Dusk in the August Garden

 Dusk falls on the August garden after a lovely dinner followed by whiskey hazelnut Earnest Ice Cream topped with apricots simmered with buckwheat honey. After a morning spent running errands downtown I am grateful to be back home surrounded by our little green oasis.

 The late summer light makes the colors of the flowers pop. Tonight I noticed that the Cleome spinosa perks up and offers nectar at night, a sure sign it evolved for night pollinators like bats.

 Speaking of bats, I wonder if this moth is meant to resemble a bat, cat, or squirrel.

A hummingbird visited later than usual tonight, doing her rounds: buddleia, crocosmia, back to the buddleia, scarlet runner beans, sweat peas, and then zinnias. She has a strict sense of preference.

Other small songbirds are starting to visit the garden as well. They love to perch on the bamboo supports for the sweet peas. You could do a whole sculpture project just on perching points for birds.

Hummingbird Sage

 Pssst! Mr. Stink bug, your cammo isn't working here.

It's nearing the end of August and things in the garden are winding down. I cleared out my peas to make way for some winter starts and I'm beginning to think about putting gardens to bed next month and planning new gardens for next spring. Those who make jam are at it full force. There's a bit of a feeling of panic in the air to get all those summer activities in and get those school clothes bought because you know how summer makes kids grow.

 I started cleaning out the raspberry canes and catching up on some weeding, but mostly I like to sit and enjoy the garden with my feet up in my anti-gravity chair. I am worrying about the neighbor's bamboo, which is aggressively creeping under the back fence. Peter and I had a good old barny about what we should do about it. He thinks we should dig out the roots and put down plexiglass. I think the neighbor should do it because it's this bamboo. We think he's an absentee landlord so we are unsure about whether he would do anything. Then I worry about the buddleia on the other side which is starting to set seed and the wild black berry that crept into the raspberry patch. The thing is, I've got to stop worrying and start doing something about it.

And then the hummingbird visits. She feeds at almost all the plants I grew for her: scarlet runner beans, zinnias, and the hummingbird salvias. My heart lightens and I forget about all those fall garden worries. I am in the moment enjoying the luscious end of summer. These annual salvias are from a mix put out by Swallowtail Garden Seeds and you can buy each color separately as well: Salvia coccinea. I hope I can get some better photos this week as I rest up before my marathon performance as the Queen Bee at the 125th birthday of Stanley Park this weekend. Lord, give me strength!

In the mean time I am enjoying my garden, feeling like Grizzly Adams with all these insects and birds coming to visit. The chickadees and I have a good dialogue going on now that they have claimed one of the bee oases as their own. They perch boldly on my chair when the water needs to be refilled and I usually get the message when I am not otherwise preoccupied with buddleia and bamboo.

Fennel Delights

The bumble bees and leaf cutters are frantically excited about the bee balm and they keep circling the blossoms over and over again for the nectar.

A friend gave me this lovely gentian plant from her garden. I feel honored to have something so beautiful in our back yard.

The honey bees love the fennel and at mid day it is covered in all sorts of insects.

The fennel plant is just next to the hive so they don't have very far to go for it.

Look at that behemoth of a sunflower. It's a volunteer from last year.



I fill these shells at the edge of my garden so the insects can drink from them. Here is a yellow jacket taking a sip.

J and I did a hive check today, but first we did the grisly job of uncapping dead drone larva that we had put in the freezer to kill mites. The wasps have been carrying off the few corpses that I left behind. The bees are cleaning out the dead and chucking them out of the front of the hive now and the wasps are fighting over them. They take the corpses back to their nests for their brood. Wasps are carnivorous when young, and adult wasps live off sugary liquids, including nectar, baby wasp puke and lemonade.

Grown from Seed

Many of the plants in our back yard are now blossoming and full of lively bees during the day and sleepy bees in the evening. This burgundy gaillardia was started in early spring and it's just finally blooming.

I am inordinately proud of these wild bergamot plants grown from seed--two years in the making. The bumble bees love them, even though they have to do quite an awkward aerial dance to suck out the nectar.

Most of the sunflowers are Earthwalkers, grown from seed, with Cherokee Trail of Tears beans growing up the stalks.

These lemon gem marigolds were very slow in coming, and I have a love-hate relationship with their tiny sharp-smelling blossoms.

They're Back! Mason Bees are out to Play

Yesterday the temperature really soared and the male mason bees came out to play. I kept seeing them land on the sunny south side of our house. This event seems to correspond with the forsythia being fully in bloom, which could be a phenological correlation. Did you know that one is supposed to prune one's roses when the forsythia is in bloom?

I was hardening off some seedlings yesterday and when I picked up one of my pots to take back inside I found a mason bee having a nap. I apologized for disturbing him and let him crawl up onto my hand to have a closer look at his white powdery face. It looked as though he'd stuck his face in baking flour.


These mason bee homes were a gift to me and I love the way they are designed so you can take them apart to clean them. The males keep peeking their heads into the holes as if to say, "Yoo Hoo! It's warm out here, so come out and join us...."

The rhubarb is poking rudely through the soil, proclaiming it is indeed the season of the botany of desire. The yellow jacket wasps have also hatched and so a darker side of spring commences: predation to feed the young. As I was doing my morning exercises a small hawk landed a few feet away from me in my lilac tree, then did a low dive through the neighbor's yard. We have a lot of starlings in our hood which are experts at mimicking other birds. I kept hearing a red tailed hawk over and over, thinking it was a juvenile delinquent starling getting a kick out of scaring the bush tits. I didn't get a close look at the hawk that visited today. Maybe it was the real thing.

The outside temperature is currently 21 degrees Celsius. Hopefully it will hold for the UBC Farm trek tomorrow.