and the Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America shows the year-round range in Minnesota extending not much beyond the arrowhead region of northeastern Minnesota. The bird checklists from the Cowling Arboretum in Northfield and River Bend Nature Center in Faribault show the red-breasted nuthatch to be rarely reported in fall, winter, and spring, and not observed in summer. All these sources indicate that it is not historically common to find a red-breasted nuthatch in Rice County in the summer months, so we are excited to have done so.

Hairy Woodpecker

We haven't seen an oriole for several weeks. Common visitors to the bird feeders lately have included downy and (less often) hairy woodpeckers, blue jays, house finches, goldfinches, and chickadees. Mourning doves and chipping sparrows come for millet put out on our front walk. We have not been troubled by grackles or brown-headed cowbirds recently (in mid-June I reported grackles as our most common visitors). We don't often notice hummingbirds, though I did see one about a week ago. One day Dave saw six blue jays at the various feeders or in the nearby maple tree at the same time; usually we see only one or two.

On July 18 three baby raccoons appeared on our deck. One was seen again soon after on our front step. I haven't seen them since.

Baby raccoon

We have not been going out birding -- it's been so warm and humid that the idea has not been inviting. Summer isn't a peak time for our birding activities anyway, with the trees heavily leafed out, obscuring the view, but it can be fun to see turtles and families of young wood ducks in secluded ponds. After many humid days in the upper 80s and lower 90s, we are looking forward with relief to the coming week's forecast of a string of days with highs in the 70s and lows reaching down into the 50s.

Monarch and eastern tiger swallowtail butterflies have been common on our purple coneflowers the last several weeks. Joe-pye weed is also in bloom, and may be attracting them. Although I reported an early coneflower in mid-June (one that was closer to the house than most), most were not in full flower until July. 

Tiger Swallowtail

The last few days I have noticed that our garden phlox is flowering. I haven't kept records of that before.

Our half-hearted, late-started, much-neglected vegetable garden is in horrible condition. The six or so tomato plants look lush, but the swings between a cool June and extreme heat in the third week of July (up to 99 F. here, I believe, with outrageous dew points, putting the heat index well above 110) have limited the fruit production and certainly also limited my garden-upkeep efforts. I have picked a total of three cherry tomatoes (I think they are Super Sweet 100s); that plant has some more that are ripening, but nothing else is close to being ripe. I never got around to putting down a straw mulch, and the bed has been overtaken by tall grass. My attempt at bush beans succumbed to rabbits or other nibblers, and then got smothered by the grass. I have some cucumber plants that are growing well now, but not yet setting fruit. I have been cutting chives and basil for use in the kitchen, and we have a lot of lemon thyme and sage, but nothing else is producing.

I noticed my first flying geese of the season within the last week or two. There were some still-fuzzy half-grown goslings on the river not too long ago, suggesting a second hatching of the season.

Woodchuck!

I suppose I should be warned by the fact that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources' website only describes the woodchuck (or groundhog, or marmot, or whistle pig), in the context of management of nuisance animals and doesn't bother to list it in its main Mammals section. But I can't help but get excited when I see a relatively unfamiliar animal in the back yard, even if I know it probably wants to eat (and eat, and eat) our garden vegetables. I've only seen these a couple of times before, though I've now seen this one (assuming it's the same one) two or three times in the past several days. So here's a more complete guide (pdf) to the ecology (and control) of the woodchuck from the University of Wisconsin Extension.

Woodchuck passing our rear neighbor's fenced vegetable garden

Pausing for a moment in our yard. I later saw it on our deck!

Recent Observations (mid-June Phenology)

In no particular order, here are some recent Northfield-area nature and garden notes. All of the photos have large originals that can be seen if you click on the small images.

We last saw a red-breasted nuthatch at our feeders on May 29. I noted about two weeks earlier that each time I saw one I expected it to be the last time for the season. We've not seen any pine siskins, also mentioned in the post of two weeks ago, for quite a while either.

We've seen fewer songbirds and hummingbirds at the feeders as hatching insects and blooming flowers have offered more nutritional variety. It's my understanding that even birds that prefer seeds or fruit at some times of the year tend to feed insects to their hatchlings, due to the higher protein content. The grackles are becoming our most common visitors, enjoying the sunflower seeds, grape jelly and peanuts we put out with other birds in mind.

