Kaseys Korner

Tachinid Flies

As with so many other creatures/plants, I didn't know anything about Tachinid Flies until I started gardening.  Funny how this hobby is so eye-opening to nature, isn't it?  Last year, I had the opportunity to photograph my first one and I don't think I shared the photos?  (I can't remember for certain tho?)  I put it on my list of future blog topics but still never got around to posting about them.  Yesterday, while photographing the fall arbor decorations, I had my first sighting this season.  Of course, I jumped on the opportunity to snag a few more photos and decided not to wait this time to share them with you.  Below you'll see the fly sharing a 'Honeycomb' Buddleia bloom with a honeybee:

Whenever I've spotted these flies in my garden, they've been quite large (about 1/2" to 1") ~ distinctly bigger than your common housefly ~ and the stiff abdominal bristles are a dead giveaway as to their identity.  You can see those bristles clearly in the photo below:

Tachinid flies are parasitic, laying their eggs on a host (by various methods), eventually destroying the host and emerging during the pupa stage of the hosts life.  You can read more about them in the highlighted link provided above.  I won't even attempt to capsulize the information.  It is very interesting tho and worth a read.  They seem to like Buddleias as last years capture was on 'Davidii.' 

'Honeycomb' is the perfect photographic backdrop for them, don't you think? 

A footnote:  Just to let you know, I've been thinking about abandoning this blog.  I've never really gotten that much traffic (except for google who has taken every single photo I've ever posted ~ anyone else have that happen?) and it makes me spend way too much time sitting in front of the computer (I'm sure you know the feeling).  I may or may not give up blogging altogether, but if I decide to continue I'll definitely be moving to a free forum so that I don't feel guilty when I am not posting regularly.  I will notify you of my decision before it occurs tho so you aren't caught off guard or wondering what happened to me.

some decisions are just good

I know you know what I mean.  One of those good decisions in my garden is electing to put an arbor over my side gate ~  remember I did that this spring?  Even tho the Sweet Autumn Clematis and Akebia vines never really took off (planted on either side of the arbor) look what a showcase it's turned out to be for fall:

We're having a Halloween party (for my daughters friends)in the back garden and this will be the perfect entrance.  btw, those pretty purple flowers protruding into the left side of the photo are Tibouchina blooms! Nice that they are still flowering, huh?  Here's a closer view of the cute little jack o'lantern lights dangling from the top of the arbor:

What Halloween/Fall scene would be complete without a black cat?  None at our house (or that I know of)!  Although this black cat is only outside when I am there to watch him:

Hello sweet boy!  I think he approves!  Now you know why I haven't been blogging ~ I'm still decorating.  :-) 

fun fall project

If you're like me, you'll want to fire up your drills when you see this project.  I wish I could say it was my original idea but it came from the pages of last years (2008) Southern Living special issue called "Fall Decorating."  I found the issue too late in the season (last fall) so I saved the idea to re-create this year.  I'm so glad I did.  I love the results and my neighbors are asking if I'll make them one too so I think it's a hit.  Southern Living used real pumpkins for their project but I wanted mine to last a lot longer so I bought 3 fake ones in various sizes ~ that way I can use the project next year too.  The plastic pumpkins were very easy to drill ~ I used two different sized drill bits (this is what I was working on last week when the weather had me in such a bad mood).  You also need to cut the tops out of the two bottom pumpkins & the bottoms out of the two top pumpkins.  Clear as mud?  Good.  Now here's a look at the finished results (all duded up) during the day:  (I still plan to add a few more real pumpkins around the base)

The pumpkins were stacked together after a 100 count string of white lights was spread evenly throughout all three (which is why you need to cut the tops & bottoms).  I pulled a bit of the light string out of the bottom pumpkin to weave around the grapevine at the base of the urn but you could also just add another string of lights instead.  Isn't that the best project ever?  As gardeners, you most likely already have any number of containers handy that you could use as a base.  Or you could also use a pedestal instead of a container, just a thought....  Want to see the night-time effect?  I thought so. 

oops.  Looks like I had my camera turned at an angle.  I didn't realize that when I snapped the picture.  It really isn't crooked as you can see in the daylight photo!   I'm thinking I'll leave this up right thru October because it would be nice for Thanksgiving as well, don't you think??

