As the Garden Grows

What's blooming today?


You are here: Home / Archives for flowers

Butterfly Milkweed

by

I noticed that my hybrid Butterfly Milkweed – Asclepias tuberosa – had started to form buds. I had noticed the developing buds about a week and a half ago as I took a walk in my garden checking on all the plants as I went.

Luckily I had my camera at hand and I was able to take a few nice photos of the developing buds:

Milkweed tuberosa buds

Butterfly weed is a herbaceous perennial that grows up to two feet in height. It dies back each winter and then re-sprouts in late spring from underground tubers.

Milkweed is slow to come up each spring. If you grow any form of milkweed you should always take care to mark the spot that it grows in each fall or at the very least try to remember where it was as it’s slow to make an appearance and you wouldn’t want to dig in the area and damage the plants roots.

Flower clusters of brilliant orange or red appear in midsummer. Once the blooms are spent attractive green pods develop. When the pods mature they open to release silky parachutes that drift away on autumn winds. This is how the butterfly weed propagates as the seeds of the butterfly weed are on these silky floating strands.

Each cluster has many flowers, several of these flowers will have an inner whorl of petals that are called the corolla and an outer whorl of sepals that is called the calyx. Butterfly Milkweed is a little different from other species of milkweed in that the sap is not milky nor are the leaves opposite.

Butterfly weed is a naturally occurring plant that grows east of the Rockies in North America. It’s preference is for well drained sandy soils.

If you’d like to grow these lovely flowers plant them in full sun to very light shade. Butterfly weed is hardy to USDA zones 4 – 10.

If you’d like to encourage butterflies to visit your garden this flower is a must as the caterpillars of Monarch butterflies feed only on milkweed foliage. Adult butterflies of many species enjoy sipping the nectar from the butterfly weeds blossoms.

I grow a few types of milkweed in my garden and every time I gaze out my kitchen window I see butterflies visiting many of my plants.






Shadowy garden photograhy

by

Grab the Scavenger Hunt code.
Photo Theme. Join the blogroll. Visit participants.

This weeks theme is shadows

IMGP3165

This is a hollyhock. The photo was taken into the light so that the flowers and stalk appear dark or as if they are a shadow of themselves. This is certainly what the shadow would look like if were to fall on the ground or another object.

Here’s a gladiola that is half in shadow:

shadowed,gladiola

These are actually photographic mistakes, but they fit this weeks Photo Hunter theme.

Perhaps I should have named this post shady garden photography, but that might have made people think I was photographing something illegal or illicit.

Do you think Live Earth will make a difference?

by

There’s an interesting conversation going on about the Live Earth concert at Go Smell the Flowers.

The blog author asks the question:

Live earth is kicking off around the world today with performance in all 7 continents with over 10,000 events promised globally. Will it really help? Are we too late or no need for concern?

There’s been quite a few replies to that post. Some people are being quite pessimistic stating that whatever we do now won’t make a difference and that the message of the concert won’t really get through to many people. Others are more optimistic stating the changes they’ve made in their own lives towards becoming more green and how every little bit will help.

What do you think?

Do you believe global warming exists?

Whether you believe in global warming or not, do you think that if we all made a few changes in our lives it might help the environment or that it might really be a better way to live?

Chris and I aren’t totally green, but we’ve made a lot of changes in our lives over the years toward living green.

Here’s just a few of the things that we do:

  1. Almost all of our lights are energy efficient, as are our appliances.
  2. We turn the heat down in the winter
  3. We live a few blocks from work so we walk to work
  4. Our car is a 4 cyl and because we live so close to work and many small shops we really only use our car once a week or so for short trips to get groceries etc.
  5. We have a few small trees in our yard
  6. Not all of our plants are drought resistant but many are so I don’t have to water a lot
  7. We grow many of our own veggies and fruit
  8. Our garden is organic
  9. What we do purchase in the grocery store is local whenever possible
  10. We don’t eat much meat
  11. We rarely eat processed foods,
  12. We recycle and use recycled products if they are available
  13. We dry many of our clothes on the line instead of using the dryer
  14. We bring our own reusable bags to the grocery store.
  15. We try to use eco-friendly products whenever possible ie no harsh cleaning chemicals etc.

Do you do any of these things? Perhaps you have some more ideas on how to live green for those who read this site?

Meta