Garden Life With Caterpillar

We had a very, very light spattering of rain yesterday, which was a nice surprise. It's the first rain we've had in all of July but it wasn't enough to matter. It lasted about four seconds, just enough time to leave drops on the windows and remind us what rain looks like, and then vanished.

According to our local NW3 weather web site, this is the driest month on record:

But that doesn't mean things aren't growing in the garden. The inulas (above) are blooming...

...as are the red-hot pokers, or Kniphofia. This is the one that I dug up last year because it was being shaded out by surrounding plants. I put it in a pot and moved it to a sunnier space, and now we're seeing a tiny developing flower. It hasn't bloomed in years, so I'm glad that work paid off.

The African daisy is still producing blossoms. It's having a banner year.

And these, believe it or not, are chrysanthemums. Remember the ones I bought for the front porch last autumn? When the flowers faded I simply kept them, and they died back to almost nothing, but then they came out again this summer and they're covered with buds. I've always treated chrysanthemums like annuals but it's nice to know they'll bounce back if overwintered.

On the indoor plant front, remember the yucca I pruned back in May? It has finally, finally sprouted from the cut-off stalk. So next year, after these little sprouts have grown a bit, I'll cut the other stalk down and we'll have a rejuvenated (and much smaller and more manageable) yucca plant.



Here's the whole garden. As you can see, our grass is not happy. I mowed the "No-Mow May" area in the center rear of the garden, because the grass had gone to seed and I don't think there were any bugs doing anything meaningful in there. The insect world is already beginning to decline as we move toward autumn.

Dave discovered this fellow on some toadflax in a pot. It's the caterpillar for the toadflax brocade moth. (This is where I wish I had my macro lens -- the camera phone photo doesn't do it justice!) Anyway, I'd just pulled up some toadflax so I went rushing to the yard waste bin to make sure I didn't inadvertently throw away any caterpillars, and I didn't see any. Close call for this guy, who fortunately is on a plant I left behind.