Visitors: expected, unexpected and missed

There are various creatures we expect to see at this time of year. Colorado potato beetles and their offspring, for instance.

Check. (And ewwww.)

Then there are creatures that we don't normally see. I went for a bike ride yesterday and saw two very tall birds in a field beside the road. I thought at first that they were herons, but when I looked at the photo more closely I realised that the colour was all wrong:

They're actually Sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis), which usually pass through but don't breed in this area, from what I've seen online, but this looks like a parent and youngster to me.

Then there are the expected-but-missing. This year it is the caterpillars of Monarch butterflies, which are usually munching their way through the milkweed plants by now.

There are some milkweed plants down at the bottom of this photo, and if you look really closely in the middle of the dark area at the top, you might just see a small flash of orange. This is only the fourth Monarch I've seen this year and there are widespread reports that there have been fewer sightings of this particular visitor than usual.

I spent a while this evening inspecting a lot of the milkweed plants in the hayfield. As usual they were host to many different insects: ladybirds, spiders and beetles.

But I didn't find a single monarch caterpillar. Around this date in 2009 I hadn't noticed any Monarchs but the caterpillars were easy to find. I hope their numbers recover.

Mid-June news

The two chicks which hatched out in May are now a month old. I think they're both female, this time. The broody is still in with them at the moment, but it won't be long before she will want to be back with the rest of the flock: she's already laying eggs again.

Out in the barnyard, the strawberries are producing a good crop this year and we've just stopped picking the asparagus.

The bees are busy with some of the beans that I'm growing in the greenhouse for the first time this year. With the relatively cool, damp weather we've been having, the ones in the barnyard are only a few inches high, so I'm hoping that we'll get a good early crop from the greenhouse-grown ones.

We woke up to rain this morning again - but the forecast for the rest of the week looks warm and dry. Perhaps everything outside will start to catch up a bit!

Evening lace

Snapped this last night - the sun was just setting and it gave the flower head a lovely glow.

Dead and alive

 There are so many sad-looking sights as a result of the dry spell that it's hard to choose candidates for this post. This is a bittersweet nightshade, which would normally be green and thriving at this time of year:

Even the sunchokes, usually indestructible, are looking more dead than alive. Usually they're flowering around now, but they aren't showing much sign of doing so at the moment.

This little frog is sitting in what is usually a year-round pond.

The brown cylinder in the lawn on the right of this shot is a sugar maple tree we put in two years ago. Needless to say, it shouldn't be brown! Hope it recovers. Today's generous downpours of rain may have come just in time...

Helen's tears

I posted about a mystery wildflower three years ago - at the time it had finished flowering and its dried up seed heads weren't very helpful in making a firm identification, although one of the commenters at the time did suggest it might be an Inula.

And he was quite right - I've noticed some more of these plants growing in the woods this year and now they are flowering:

It's Inula helenium, not a native wildflower at all, but a naturalised plant from the old world, used for various medicinal purposes and in the production of absinthe, according to Wikipedia. Its common name is Elecampane (also Elf-wort). The 'ele' part and both parts of the Latin name come from an association with Helen of Troy: one story is that the plant grew where her tears fell when she was abducted by Paris.

 I'm really pleased to have found the plant again and to have caught it in full flower this time.

Pumpkin patch

The plants in the experimental pumpkin patch we've carved out of the hayfield seem to be doing well. We've been lucky with the weather - there has been just enough rain to keep things going up there, although there were two frustrating nights when we watched storms pass closely to the north of us without dropping any rain. More storms are possible tonight. Fingers crossed.

The point of this bed was to avoid the squash bugs which destroyed all the cucurbits in the barnyard and greenhouse last year. I've sown cucumbers, melons, zucchini/courgettes and a variety of pumpkins and squash up there. As a control, I sowed two zucchini plants in the barnyard. They haven't been bothered by squash bugs yet, but there are loads of cucumber beetles on them which have turned the leaves into lacework in places. In contrast, the two zucchini plants in the hayfield are completely undamaged and much bigger than their barnyard cousins.