Edited to add:  That crooked photo was really bugging me so I just went out and took another one.  Here it is not leaning!!

I'm happy now!  :-)

Magnolia 'Jane' & a snail

I need your help this morning.  I've been looking at my Magnolia 'Jane' thru the kitchen window the last few dreary days, and thinking to myself, "it doesn't look good."   Look at this photo taken today and notice how bare the branches are:

You may remember that I purchased this magnolia last year and never got around to planting it.  It overwintered in the nursery pot until I finally put it in the ground this spring.  At first, everything seemed fine.  It even put out a few beautiful pink blossoms.  Sometime over the summer tho, a change occurred (I don't remember when exactly) and she started looking a bit stressed and lost most of her leaves.  (Even tho I complained about a lack of heat, I think it was a great summer for planting shrubs and trees ~ there was certainly abundant moisture which isn't always the case). When I inspected 'Jane' up close this morning, I was surprised to find new growth/buds (??) along all her branches:

I guess I'm never satisfied because although I should be thrilled to find out she's not dead, I am now worrying whether this is a good thing late in the season as it is???  Anyone out there that grows 'Jane' know the answer?  If we get a killing frost anytime soon, I hope it doesn't permanently set her back.  Until I found out about 'Jane' I never dreamed I could grow a magnolia in this climate/zone.  Now that I've discovered her, I definitely don't want to lose her. 

On a different subject entirely, look what was crawling across my driveway this morning (as I was leaving to take my daughter to school):

A snail!  Woo hoo.  He was headed in the direction of my little pond.  I've never seen a snail in my yard before so I don't know where he came from but I'm thinking my tiny water habitat drew him in???  I helped him along by moving him nearer to his destination and out of harms way.  We'll see if he sticks around now.

forget about summer

where the heck is fall???  It seems like we by-passed it and went directly to winter.  ugh.  It's got me in such a foul mood.  No sun since Sunday, nothing but cool, wet, cloudy weather with temperatures in the 40's.  Enough already.  Bring back "normal." (or maybe there's no such thing anymore??)  The weatherman said to "hold on" one more day and temperatures will start to climb on Friday.  I'm holding, I'm holding....
Meanwhile, I've been working on a fall decorating project that I will share with you very soon.  It involves using a drill which was somewhat dangerous considering my temperament the past few days.  ha.  I am going to concentrate on being grateful for even tho it's been SO unseasonably cold, nothing has frosted and we've had no snow.  I need to get back outside and take more pics of my containers.  Here's one I took last week, that you've seen macros from throughout the summer.  It's one of those classic cases where the "parts" are greater than the "whole" if you know what I mean.

I planned the color scheme around the New Zealand Flax that I was so excited to find at Lowes, remember?  Besides the flax (which never did much, not enough heat I think) there's also Salvia 'buchananii':

which you've seen a zillion times (but it's so darn pretty I couldn't resist showing it off again), an Alternanthera (variety unknown because I can't find the tag ~ I think it might be 'Red Thread' tho??):

Don't you just love Alternanthera for filler material?  It's really great.  Oh, and we can't forget the dahlia, a collarette variety named 'Rosita:'

You've seen her before too but she's worth another look.  I think I've about decided I'm keeping the container intact and hauling the whole thing "as is" down to the basement (because I basically want to save everything in it) and next year (if everything survives the winter), I'll tweak it to make it better.  It's sorely lacking some vining material and I didn't situate the plants as best I could. Now, not to wish away time, but hurry up Friday so the sun will shine again! 

