In the garden

An Evening in the Back Yard

September 17, 2013 by KTgreen

Just hanging out with Maggie and my camera on a beautiful evening….

In the Backyard

September 10, 2013 by KTgreen

Nightblooming jasmine with caladiums and hydrangeas.

Nightblooming Jasmine — Love taking the dog out for her evening walk just because the scent of the nightblooming jasmine is exquisite.

Blue Hydrangea — One blue hydrangea amidst all the pink ones.

Maggie in the garden — Maggie is not happy with me. I feed some stale bread to the fish and she was really miffed. She went out several times just to stand on the dock and check for floating bread. Just want to say, Maggie hates bread–unless I feed it to the fish.

The plumeria didn’t do well this year. I have nine plants and these are the only two that bloomed.

Rose, In the Garden — The roses are coming back since the weather has cooled a wee bit.

Bromeliad, In the Garden — This variety of bromeliad is starting to bloom. Michelle gave me these many years ago, they’ve multiplied, and I’ve transplanted them around several trees.

Banana tree, in the garden — I took this picture of the flower on the banana tree yesterday morning. I went out in the late afternoon to get a better photo and the yellow flowers were gone. Did the ants eat them? Squirrels?

I was in North Dakota for two weeks and returned to find some changes in my gardens. First, my parsley patch was stripped down to the stems. The only plant remaining was covered with Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars.

In the Garden — The eastern black swallowtail caterpillar morphs through several phases. Here you can see the 3rd instar on the left, 4th in the middle and 5th on the right.

I planted banana trees a few years ago to camouflage the fence plus provide a little privacy. They appear to have grown a few feet since we left!

And there’s a flower on one of the trees! Is a banana stalk next?

I don’t think we’ve had this butterfly before. Or if we did, I didn’t get any pictures of it! After doing some research, I’ve decided that it’s a White Peacock Butterfly. According to the book, it’s quite common in Florida.

We have more Gulf Fritillaries than we have Swallowtails. We get a lot of them every year. I think that they are attracted to the yellow and orange cosmos that reseed themselves. Plus I have passionflower vine growing on the fence that is one of their host plants. I liked the colors in this photo.

I have no idea what kind of moth this is. We seem to have more moths than usual since our return. It’s hard to get pictures of them because they flit around so quickly.