The only problem with the hayfield plants is their distance from the house (I know I shouldn't complain about this). If we get a good crop of zucchini and cucumbers it's going to be hard work carrying them back indoors!

On the way back from the pumpkin patch last night I had to do a double-take when I saw these flowers. For a moment I thought they were asters but then realised it was much too early in the summer. They're actually thistles; the flowers are much smaller than Canada thistles and so far I haven't been able to positively identify them. I don't think I've ever noticed them before.

Cold dawn

They were right about the temperature: it did go down to -4°C/25°F last night, as this frosted dandelion demonstrates.

The greenhouse and yesterday's additional precautions seem to have done the trick in protecting the young tomato plants. Although they still look a bit pathetic. It's hard to imagine that these will be six feet tall by the end of the summer. Some sunshine over the next few days and the warmer weather promised by the end of the week might make them look more respectable.

Messy mix

The weather people don't like it when the temperature is around the freezing point and a system is due to arrive. It makes it difficult to forecast whether people are going to get rain, freezing rain, ice pellets or snow. They always say that there will be a 'messy mix' as the system passes through.

Messy from a forecaster's point of view, perhaps, but my ears always prick up when I hear that phrase, as I know it means there will be a chance of some interesting ice formations for me to take pictures of. Today was such a day: we had freezing rain on waking, which turned to regular rain and then to snow.

On my morning walk with the dog, I found a fence-post decorated with a combination of snow, ice and lichen:

Some aster seed-heads, weighed down and encased by ice:

This Canadian thistle head looks like something microscopic blown up big:

And this seed head of Queen Anne's Lace was somehow still standing upright, where most of the others had toppled to the ground:

Not messy at all, in my opinion!

Resurrections

The French tarragon which looked so woebegone a few weeks ago has come back to life after some intensive care in the kitchen:

And the remaining tomatoes are slowly ripening:

The greenhouse tomato plants were killed by frost in the last week of November and I spent an hour or so this morning clearing the plants and their supports from the beds. But it really hasn't been very cold yet this November and December (tempting fate by saying that, I know). I'm still picking broccoli florets from the plants in the greenhouse and the Tuscan black kale outside is producing well.

Yesterday morning brought a hoar frost. It turned these swamp milkweed seed pods furry:

And made the asters look like they were flowering all over again.

Bright spots

The last few days have been dull, cool, windy and altogether back-to-schoolish. As I type, the setting sun has made an appearance, but we haven't seen much of it recently.

There are some cheering sights around, though. At last we're getting a corn crop that people other than myself will eat. The multi-coloured variety is interesting. It's called 'Rainbow Inca Sweet'. Personally I feel it's somewhat lacking in the green and orange department for a name like that.

The goldenrod has been flowering for a few weeks now and the asters are just starting to open up to keep them company.

Side-road scenes

I usually think of the tree-webs of the fall web worm as rather disfiguring. But with the early-morning sun shining through them, they're transformed into something more magical:

I've been meaning to take a picture of this building for a while now. It's a transplanted church which is now part of the Closson Chase vineyard. Its unusual roof design is a tribute to the fifteenth-century Hospices de Beaune in Burgundy, famous for its vineyards. Closson Road is the core of Prince Edward County's wine region - there is just one vineyard after another as you travel down it.

On my ride this morning I turned off Closson Road and took the Millennium Trail back to Lake Consecon. I paused a few times to take photos. The subject of this next one literally stopped me in my tracks.

I think it's a Nannyberry (Viburnum lentago). Aren't those berries beautiful?

 Back when I visited the Art Gallery of Ontario in February, I decided that my favourite Canadian painting of those on display was this one by Franklin Carmichael of Cranberry Lake:

I was rather taken aback then, this morning, to be confronted with a very similar view on my bike ride: a hidden cluster of flooded trees.

I also found this single red maple leaf on the path. I'm going to take it as a good omen for the Canadian citizenship test that Mike and I will be taking next week...

Naming names

I went up to the hayfield today, to see whether any Monarch caterpillars had hatched out on the common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) plants which grow around the edges of the field.

The milkweeds are popular with many creatures and the first one I saw today was very strange: a sort of wasp/praying mantis hybrid.

