Alas, Not Your Typical Monarch ...

I'll admit right up front here that this is not the kind of post I'd rather be writing about one of our Fall Monarch Denizens here in the garden at Casa IVG. Fernymoss discovered this unfortunate Monarch last weekend when he was out with the camera, taking shots of the pumpkins in the back garden. As most of you probably know, we virtually worship and put out all the welcome flowers we can to attract butterflies to our garden, so this was a very disconcerting find for both of us ... after watching a Monarch chrysalis develop over the past several weeks (and eventual departure of said Monarch), we could only wonder if this poor fellow might be the one we watched develop. Of course, there's no sure way of knowing, but that makes little difference given the obvious handicaps this unfortunate butterfly possesses. In this shot you can see that his fourth wing never developed properly, which probably explains why he was found resting in the grass, rather than higher up. In addition, he only has four legs, which is not immediately apparent in this shot.
At this point, Fernymoss had moved him up to one of the Zinnias in the back garden, not only to provide him with a bit of food, but also to get a better look at just how deformed that third wing really is ... it's quite sad, we thought, that this poor fellow is already likely behind his flock in migrating, and appears to have little chance of being able to perform the migration that he's hard wired to accomplish. Of course, in the greater scheme of Nature, I'm sure this sort of thing happens more often than we'd like to admit, but when one is made a personal witness to Nature in action, it's not always a pretty sight. I guess the whole thing that bothers me the most is that our populations of Monarchs are more and more endangered, from pesticides to genetically altered crops, to who knows what Frankensteinian perversions the Agribusiness industry has perpetrated on our once reliable insect populations. True, I could be exaggerating the import of finding this unfortunate Monarch in our garden, but with all the changes in climate we've experienced in the mere 10 years we've lived here, it's hard not to wonder about some of the causes of the odder occurrences we've seen in that time. If you've still not seen An Inconvenient Truth, this might be a good time to see what we're up against in the years to come....
Alas, this final shot clearly shows what our poor friend is up against ... a deformed third wing and lack of the requisite six legs... although he had a limited ability to fly, he did make a heroic effort to move from this flower eventually ... as to where he went and his subsequent fate, we know nothing. But the odds didn't look very good for him achieving his purpose ... again, the dispassionate voice in me says that this is Nature in action, but in this particular case, it's really hard not to take this one personally. We do our best to provide a good environment for the bees and butterflies, and when we see something like this (a first this year!), it does have a way of putting a damper on our garden ideals. I guess the long and the short of it is that I'd rather be reporting more positive news from the Fall garden here ...Take this post as you will ... diatribe or documentary ... I'm still not sure where I weigh in on that, but as I said at the outset, this is not the type of post I'd like to be writing abut our Fall butterfly denizens.

I prefer the happier, more productive times of mid-summer, obviously. I'm still struggling here to accept the definitive arrival of Fall. Yep, that's a big river, denial....

Detecting a Real Fall Trend Here ...

This past weekend certainly had all the harbingers of fall in sway ... with cool, rainy days and nights, and as we experienced today, some of the very windy, remnants of Ike blew through. I saw on the regional radar last night that a few former outer bands of Ike's stormy weather were actually passing through the SE corner of the state, into Illinois and beyond. I suspect that more than a few midwestern gardeners also noticed these effects as well... Indeed, Fall is creeping quickly on to the gardening scene around Casa IVG, as the rest of this post will show, I hope....

Anyway, as you can now see, the Chrysalis has now been officially vacated ... it must have been sometime Thursday (when last we checked it) overnight or during the day Friday, which was a very rainy day and night here ... in any case we wish her/him well on the journey ahead, and hope s/he comes back next year and brings friends! I guess I know instinctively what's coming ahead in the season, and with the imminent departure of the butterflies, it's near certain proof that it's time to quit boating in denial, and just accept it.