Weigela

One of the flowering shrubs that may be attracting the hummingbirds away from the feeder is our red Weigela bush, now in full flower. It's at a corner of the house that's not overlooked by any of our windows, so we don't have much opportunity to watch to see if the hummers are going there, but this bush is mentioned by a variety of sources as being very attractive to hummingbirds.

"Baby" crows are very comical -- as large as their parents and quite formidable-looking but bleating pitifully to be fed. We've heard them often and occasionally seen them near the house.

Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)

I noticed my first purple coneflower in bloom yesterday. Last year I noted on June 27 that they had been blooming for the previous week or so, but I'm pretty sure I meant they had been widely in bloom for that period of time. The oxeye daisies have also started blooming, though most are not yet out.

Small acorns

The oak tree next to our house has formed lots of small, green acorns. I haven't paid much attention in the past to the timing of acorn production, so I can't tell you how this compares to the second week of June in other years.

Chives

 We all know it's been a mainly cool and rainy spring, slowing down both farmers and home gardeners from getting their planting done. We bought vegetable plants Mother's Day weekend and had them under lights inside until last weekend, when we finally got enough garden space cleared to put in seven tomato plants and some broccoli (we lost our pepper plants when the cats got at them), just in time for the dry, windy heat wave straight from Arizona that brought the temperature into the low 100s by some readings.

Sage in flower

We hadn't done a good job of hardening off our plants beforehand, and several of them look terribly stressed, even though the cool, damp weather returned quickly. The perennial herbs in the bed are doing fine, though. The chives are nearing the end of their bloom and the sage has just started blooming. We also have a much larger patch of lemon thyme this year, which I didn't realize would come back on its own.

Cottonwood seeds on deck

The cottonwood seed fluff has really picked up today and is drifting lazily down, occasionally swirling in the breeze, and sticking to the deck, which is wet from a light rain sprinkle. This is about a week later than I wrote a post on "cottonwood snow" in 2009.

Pine Siskins on Seedheads

I've been very glad I left our purple coneflower seedheads uncut for proverbial "winter interest" this year. Not only have they provided a welcome visual variation from the snow-covered ground, but birds that like narrow seeds, including the goldfinch and the pine siskin (the bird shown below), have taken advantage of them from time to time throughout the winter, even though only a few feet away there is a mesh sock-style feeder full of Nyger thistle seed that's surely easier to cling to than these swaying stems.

Switching to Gardening Mode

So, who's planning a garden for this year? After a year of lying fallow and enjoying the fruits of our membership in Open Hands Farm CSA, I am definitely itching to start some seeds and get my hands dirty in the garden this year.

The good folks over at Just Food Co-op in Northfield are offering some get-ready-to-garden classes in the next several weeks. The first class is tomorrow! Call them to register: 507-650-0106.

Full disclosure: Just Food has been a client at my place of employment, but as I've made clear before, I am a longtime member and supporter independently of that business connection.


Garden Fertility: How to Grow Good Soil
Tuesday, February 8, 6:30-8:30 p.m. in the Just Food Community Room
Cost: $15/$12 owners
Jennifer Nelson of Gardens of Eagan will expound on the importance of healthy soil. GOE's claim of "Dirt First!" is no empty slogan. An organic farmer's most important job is growing the soil. GOE will pass on some of their secrets for the benefit of your garden.

Pruning 101
Saturday, February 12, 2-4 p.m. at Thorn Crest Farm, 11885 Cabot Ave, Dundas
Cost: FREE
Come out to the orchard and learn how to prune apple trees and raspberry bushes. Gary Vosejpka, owner of Thorn Crest Farm, will give a hands-on demonstration of the techniques in the orchard and raspberry patch. Learn the appropriate time and basic skills necessary to prune for maximum production. Wear boots and dress for the weather. Expect deep snow out at the farm.

