Summer in the Garden

Beautiful day in the garden! The Butterfly Weed is beautiful and getting lots of visits by bees. Coreopsis is in the background.

The Brown Eyed Susans are coming in all over. We did not plant these, just weeded around them.

Here's a view from up above.

To our horror we found the invasive Black Swallowwort was going to seed. The seed pods are somewhat bean-like. So we stopped what we were doing, and filled two large plastic garbage bags with the stuff, mostly from a new patch discovered outside the deer fence up above the garden. These cannot go on the mulch pile!

Here's one of our native caterpillars enjoying the Sedum. This is a Yellow Bear caterpillar, aka Virginia Tiger Moth, a real generalist species and very widespread. It's important to recognize that our landscaping is not just ornamental, but part of the ecosystem. A certain amount of grazing on our plants should be welcomed.