The Praying Mantises are still around and quite visible, especially on the aphid infested Heliopsis (aka: Yellow Rogue) out by the shed. Both Fernymoss and I got shots of this guy at work, but I liked this series that Fernymoss got, so his photos won out. Just a Saturday afternoon session at the Lunch Counter for this lucky Mantis pal of ours ... and most days if we take a good look around, we can usually see this or one of his friends hanging out as well. I hope they do realize that they are the only reason why these Heliopsis haven't been dug/ripped out of the ground by now. Fortunately those aphids don't migrate to our other plants, and we've decided that the Mantises definitely have had something to do with that. Anyway, as most now know, we're tickled to have these guys in the garden ... we think they may be here to stay now that we've two full years of Mantis Guard....
Out in the savage back veggie garden, Punkinstein is still running amok and now crawling over the fence we have up to keep the dogs out (it doesn't work well with Pepa!), and into the back yard. They're still blooming prolifically, and are producing a few pumpkins --unless there are some as yet undiscovered ones, which is possible-- but we're assured we'll have at least two small ones ... now the question is whether they will fully ripen to orange by Halloween. We went grocery shopping today and saw they already had pumpkins for sale, but I somehow suspect they came from another place, because I'd find it hard to believe Iowa grown pumpkins would be that ripe already ... anyway, time will tell. Now, what might Pepa be peering through the fencing to see?
Yep, it's one of Punkinstein's progeny lying just on the other side of the fence, and when I looked at this new one last time, I recall it was about baseball sized, and now look at it! I'm sure they appreciated all the cool, rainy weather we've had for the last week and have really been (literally) soaking it up. Even though the veggie garden has been a savage jungle the last month or so, we're really proud of two of our more unusual growing attempts ... we had several rows of our own, organic corn that gave us several good meals, and now we seem primed to have our own organic Halloween pumpkins as well! The corn stalks are starting to dry on their own, and the few tardive ears that have developed --since we stopped harvesting a week or so ago-- will be shucked and left to whatever critters in the yard may want them. I suspect the tree rats will likely be the recipients, but I wouldn't mind if a raccoon happened through and found them ... one of our mild concerns with the corn was that we'd lose it to raccoons, but if they've been around, they have either been very discreet in thievery or respectful ... in either case, we got a crop out of it, and have even more Halloween decorations drying out back...
Though this is anything but a 'fall' flower, the abundance of fiery orange certainly suggests (ok, it screams) autumn hues. Both 'Sun Showers' and 'Erin Rachel' (more on them in another post) were blooming abundantly this weekend, and both of us ended up taking very similar shots of them (though independently of each other!), and we both focused on getting close ups of this particular bud, with another open bloom in the background. Both sets turned out pretty well, but I selected this one from Fernymoss' because I liked the detail and the overall composition ... aren't those buds as delectable as the open flowers? I have to say, 'Sun Showers' is the most spectacular tropical hibiscus I've ever owned (even when pitted against the double blooming red Chinese one I had through college and grad school), and it was worth every bit of its high end price of $45! You can bet we'll be pampering these two more this winter to keep them happy, and even perhaps blooming! Anyway, such vibrant orange leads to thinking of Halloween, which then leads to thinking of Halloween themed colors, such as black....
While I was out looking for the Chrysalis yesterday, I spotted this spider working her web in the vicinity of the now-voided chrysalis ... I can't provide a positive ID on her, but she looks a lot like that one I posted a while back (the one who was carrying her little ones). In any case, when I shot her, she was pretty mellow (Fernymoss tried later and scared her a bit), so I was able to get up fairly close. Hmm, spiders, fall, black after orange ... there is definitely a fall trend going on here.

As the garden winds down, inevitably, there are still bright spots to be seen, mostly among the remaining annuals you'll see over the coming days ... some of the perennials (namely the Ligularia dentata) are still in full swing --yay Toad Lilies! Yay Queen Rudbeckia!-- but the general trend is definitely on the winding down side of the cycle. I picked a few tomatoes yesterday and they're ripening much too slowly with this recent cool weather, but are still tasting pretty good ... my miserable peppers are now rebounding (too little, too late), but I still hold out few hopes to see much from them. So we were blessed by the garden gods in some respects and eh, slighted in others? Such is the gardening cycle we play every year ... we play with what we're dealt, and given the unusual nature of this particular summer, I think we still came out pretty well, all things considered. At this point, we're still pretty pleased, despite the onslaught of weeds this wet summer brought upon us....
I'm sure no one saw this coming ... Halloween Full Bore is nearly upon us here at Casa IVG. As long time readers already know, this is our big decorating event of the year (aside from Christmas blogging). While we were out shopping today, we made one of our periodic trips to Big Lots, one of those stores we like to check out every couple of months or so, just to see what they have ... and where we can often pick up many grocery items we'd pay more for at the regular places.

Of course, they had all their Halloween regalia on display, but aside from the usual items astute Halloween shoppers see, this particular item, 'Mr. Foggy, Mist Making Skull,' caught my eye, imagination and $20. It's actually a quite fun --and different-- Halloween decoration that does something ... it produces ample water vapor illuminated by interior LEDs. So I thought I'd include this short video just for fun ... I think you'll get an idea of what it does, even from this rudimentary set up. What we really intend to do with it is a bit more thematic ... some gravel, rocks, bones and other items placed around it. But I couldn't resist showing it off as it gave one of its début performances. After a while, it actually makes a nice, quiet gurgling ambient sound, but what you'll hear most prominently is the sound of Rolly panting in the background ... this recent weather with so much humidity in the air hasn't been kind to either humans or animals, but it too will pass soon...