Ready, Set, Garden!
Saturday, February 19, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. in the Just Food Community Room
Cost: $15/12 owner
Sara Morrison, owner of The Backyard Grocery, will be discussing seed starting, companion planting and getting the most out of your backyard garden plot this season. This two-hour class will include instruction on choosing plant varieties, seed companies, seed starting equipment, planting mediums and seedling care, as well as ways to plan the garden so all inhabitants get along and thrive. The class will be a verdant mix of horticulture, history and general backyard garden fun. Be sure to bring your questions! www.thebackyardgrocery.com

Beginning Beekeeping
March 3, 7-8:30 p.m. in the Just Food Community Room
Cost: FREE
If you’ve thought about having your own backyard honey supply, this is for you. In addition to the culinary benefits of keeping bees you can help to increase the number of pollinators in our community. Find out what equipment you need, how to choose from the different kinds of bees, how to manage hives during the season, and whether to manage your bees organically. Learn about resources for classes, equipment, and beekeeping groups. Local farmer and beekeeper Chris Sullivan Kelley will share the basics of the apiculture trade.

Seasonal Eating Calendar
Tuesday, March 8, 6:30-8:30 p.m. in the Just Food Community Room
Cost: $15/$12 owners
Join Jennifer Nelson from Gardens of Eagan to learn how to plan your life around local, seasonal foods. Create your seasonal eating calendar of when and how to plan your garden, weekly menus, working with CSA deliveries, winter eating and more. With a little planning, your family can live a healthier, seasonal lifestyle while eating real, good food.

Call 507-650-0106 or stop by the store to reserve a space in these classes.

What to Grow?

Last year's garden in late June


Okay, putting on my gardening hat now. I'm a bit at a loss over what to do with my vegetable garden this season. We are splitting a CSA (community-supported agriculture) share, so we should have plenty of produce all summer and I'm a bit afraid of having too much if I plant much myself. The only perennial foods in my garden are rhubarb, chives and sage, apart from no doubt some self-seeded tomatoes from last year's overflow of fruits that split on the vine, and maybe a few other volunteers. I'd like to establish some bunching onions, but the rest of the bed is available.

So, what else would you advise planting at this point, either direct-seeded or with purchased seedlings? If I act very quickly I could get some asparagus plants and plan a permanent row, but I suspect I won't.

Maybe this is the year to have a riotous bed of annual flowers, but that can get expensive, and it feels a bit late to start anything from seed.

Maybe I should plant a cover crop and let everything else lie fallow for a year.

What would you do?

Tulips From My Garden

Tulips in bloom, April 26. Click on the collage to see lots more detail.

Snow Retreats, Spring Growth Bursts Forth

This garden bed in front of my living-room window was snow-covered until the weekend (my red squirrel post showed it still thickly covered on Friday morning), and already the daffodil shoots are springing up. The readiness of life to burst forth as soon as conditions are favorable is always amazing to me.

Using Up Tomatoes

I hadn't gone out to pick tomatoes in several days, so today there were most of a colander's worth of cherry tomatoes and several full-size ones of several varieties that were ready to be picked. Quite a few were overripe on the vine, in fact, and went straight into the compost pile. Also I was surprised to find this large summer squash hiding under the leaves. My zucchini plants wilted suddenly a couple of weeks ago and now you can hardly even see where they were, but the yellow squash plant is still vigorous and is suddenly churning out new babies like crazy. Maybe it's this warm weather we've been having lately. The huge pink-and-yellow tomato stem-side down next to the squash is one of the Striped Germans that are so pretty to look at.

The Striped German, a Tasty Evergreen, a Green Zebra and a couple of more generic red tomatoes got chopped up and mixed with chopped green onions, chopped cilantro, a small jalapeno pepper finely diced while wearing rubber gloves, lime juice, salt, and pepper to make a large batch of fresh salsa that will make a nice topping for quesadillas or grilled meat.

I decided to try to preserve more of the cherry tomatoes for later eating (I recently dried some in the oven). I followed a simple recipe for sauteed cherry tomatoes which was meant to be eaten immediately as a side dish, but decided I would freeze it in several batches.

After weeding out a few I had picked that looked a bit too mushy, I nearly filled a souffle dish with halved cherry tomatoes. I also picked some basil, thyme and parsley from the garden.

Into a large frying pan went 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil and when it was hot the tomatoes followed. After just a few minutes of sauteeing, I added some garlic puree and when that had become fragrant I added the chopped herbs, salt and pepper and took the mixture off the heat.

When the sauteed tomatoes had cooled, I filled 3 small containers with the fruit (or vegetables, if you prefer) and their copious liquid and put them into the freezer to enjoy on a fall or winter day. I'll try to remember to report on how they are when we get around to eating them.