yesterday was a "Monday"

in actuality and every other sense of the word.  The strange thing is no matter the connotation of Mondays, I usually look forward to them.  In fact, I've been known to say they are my favorite day of the week.  I like that a rhythm will be restored to the household.  I also like to imagine "the promise" a new week holds.  You never know when a good week will suddenly become a great week, right?  Yesterday our Monday started around 4:00 AM with a loud crack of lightening followed by the rumble of thunder.  a LOT of thunder.  Suddenly everyone in the house was wide awake and sleep was a distant afterthought.  To know how disconcerting this was for me, you have to know first that I'm a night person.  I generally don't think about bed until after midnight (my best work happens in the wee hours of the morning).  So getting up at 4:00 AM did not go over well at all (putting it mildly).  I felt like a Mac truck had run over me the entire day.  Let's not even go into everything else that went wrong.  Why is it when a day starts on the wrong foot, it stays there?  I haven't figured that out.

I had (past tense) many plans for the day which included planting the above primula veris seedlings.  Going off topic for a minute, remember how much trouble I've had germinating these seeds the past few years??  Turns out, all I needed to do was sow the seeds outdoors, (instead of inside) which is what I did in May.  The success rate was phenomenally high.  Lesson learned.  I'll try that again with other seeds I've had trouble germinating.  A flat of these seedlings, along with other perennial seedlings, have been growing in a tray all summer and now it's finally time to set them in the garden.  Unfortunately, I never got to it so that job is still on my list.  There's always tomorrow, right?  Oh wait, it IS tomorrow.  I guess they'll have to wait a while longer.  For now, I have to go outside and cover these:

A freeze warning has just been posted (and the possibility of slushy white stuff on the grassy areas).  great.  It's a wonder this wasn't predicted for yesterday ~ it would have fit right in with the rest of my Monday!

   

finally, a painted lady

Last year we had them in abundance but this year, sightings have been rare.  Luckily I was home yesterday and looking out the kitchen window when this one lighted on my vintage wheelbarrow container. 

The wheelbarrow was half in shade, and half in sun creating a bit of a lighting challenge and wouldn't you know the painted lady landed right on the line between the lights!  It didn't matter, I was taking a picture.  This is why I planted the wheelbarrow with the plants choices I did.

I envisioned it being a feast for butterflies throughout the entire summer but, until yesterday, I hadn't seen a butterfly anywhere in its vicinity. Whew.  I can rest easier.  All was not in vain if even one painted lady has so much as dined there.

Many thanks Ms Painted Lady, for moving out of the shade and onto a sunnier bloom so I could capture this shot.  Have a great Sunday everyone.  I'm headed outdoors to enjoy one last warm day before our temperatures plummet 25 degrees (at least that's the forecast).  Looks like the upcoming week will be cool and decidedly fallish.

"challenge" container

Considering this is the last "official" weekend of summer, I thought maybe we should start reviewing a few containers.  Remember last year when I had a zillion to share with you?  Not so this season.  This was hands down, my worst year ever for container gardening.  The combination of wet, cool weather with heat loving annuals, was not a good mix.  Had I known ahead of time what our summer weather would be like, I could have switched gears and tried some different combinations.  A few of my pots never reached their full potential (by a long shot) and have already been dis-banned.  *gasp*  That has never happened before in this garden.  I can only hope next year is a better season.
Okay, now that we have that bit of info out of the way, let's begin with today's container.  This one is what I call my "challenge" container.  It got that name because it was a "contestant" in a "friendly" competition with one of my dear gardening buddies, Dana.  We decided at the beginning of garden season to see who could plant the best "lime green & purple" container.  There were no other rules, just stick to those two colors.  The competition was an incentive for both of us to "up our game" and expand our creativity when it came to combining plants ~ we really don't compete with each other.  With her permission, I was going to post both of our containers but unfortunately, hers got decimated by hail and is no longer in the running.  Mine is the only one left to view:

and there it is.  Hmmmm.  Nothing jaw-dropping about it but truthfully (and sadly), it's one of the better performers this summer.  Included in the 12" pot is one each of the following plants:  'Electric Lime' Coleus, 'Persian Shield' (strobilanthes dyerianus), Angelmist 'Plum' Angelonia, 'Marguerite' Sweet Potato Vine (Ipomoea batatas), Talinum 'Limon' (not seen from this photo angle), a purple foliaged Tradescantia (or Spiderwort) and a dark purple (name unknown) Coleus.  

