Butterflies & Waterlilies at Duke Gardens

This past Wednesday I helped Meg's second grade class with a field trip to Sara P Duke Gardens. As you know they are raising butterflies, Black Swallowtails. So far as of yesterday 5 have emerged and have been released. Many classrooms raise and release butterflies, usually I do not recommend releasing butterflies raised from kits shipped from across the country. Releasing butterflies from local wild sources is a very good thing to do.

Female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on penta.

We found maybe 30 species of butterflies at Duke Gardens, the best ones were Painted Ladies, Long-tailed Skippers and a Delaware Skipper. About half the class witnessed a female Monarch laying eggs on Swamp Milkweed.

I had fun getting photos of the water gardens, every year the tropical water lilies get better. Still early in the water lily season I hope to go back and investigate further.

The lower terraces water garden looking from the right side.

The lower terraces water garden looking from the left side.

Burgundy water lilies so cool, hard to capture the color correctly on these beauties!

Lotus flower, this might have been a dwarf lotus, very small.

This is Autumn Clematis, it is having a great year here. Last spring I found a plant in the garden that the birds planted. I moved it to a better spot and it is already blooming. I saw honey bees gathering white nectar from it. We have a large mass of this going along the roadside about 1 1/2 miles from the house.

Waterlilies and the garden update

Last Saturday I got out in the solo canoe and trimmed out the willow trees that had fell into the pond to clean it up some. Sadly it was the last time we saw the pair of Mallard ducks in the pond. But the next day exactly a week ago, the waterlilies came out, only 3 but a start. Below is 2 of the 3.

I planted the waterlilies 6 or 7 years ago, they now cover 3/4 of the 70- 80 foot diameter pond. In a few years I'll likely have to do a major thinning to keep them under control. We also have several nice clusters of Pickerelweed in the pond.

Today a portion of thew waterlilies in the pond.

This iris is either an Louisiana Iris or a Siberian Iris, the blades seem too thin to be a Louisiana, could it have crossed with the Siberian nearby?

This is an Louisiana Iris for sure and only a few feet for the other iris.

One of my seedling tomatoes in the garden, we have had a terrible year for growing seedlings.

This was last Sunday nights dinner Swiss Chard from the garden finally. The next morning Meg found a pile of chard leaves on the deck that I must have dropped.


Beets and carrots growing in the garden today.

You know I'm legally colored blind, only greens and reds. Meg pointed out to me that this spiderwort was a bit pink and not blue. I stopped at a garden club plant sale yesterday, the garden they had the sale in was full of all kinds of spiderworts and none for sale. I did get 6 plants including a cultivated goldenrod, exciting.

Lemon Cucumber for this morning in our garden. we have an old fashioned tripod set up over it to grow on.

The upper half of the clematis growing along our walkway I featured last week on my blog entry.

The latest project here, Meg wanted dog protection for her batchler buttons. I made the lattice from scraps left over from a customers recent project. Each panel is removable too.