I still have several more tomatoes ready to eat, and plenty more on the vine. Maybe nine tomato plants was a bit too much, but it's a wonderful situation to be in!

Tomato Jungle

My late-summer garden is a tangle of tomato plants. I've been picking the cherry varieties for several weeks, but the big slicers, especially the heirloom varieties, are just ripening now. Below are some of the red grape variety, which are not as wonderful-tasting as the hybrid Sun Golds (some are visible at the back), but which have proved much more resistant to splitting after the heavy rains we've had lately. I've had to put dozens of the delicious Sun Golds into the compost pile, but I have also resolved to save some of their seeds since I have so many otherwise going to "waste" (not that contributing to compost can be considered a total waste). When I can tell that they have very recently split and still look fresh I still sometimes try to use them, but if the split has dried or the fruit looks as if it is starting to rot, I consign them to the pile.

I've never dried tomatoes before, but the sweet Sun Golds are so prolific and proved so wonderful on pizza recently that I think I will dry a freezer-bagful. To do this, you wash them and cut them in half, spread them cut-side up (some sources say cut-side down) on a baking sheet, and place in a very slow oven (200 F.) for several hours, until leathery but still pliable. Some recipes call for salting the tomatoes and/or seasoning with Italian herbs before drying them. When properly dried they can be kept in the cupboard in a glass jar, but since this is a judgment call probably best made after some trial and error, I will keep mine in the freezer to avoid any risk of mold that could grow if they are not sufficiently dry. I'd hate to lose any.

Above is a mammoth Striped German heirloom tomato. I picked a similar one already, wrestling it out from between the supports; it more than filled my entire hand and probably weighed more than a pound. Unfortunately, it was so tightly wedged against the tomato behind it and the metal cage wires that it emerged sadly bruised. These have a old-fashioned appearance and are rather ribbed from the outside; they are marvelous to look at when sliced, as their flesh is a lovely yellow with red streaks. I have grown these before, and I think their flavor and texture make them a decent rival for the classic "best-tasting" Brandywines.

Above are Tasty Evergreens, a new variety for me this year, which are also getting quite large. The tag says to pick these when green with a yellow tinge, so after taking this photo I picked the closer one, but I haven't sliced it yet.

And here is the Green Zebra variety, another kind I've not grown before. I couldn't find the planting tag and was wondering how to tell when to pick these, but Johnny's Selected Seeds says they are ripe just as the green fruit develops a yellow blush, as the closer fruit above is starting to do. The photo on Seed Savers Exchange (first link above) seems to show that the main portion of the skin will turn considerably yellower than this, with distinctive green stripes remaining. Either way, these are very attractive. Johnny's notes that these are "not technically an heirloom" but lists them with its other heirlooms.

I bought all my tomato plants at Just Food Co-op's Mother's Day plant sale this year; most of the large, vigorous seedlings were raised by the nice folks at Big Woods Farm.

I've done no fertilizing this year other than digging some purchased compost into the soil before planting. I put down straw mulch, and except where it wasn't thick enough, I've needed to do very little weeding. (Whether I've actually weeded where I needed to is a story better left untold.)

Happy tomato season, everyone.

Summer's Bounty

We're halfway through the summer Eat Local Challenge, so in abbreviated form let me comment on some of my pleasures of the season:

• A batch of "dilly beans" marinating in my fridge right now, made from string beans our backyard neighbor gave us from his garden, and dill from our own. I don't make enough to can these, but I follow Jane Brody's recipe for a batch big enough to enjoy as a side dish for several days.
  
• Dinner tonight: 1000 Hills Cattle local, grass-fed beef hamburgers on bakery buns with slices of the first ripe slicing tomato from our garden, plus sweet, buttery corn on the cob from Grism's stand on Water Street
• A dozen or so new Sun Gold cherry tomatoes ripen every day or so in the garden - extremely prolific, early to ripen, and utterly delicious
• Enough zucchini from my two plants over the past two or three weeks that we have made zucchini-cheese bake, zucchini muffins, chocolate zucchini cake and oven-roasted zucchini "fries" (melt-in-your-mouth wonderful)
  
• The ever-wonderful local tortilla chips (both yellow and blue corn varieties) from Whole Grain Milling Company in Welcome, Minn. A terrific addition to practically any occasion.
• A mind-bogglingly enormous cabbage from a recent farmers' market made a nice big batch of Asian coleslaw, and we've still got some cabbage left over
• Potato salad from local farmers' market potatoes
  
