11 July 2011 - Watering the Weather into Submission

It has been hot, humid and dry, followed by more hot , humid and dry. Rather a conundrum—dry and humid at the same time. You get used to it and don’t really think about the lack of rain until one day you see the lawn is yellowing and crispy, and the big clumps of perennials are limp. Uh-oh. 

This weekend hit us with that revelation. So even though we were emptying out the library in order to paint and re-carpet, we were also moving hoses around the yard for two days straight. The world was dry. When I had the fan sprayer on the hose, the water would hit the soil and dust would fluff up into the air. Not a good sign. The water would either pool on top of the dirt or would just run off.  I spent a lot of time on my hands and knees with one hand digging deep into the dirt and then flooding the hole. Yes, it would have been easier to use my four pronged, curved claw hand tool, but it was in the garage, and I was at the far corner of the yard.

As I said, our weekend was two solid days of watering with no relief in sight. Today? Out of nowhere we are having rain. Huge storms moving across the state from Chicago have already reached the east side of Michigan and we have rain. It isn’t a nice long soaker, but a fast moving dump with lots of wind.  I heard on the news that 600,000 people in Chicago are without power, people across Michigan are also without power and  we are under a tornado watch as well. Typical July weather, but what? I had to run water for two days in order to initiate this storm? At least our yard should be soggy enough to soak up every last drop of rain. That would be a good thing.

Currently it is 94 degrees, raining like crazy, so hot and wet that your glasses fog up when you step out the door. The big winds have gone south of us, but hopefully this rain will take the temps down.

The midnight lopper has been at it again. Our neighbors to the south have moved out. They had rented that house for at least 10 years. They did a nice job with the yard, planted trees, added a hedge punctuated with rose of sharons down one fence line, put in lilies, chrysanthemums and hostas. However, over in one corner of the yard under our big oak, there were many saplings: mostly cottonwoods and mulberries that had sprung up and were easily ten to twelve feet tall. Last night Jack went over with the loppers and chopped them down. As he chopped, I dragged them over the fence into our yard, where we quickly cut them into four-foot lengths to bundle for yard waste.

I know, not our house—not our problem, but there was no room for that many trees in such a small corner, nor was there any room in the canopy for anything to grow upwards. Renters don’t pay attention to such things, nor does the absentee owner. One small victory for lawn order.

4 July 2011 - Annoying the caterpillars and other delights

Happy Fourth of July!  

Who needs sparklers to celebrate, when you have a yard full of fireflies? They begin to rise right before dusk, and light up the yard with their flashes. Better than fireworks, any day! Right now, many of the neighbors are shooting off aerial bursts. I have to wonder if the fireflies are wondering how some of their kind got so high! 

There are so many fireworks going off that the air is smokey, like a foggy night, except it has that acrid tang you associate with black powder. We are surrounded by many tall trees, but all of them being lit from behind due to all the fireworks going off. I'm thinking the economy is getting better-- so many people with so many fireworks. T'aint cheap!

 

While Jack and I were weeding and watering the veggies on Saturday, I found the most beautiful caterpillar on my parsley plant. Hollered at Jack and we watched this mean green eating machine decimate some parsley. 

A quick search of the plant revealed two of these caterpillars. Odd. Only two? Somehow you would think where there were one or two there would be more. 

Naturally, I had to know what it was, so I googled black and green striped caterpillar. The first thing that came up was a picture of my guy calling it a parsley worm. Well, I guess!

Next I discovered that it turns into a black swallowtail butterfly. Go pupate babies! I looked up black swallowtail and found the male and the female have quite different color variations. Now I have been out every day combing through the plants to keep an eye on the caterpillars.

Another thing I learned was that parsley worms have a defensive structure, called an osmeterium, right behind the head. This structure is usually concealed. However, when disturbed this "Y" shaped organ protrudes and emits a strong odor that is apparently distasteful to predators.

After reading this, there was nothing for it—I had to go annoy the caterpillar. Yep! Very strong odor.  And how fun was this?  What did you do over the Fourth?  Oh, not much, annoyed some caterpillars. 

While I find many insects fascinating and I'm happy to just let them be, I do have a James Bond attitude about others. Japanese beetles, for instance are definitely on my Live and Let Die list.

Japanese beetles are really very pretty, they have an iridescent shimmer that turns them bronze in the sun. However, I am hard put to find another common garden bug that wrecks as much devastation in as short a time as these beetles. Over the last several years I have been out in the early morning and early evening knocking them off the plants into a plastic bag. This year I am trying something different. I use a coffee can (one of the new-fangled plastic types with the grip indents) with a couple inches of water in the bottom add a squirt of dish soap, then shake or knock them off the plant into the brew. There is a really big crop of Japanese beetles this year. I will need to be vigilant. As Madeye Moody would say, "Constant vigilance!" In my garden they are particularly fond of loosestrife, evening primrose, hibiscus and roses. That's a lot of territory to cover. 

We have been eating from the garden for weeks now. First lettuce, spinach and chard, then summer squash and now sugar snap peas. We even have a couple of tomatoes showing the first blush of color. The beans are starting to form too. We have both purple and yellow wax beans. Good thing Robin is coming to help us eat!  

The lettuce in now beginning to bolt so we need to get the next crop in.  

Jack is standing at the end of the snap pea row. They are taller than he is, and covered with pods. They make a great snack while weeding and watering.  The lower knee-high plants are the yellow wax beans. The purples are on the other side of the peas. 

I have mentioned before that where we live in Farmington Hills seems to be surrounded by some weird force field that keeps weather systems away. Time after time, major storms come across lower Michigan, accompanied by the requisite severe storm warnings and we get nothing. Two weeks ago, we had a huge storm that practically washed away downtown Farmington, a mere 3 miles away. We didn't even get a rain drop. 

Friday, July 1 was another example. Huge storm, high winds, hail, torrential rain. We heard rolling thunder for over an hour, saw a few lightning bolts but that was it. The next morning we discovered that 150,000 people south of us were without power and that the airport had two inches of rain. Whew. I'm glad we missed it, but it really is strange to watch the radar maps and see the storms split to the north and south of us.  

What was interesting about this storm was the sky kept changing color. First it went green. Really green. The kind of eerie green that Jack said if he saw that color sky in Oklahoma it would mean a tornado was coming. About 30 minutes later the sky turned orange. This was during the late afternoon, so don't even think about this color being a sunset orange. The photo I am posting is NOT retouched or color enhanced in any way. It truly was this color.