It took a bit of digging around, but eventually I ID'd it as a Wasp Mantidfly, Climaciella brunnea (yes, it's obvious, once you know...).

There weren't any caterpillars to be seen. I noticed some attractive white flowers on my walk. These ones are (I think) field chickweed (Cerastium arvense):

And this small shrub is gray dogwood (Cornus racemosa). Later in the year, the flowers are replaced by pale green berries, popular with the birds. I'd noticed the berries before, but not the flowers.

There are two small swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) plants near the pond. As I passed them, on my walk back home, I noticed that there was a Monarch caterpillar on one of them. Actually, there were two - the camera picked up a second one (on the top right of this shot) which I didn't notice at the time.

I don't know why it's so important to me to know the names of all these things. They're just as attractive or interesting without a label, but there's something very satisfying in tracking down their identities...

Daisies

At this time of year there are stands of Ox-eye daisies in various places around the farm, particularly on the edges of the hayfield. This clump were in a shady corner of the ash woods.

They're not a native plant, but they always cheer me up when I see them. I even picked a few and normally I'm not into cut flowers. I would probably tell you that I prefer to see them growing in the ground if you were to ask me why. Which is partially true, although I suspect that lack of time to think about growing a cutting garden is probably more to do with it. I have a deep admiration for gardeners like Sarah Raven or fellow blogger Karen Hall who do amazing things with beautiful flowers grown for cutting. It's something I aspire to, but somehow know that I'm never going to achieve...

Just add water

Yesterday's not-so-fun job was emptying the chicken's stall of litter. There were about seven barrow-loads of it, which are now sitting outside the greenhouse, ready to be turned into chicken manure. Of course when you want it to rain, it doesn't, so I'll be watering this heap along with the greenhouse beds for the next week or so, to get the process going. Then once it's good and hot, I'll cover it with tarpaulin and let it rot down over the next few months.

When I look at this pile I'm planning how it's going to help improve my vegetable garden next year. I certainly hadn't thought about it as a source of food for anything other than my plants. But while doing a little research on how best to turn it into chicken manure I came across this disturbing article from last year about how cattle are being fed poultry litter to bulk out more expensive animal feed. This practice is illegal in Canada, but not in the US. How can anyone think that it's a good idea to feed faecal matter from one animal to another? Poor cows.

In case that has left a bad taste in your mouth, here are a couple of photos I took today of flowers and insects, to change the subject.

Spring beauty

Claytonia virginica

Punks make my day

Sorry, yes, yet another picture of these cattails/bulrushes. In fact, if my digital camera files outlive me, I'm beginning to worry that my descendants will think that I'm suffering from an unhealthy obsession, as I've taken so many photographs of them. I love the way the seed heads unravel. With everything else in a winter stasis, these are one of the few things in my landscape that are changing every day. And just look at the colour of that sky.

What I didn't know until recently was that most parts of these plants are edible. The seeds themselves were used as stuffing for pillows and for lining moccasins, according to the mine of information at this site, while the brown heads burn slowly, so were used as fuses (known as candlewicks or punks) and are also effective at keeping mosquitoes away.

Another reason I'm intrigued by this particular stand of cattails is that they are fairly new. I dug out a photo of the pond from November 2007 and you can see that there are no reeds in the foreground.

The photo below, taken on 30 January this year, from roughly the same place, shows how much they've grown since them. The seeds are so light that they are easily distributed by the wind. The plants also spread underwater through their rhizomes.

They are an invasive species but they also perform a valuable role in filtering impurities from water, so I'm not too worried about them taking over. I'm looking forward to tasting the shoots in early summer: they're supposed to be like cucumber and can even be made into pickles!

Browned off

The landscape turns sepia at this time of year and you have to look hard to find other colours.

Nightshade berries always look good against the stump fence.

The blue jays have been raiding the bird seed in the mornings.

A few clover flowers are clinging on.

I don't know if you can call a long spell of mild and sunny weather in November an Indian Summer (probably not), but it has been warm enough to confuse this one goldenrod into flowering, while all the others are gracefully greying into old age.

In the greenhouse, the peppers are still, miraculously, going strong.