• Cucumbers from my colleague's garden, plus some more of my own. I eat them many ways, but one favorite way is to chop them up and put them on top of a quesadilla that's first topped with good salsa, either homemade or Salsa Lisa (made in Minneapolis)

Things I still look forward to this summer: ripe cantaloupe (there's plenty around; I just haven't bought any yet); enough big ripe tomatoes to pile up on my kitchen counter and make lavish tomato sandwiches and fresh salsa with lime and cilantro; perhaps a blueberry-picking outing to the lovely Rush River Produce at Maiden Rock, Wisconsin, overlooking Lake Pepin (their website says that their midseason Nelson crop has failed, but they expect good picking from the Elliots in late August).

What are you enjoying eating this summer?

Surprise Lilies

Every year I forget about the surprise lilies, and every year up they pop and add a touch of unexpected grace to the jungle that is my garden by this point in the summer. Also known as naked ladies and spider lilies, they belong to the genus Lycoris; the most common version in our part of the country is Lycoris squamigera, which bears pink flowers.

They do have leaves: their strap-like foliage comes up in the spring, but it eventually withers and dies completely back, so that you forget that the plant was ever there.

Weeks later, usually around the beginning of August in southern Minnesota, the tall flower shoots emerge seemingly from nowhere. This year we even mowed the end of the bed where they are, so their leafless appearance is even more startling.

I took these photos on Saturday; all of the shoots seen above are now in full bloom. You can learn more about surprise lilies here.

Morning in the Garden After Rains

The harvest is really coming in well now. I have four good-sized zucchinis in my kitchen right now, including these two, and I picked my first cucumber today. I hadn't picked cherry tomatoes for a couple of days, and at least a pintful were ripe and ready for my helper and me this morning.

Yesterday morning's and last night's heavy rainfalls, much needed this year, caused about some of the ripest Sun Golds to split. The delicious Sun Golds have a thin skin, which probably accounts for it. I also have a red grape variety, which doesn't seem as susceptible. I'll wash the split ones well and use them quickly so they don't start to rot. (We're thinking of gazpacho.) The usual advice for avoiding split tomatoes is to water evenly, but some varieties are more vulnerable to splitting than others.

It didn't help that I set the basket down on the grass while examining the cucumbers, and then stepped backward onto it. Squelch! Only a couple got really squashed, though.

I haven't yet picked a yellow squash, but maybe tomorrow. What a profusion of blossoms.


We noticed a couple of bumblebees, an unidentified creature that gave the impression of a large bee with very long legs, an ant with wings (my son saw that one; I didn't), a Monarch butterfly on the joe-pye weed (above) , and a soldier beetle on my sage plant (below).

I looked up the soldier beetle in Rodale's Color Handbook of Garden Insects, as I didn't recognize it. It's also known as Pennsylvania leather-wing (Chauliognathus pennsylvanicus). This beneficial garden insect feeds on grasshopper eggs, cucumber beetles, and various caterpillars. One writer in the New York Times said it "annoys me with its habit of mating and then dying in the flowers. It seems to prefer the everlastings, and I find its sere remains (the color holds beautifully) when I arrange the statice for winter bouquets."

Zucchini Flower with Native Bee

Here are the first of my zucchinis - I'll probably pick the larger one in the next day or so.

When leaning in to take a photo looking into an open squash blossom, I found it was occupied. This looks like something other than a honeybee; native bees can also be very useful pollinators. In doing a little research just now, I learned from the U.S. Forest Service's Celebrating Wildflowers website that there is in fact a specialist bee for squash: "native solitary bees of two genera, Peponapis and Xenoglossa, the so-called 'squash bees." From the photos shown there, it looks rather likely that the bee inside my squash flower is indeed a squash bee.

Squash bees have been shown to be excellent pollinators of zucchini and butternut squashes, among others. If numerous, they thoroughly pollinate all available flowers, rendering later visits of honeybees superfluous. Before Europeans brought honeybees to the New World, squash bees were busy aiding the adoption, domestication, spread, and production of squashes and gourds by indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. [quote is from the USFS site linked above]

Here's a crop of the same photo that shows the fuzzy texture inside the flower and gives a better look at the creature within. Click on the photo for even more detail.