I have to say, it was very fun to do the challenge even if it didn't work out the way we planned.  Maybe we could do a "blogasphere" container challenge next year?   If anyone is up for that, let me know.  Meanwhile, I guess I won??!!!  ;-)  Just kidding Dana!  Stay tuned for a few more containers in upcoming posts.

hostess with the "mostess"

caterpillars that is.  I'm not so sure that's a good title to have either although I think the caterpillars in question are more sphinx moths?  The hostess in this case is the Nicotiana 'sylvestris' plant seen below growing in front of the pond:
I didn't notice the caterpillars until last night when I decided to do a little deadheading.  There are many more bloom stalks than the one pictured above (photo taken earlier in the summer) and a couple of the stalks had gotten pretty ragged looking.  Since I'm not particularly interested in this plant seeding around (I have others I'll let do that job) I decided to trim them.  When I raised the pruners to snip, is when I saw caterpillars coming out or going in almost every spent flower head:

I couldn't tell which the caterpillar above was doing.  He never moved.  But every seed head had holes chewed into it.  I don't believe I've ever noticed that before although I don't think it's unusual?  A quick search on the Internet revealed Nicotiana to be a host plant to numerous moths and butterflies in the Lepidoptera order.  Three that I was familiar with are cabbage moths, horn worms and sphinx moths. 

Why, oh why can't I ever discover Swallowtail or Monarch caterpillars in numbers like these?  Then I would never have to ponder whether or not to deadhead.  The answer would be easy.  This one has me on the fence tho.  The spent stalks are still hanging and my pruners are "on-call."   I'm leaning heavily toward "deadhead."  Which way would you go?

and then there was one

Remember how I said I would be sad when the orioles were gone and the grape jelly feeder sat empty?  Well, now I have the opposite problem.  One little Bullocks oriole refuses to leave and has me worrying over him like a mother hen.  All of his siblings and parents left long ago on their migration south.  The adult orioles were the first to leave ~ I think I saw the last adult male & female around the first week in August.  This years young stayed for several more weeks, coming to the yard and feeder in groups until slowly their numbers dwindled down to one.  Orioles migrate at night, so every morning when I get up, I hope that I won't see him.  That he'll finally have started his journey.  But every morning, there he is.  I pulled the grape jelly feeder three weeks ago, hoping to move him along but that didn't work.

 

I keep telling him that I'm not going to buy meal worms to feed him all winter.  I am not (reinforces to self).  Even tho more and more migratory birds are opting to fore-go migration (especially in southern states where winters are mild) there's no way he could survive a winter in Colorado without a LOT of help.  Worrying over him and why he won't leave had me doing research on oriole migration late one evening.  It ended up being extremely fascinating so I thought I would share some of it with you.  Mind you, this is my non-scientific recounting of what I read.  Did you know birds are very in-tune with the stars?  Maybe they could even be considered the first students of astronomy?  All that time spent in the nest after hatching, gives them hours upon hours to study the sky.  As the earth rotates, the one star that remains constant is the North Star.  Somehow they know/learn to fly away from it in fall and toward it in spring.  Isn't that amazing?  They also are very auditory, preventing night time collisions by communicating to keep each other apprised of their whereabouts.  Maybe my little oriole, didn't do enough star gazing??  I find myself wondering (like in the movie Fly Away Home) how to get him moving along in the right direction.  I suppose I should quit worrying and let nature take its course...but somehow that's very difficult to do.