Update on other matters: In case anyone was wondering what I was up to this weekend, other than neglecting the blog, I was very much involved with searching out and testing various programs to produce the Urban Oasis Calendar 2009. After upgrading to the most recent version of my photo editing software, I realized that it really lacks the capabilities to produce the kind of calendar we want to do, so I went hunting on the tubes to see what I could find that would do what we want to do. After testing out about a dozen or so programs (all rejected for one reason or another), I've almost come to a decision, and it may be a somewhat costly one, but still ... We want to produce a quality product we can proudly give our friends and family.

At this point, I still have a couple of other programs I want to check out, but I'm tending toward the higher end (e.g. expensive) solution offered by SmartDraw. It has the kind of ultimate hands on control of all options of the calendar I want to be able to manipulate, but it comes at a price ($99.00 US) ... we'll see what wins out, but at any rate I wanted to say that we're working on the calendar in the background, and it's pretty certain that it will happen eventually (I'd like to have it wrapped by mid-November). Fernymoss has been busy of late compiling some really cool and helpful enviro-friendly tips about pest control and other topics ... we'll also be including all the usual (and unusual) holidays, as well as the moon phases, and even more that Fernymoss will probably contribute. We've got the basic layout (depending on the software I choose) established at this point, and some preliminary photos have been identified, so it's just a matter of time ... and software chosen to do the job! I'll keep you updated....

And, as I've said before, if anyone would like to nominate particular pictures they've liked over this year, feel free to point them out in the comments ... we've got each month mapped out provisionally, but are certainly still open to suggestions. Depending on what software I eventually choose, we can probably include multiple images on certain pages (cover, interior page, back cover), so if anyone has any favorites, let us know!

Monarch Chrysalis Update and Other Treats

Here's Thursday's update on our developing Monarch Chrysalis ... Fernymoss took this shot a little after 6:30 tonight when the light wasn't the greatest (it's been cloudy and rainy again today). We can detect a little more progress (you can begin to see the coloring in the wings), though the chrysalis still seems a bit on the cloudy side, but at least we didn't miss the emergence yet! I'm wondering if this sudden cool down has slowed its development a bit (care to weigh in on that, Shady?). We're supposed to get back into the sunnier 70s this weekend, so maybe that will make things move along more quickly ... No matter, we'll keep watching and posting on its progress...
Ok, this is an evil teaser shot of an upcoming post on the Toad Lilies who are starting to burst into bloom in the Woodland Garden, and there are going to be a lot of them! This particular cultivar, 'Amethystina,' was really slow to get going at first (it was a tiny mail order plant about 4 years ago), but this year it has really come into its own, and this the most it has ever bloomed thus far. What we really liked about this particular shot is that it shows the flowers at all stages of blooming ... from the bulbous buds, to the half open, fully open and even spent blooms. It's part of an ever expanding Toad Lily colony very close to the house, just outside our dining room windows, so every morning when I put up the blinds, I can get a good look at them. All 3 of the ones in this location in the Woodland Garden are spreading quite nicely, and our original one (which goes back about 7 years or more) is positively huge this year ... almost 4 ft tall! It's currently putting on a lot of buds, but has yet to start blooming in earnest.

Can you see now why I'm always proselytizing Toad Liles for the late summer/fall garden? They thrive in moist conditions in part to full shade, are virtually maintenance free (unless it's dry when, of course, they must be watered regularly), prolific bloomers, and produce downright fantastical flowers. Fernymoss likes to refer to them as 'Dr. Seuss Flowers' because of their whimsical forms ... they inevitably evoke comparisons to Orchids, but are in fact members of the Liliaceae family. One warning though: once you get hooked on Toad Lilies, it can quickly become addictive! I did refrain from buying any new ones this year, but that was only because the ones I saw for sale we already have! Stay tuned for an entire post on them coming soon....
Obviously there's a lot going on in this shot, so a little explanation is in order ... I think I've already whined and moaned about how the volunteer morning glories are threatening to take over again this year, but this is a kind of fun shot nonetheless. Believe it or not, that pole in the foreground is the support for a Blue Wisteria that Fernymoss is training into a tree form ... he had tied it earlier this summer and then these morning glories came in and picked up the task, so when we figured out that most were the purple ones (Grandpa Ott) we'd just let them do the tying for us. Since it was so cloudy today, these were still open in the early evening when he took this shot.

