Pollinators are happy!

I spent a while out in the vegetable garden yesterday - watering, picking cabbage worms, watching all the little insects flitting around, and becoming enamored with the swallowtail butterfly that kept visiting my Mexican sunflower (torch tithonia). I was commenting to someone at work that I had seen so few butterflies this year, I was beginning to think something was wrong (I guess I meant something besides the copious quantities of pesticide that are used in this agricultural region).
But all it takes is some time out in the garden and a pair of open eyes. The pollinators LOVE my torch tithonia - this is an annual plant I grow from seed. Usually I have difficulty growing it from seed, at least here in Colorado. But this year I tried a different technique: I sowed many more seeds in indoors starter pots than I usually do, so had many more surviving seedlings. I even had enough plants to give away a couple. Along with being a great pollinator attractant, the seeds will also attract birds later. It's also a beautiful plant.

I harvested my first brusselsprouts yesterday, along with green beans, one red cabbage, and some cherry tomatoes. I also removed the last of the row covers from my cabbage-family plants; I figured any damage that occurs from cabbage worms I can mostly nip in the bud from there on out. Turns out the moths had gotten under the row covers, since I did have some damage already. Had to go on a killing spree in search of cabbage worms . . .

Amazing what a little rain can do

My blooming perennials seem unusually vivid and early this year, don't know if it's my imagination or real. The pasque flower (lower left) and basket'of'gold (upper left) had great displays, and the latter is still blooming. We had about an inch of rain over a two-week period in late May/early June which may be the reason. I love going outside and hearing all the little pollinators zipping and buzzing around. I saw a beautiful bumble bee today - searching for an ID site I came across http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=10749, which is a USDA site that advertises a wallet-size bumblebee ID card. Unfortunately, I didn't get a close enough look at the bee to be able to ID it - all I remember is that it was big & yellow, with an orange band in mid-body area.

At the end of last year I realized it was short-sighted NOT to plant some pollinator-attractor plants in the vegetable garden, so I put three Russian sages in a corner; realized this spring that wasn't the best place because they were outside the irrigation system I'd set up. I moved them more into the thick of the vegie plantings and on a drip line, but now they're being slow to grow because of the adjustment I've forced them to go through. Maybe by next growing season they'll do what I have asked them to (bloom & attract bees/flies)!

Spider at the window!

I've become fascinated by a spider named Cat Face spider (Araneus gemmoides), called that because its abdomen resembles the face of a cat. I'd never seen this spider prior to moving the the San Luis Valley, and we're now hosting our second known Cat Face spider visitor on the outside of the house. The picture to the left is probably a female since it was fairly large - nothing to show its relative size, but its abdomen was probably at least the size of an average marble, or the upper part of my pinky finger. The one shown in the image I found in August 2006, when it was hanging out on the north side of the house in an sheltered area on a fence post. It came running out when I was preparing to work on the fence.

The second Cat Face spider visitor is now visible in the living room window that faces south, and has spun a big web covering much of the window (photo to right). Just this morning it caught a moth (or the moth stumbled into the web more likely) and is now wrapping it in silk. I guess next it'll make a meal of it and then dispose of the dried-up body.

Spiders are such interesting critters, but I always get the creeps when I imagine one of these guys crawling on me!

The URL below has some information on this particular type of spider. http://entomology.wsu.edu/insectoftheweek/CatFaceSpider.html

Hard freeze? Not yet !

We've nudged freezing temperatures with 32.1 and 32.3, but I still have productive tomato and pepper plants, and am also still harvesting swiss chard (a little more hardy!). Last night I harvested lots of cherry tomatoes and several peppers, and many LARGE carrots (see photo). The carrots are probably a little too big?? All of the red and white onions were harvested a week or so ago. I think I may be reaching the end of the harvest though, this hard frost-free period has to come to an end soon. In 2005 our first good frost was 9/15, in 2006 it was 9/17, last year it was 9/26.
Many of my perennials are still blooming - New England Aster, coreopsis, yarrow, Russian sage, and others.
We've had a huge number of tiny flying insects cruising around - my tomato vines are covered with them, they go up your nose when you're outside, crawl up shorts, and more. It's unusual and I have no idea why they're so numerous. They do seem to be attracted to water so I've covered my water containers to reduce the attraction.