No worries though, the Wisteria is doing fine and is nicely supported, but the morning glories are going to have to go either before or after frost. To the left, and in the background, you can see our Castor Zanzibariensis in the back yard where it continues to grow ... seemingly by the minute! It's at least 7 ft tall now, and provided we don't get an early frost, it should put on at least a few more feet before all is said and done. Personally, if it doesn't get a chance to bloom, I'll be ok with that, because we have so many seeds from last year's plants we're in good shape for a couple of years (and have plenty to share). Castor seed viability is remarkable in that it will last at least 2-3 years, though when planting older seeds, we always plant several just to make sure at least a couple germinate. They're such an exotic, easy and fun plant to grow that we just have to have a few each year. I keep dreaming of an entire row of them lining the back garden space ... though if we did that, Fernymoss would have a lot to saw down after the killing freeze ... still, I think it would be a fun experiment!
Ok, this one's for Gail ... Here's a quick update on the new Celosia 'Caracas' plants that we have out in the front boulder bed ... this one is leaning over a bit (got top heavy!), but it shows how well they branch and bloom without any prodding. I continue to be impressed with this new variety, and look forward to seeing more of it next year (we'll be spreading a lot of seed around!) ... with its bronzy red foliage and stems --not to mention the blooms!-- so if you're already a fan of Celosia in any form, this is definitely one to look for in garden centers next year! Oh, and it's grown to over 4 ft so far ... what more could you ask of a Celosia?

Monarch Chrysalis in the Woodland Garden

Just to follow up on the Monarch Caterpillar I posted on Tuesday ... and a big shout out to Shady Gardener for her comment providing us with such great information about the progress to expect over the next few days! Thanks so much, Shady! (Need any more Monarda? LOL)

This afternoon, after Fernymoss got back from work, I was telling him what we might see be able to expect from the caterpillar, so he had to grab the camera and head out to get some shots of what has happened since he first discovered it back on August 24. Lo and behold, our friend is well on its way to full adulthood and will probably emerge within the next few days and then wing on out on its migration south (perhaps after lingering here a while I hope...). We both are really excited about its decision to undergo its metamorphosis in our humble Woodland Garden, but apparently it was an inviting enough place for it to undergo the most important phase of its life so far. We feel really flattered and privileged that it has chosen our garden which, as most know by now, we try to make as butterfly friendly as we can by planting some of their favorite feeding and resting places. I think that this year, we definitely hit pay dirt for a bit of butterfly love, and from all possible ones, it's a Monarch!

In this shot you can clearly see the outline of the fully formed wings through the still somewhat opaque chrysalis, but according to Shady, it should clear up gradually as emergence time approaches. Also note the interesting gold spots on the outside of the chrysalis .. I'm not sure exactly what those are all about in the greater scheme of things, but they surely mark this butterfly in the making as a Monarch. Never fear, we'll be out every day now until it emerges to chronicle the progress going on just outside of the living room windows! So stay tuned, so to speak....

Work is shaping up to be another busy week, so I offer my apologies in advance if I miss a post or two here, or if I don't visit the other great garden blogs that I've been in the habit of haunting the past several months. I have to admit that I was a bit lax last week, due in part to the Democratic Convention (yes, I'm a political junkie if you hadn't figured that out yet) and part due to work demands, so I got a little slackerly on keeping up with things around here and the garden blogosphere.

I usually try to keep politics out of the garden here, but there are some times when I'm compelled to devote a post or a link or two to the election, and the truly inspiring acceptance speech last Thursday by Barack Obama is one of those exceptions. If you're one of the over 40 million people who saw it live last week, you know what I mean ... and in my opinion, it was truly the best political speech I've heard in my lifetime (if not in several generations), not to mention its historic proportions. Yes, I've heard all the major Kennedy speeches over the years (though I was but a toddler when he ran for president), and in my estimation, Obama rose to those legendary heights and then managed to go even further as he laid out his vision for his Presidency. We watched it live and we were both electrified and energized by the power of this man's vision and were left, quite simply, overwhelmed. On MSNBC that night, even Pat Buchanan (yes, that Pat) had nothing but praise for Obama and gushed on endlessly to my surprise.

Folks, if you didn't see this speech in its entirety, you owe it to yourselves to watch, no matter what your own opinions may be regarding the election. This is truly one for the ages, and will be cited in the history books one day, it's that brilliant. You can see it on YouTube here, in the unedited CSPAN high quality video from their website. This week, out of a somewhat masochistic sense of fairness, we also plan to watch the acceptance speeches of the Republican ticket, just to compare how their respective agendas play out at their convention. Then at least we can say we gave each side a fair shot at winning us over. Honestly, we're unlikely to be swayed, but we're going to try to at least approach it with an open mind. I would hope that more Americans would try to do the same, but I'm not holding my breath....