Garden For Wildlife

This Bird's Impressed!

Cindy recently got our yard certified as a Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation.

To get certified, you need to provide sources for food, including native plants, seeds, fruits, nuts, berries and nectar; water, including birdbaths, ponds, water gardens or streams; cover, such as thickets, rock piles, or birdhouses; and places to raise young, such as dense shrubs, vegetation, nesting boxes or ponds.

The Rest Of The Birds Are At The Feeders

We definitely have the native plants in the yard and in the canyon part of the yard, and with all the bird seed we put out, there's always plenty of food.

Or At The Birdbath

Cindy keeps the bird feeders and the bird bath filled,  and there are always plenty of customers at the feeders.  The house finches and sparrows eat the mixed seed from the left feeder, the Lesser Goldfinches flock to the Nijer seed in the right hand feeder, the Scrub Jays eat the suet in the hanging feeder and the Towhees and Mourning Doves compete with the squirrels for the seed that falls on the ground.  Once in a while we get a glimpse of the shy California Thrasher, another ground feeder that lives in the chaparral.

And, of course, the dominant Hummingbird fiercely guards the hummer feeder from the competition, although there's always plenty of food in it and plenty of flowering plants around as well.

We chose the fancy sign, but then decided we'd better put it in the back yard because of the number of thefts of markers and plaques around town lately.  But then, the back yard is where most of the wildlife hangs out anyway, so they can enjoy the sign, too.

Milkweed Bugs

Large Milkweed Bugs

A few days ago Cindy and I were out in the butterfly garden in the front yard, when we saw some strange-looking red and black bugs clustered on one of the Asclepia plants.  The bugs all had red bodies with oblong black markings on both head and tail ends and a black band around the middle.  Neither of us had ever seen anything like them before.

A little research revealed that they are Large Milkweed Bugs, Oncopeltus fasciatus.  Who knew there was such a thing?  We didn't.

Asclepia

The bugs love Asclepia, which is, of course, milkweed, and feed on the seed pods.  Because the milkweed sap contains a toxic substance called cardiac glycosides, the bugs themselves become toxic when they ingest the sap, making them unattractive to predators.

Although we've had several Monarch butterflies hanging out in the butterfly garden this summer, we've seen very few Monarch caterpillars this year.  Cindy has been reluctant to spray the Aphids off the plants because she doesn't want to wash off any Monarch eggs, but the plants aren't looking very good because of the honeydew secreted by the Aphids.  The Lady Bugs are eating the Aphids, but we're concerned that they may be eating Monarch eggs, too.

It's not easy being a caterpillar codependent.

A Plot Revealed

Bean Flowers

I knew it was a plot to get me to eat more vegetables, and so far, it's working to perfection.

The Sugar Snap Peas and Oregon Giants are long gone, the tomatoes and zucchini are finally slowing down to a trickle and the Butternut Squash aren't quite ready yet, but now the beans are on the rampage.  

Cindy planted both Green and Violet Beans again this year and rigged up two sets of long poles, with another long pole between them so that the bean vines could have someplace to go.  It's kind of fun to watch the tendrils snaking out, up and over the poles, searching for the next place to go.

Bean Vines Exploring The World

She just brought in a heaping handful of green and violet beans, fresh off the vines.  We had some of the green beans for dinner Sunday and they were wonderful; tender, juicy and sweet.


So if this is a plot to get me to eat vegetables, these green and violet beans really help it along.

After The Rain

After the rain the other day (0.13 " total) the clouds left, the sun came out and the temperature shot up twenty five degrees, into the upper 90s in the space of a couple of hours, the first time we've been over 90 degrees this summer.   It stayed hot Wednesday and Thursday, too.  Then Thursday afternoon, just when everyone's air conditioners were cranking hard, the power went out all over Southern California.  And it stayed out well into the night for most people.

So we hauled out the candles and the bottles of wine, pulled up the chairs on the front porch and caught up on how our neighbors were getting along.

Several of them came by in search of batteries for their flashlights, which reminded me that Cindy had given me a crank-driven work light last Christmas.  I pulled it out, cranked it up and we were amazed at how much light it puts out.  It lit up the kitchen well enough for us to do the dishes, an important task when the Argentine ants are on the march, as they are now.

That Dynamo Work Light is the greatest thing since sliced bread.  It even had a hook to hang it on the cabinet knob, although we could also have used the magnets to attach it to the refrigerator.  And since it works on a crank, we didn't have to worry about dead batteries.  Cindy got it from Lee Valley.

However, the power outage also reminded us that we need to update our emergency supplies and procedures.  Living in a part of the world where earthquakes and wildfires are unfortunately facts of life, we need to be prepared both for evacuating, or for "sheltering in place", depending on the circumstances.

One problem we had during the blackout was the lack of information; we had to depend on a neighbor's cell phone contact with her husband, who had access to County emergency information.  None of our household radios worked because, yes, the batteries were all dead and we didn't think of using our car radio.  So today we ordered a Hand-Crank Radio from Lee Valley and a couple more of the work lights.  The radio also has a solar panel, so the radio can stay charged through either solar or incandescent light.  I really like that feature; it's renewable energy not dependent on batteries that become depleted and have to be disposed of responsibly.

We survived this power outage, and we'll be better prepared for the next emergency.  As long as we have plenty of wine on hand, anyway.

Rain!

We woke up yesterday morning to find water droplets on the car windows.  There wasn't even enough of it to call it a shower, but we continued to get small amounts of moisture throughout the day and into the evening.

It didn't amount to much, but any rain at this time of year is unusual, and very welcome.  Our friends who live in other parts of the country are amused that we get so excited about a little bit of rain, but when it's been four months since the last time it rained, you can't help getting excited.

"What's the weather like in San Diego today?"
"It's cloudy!  We even had a little rain!  It's wonderful!"

So we had a cloudy, relaxing Labor day with the smell of rain in the soft air.  This morning we even had some thunder, which spooked Jenna and Bailey, our two youngest cats; it's so rare here that they may never have heard it before.  They couldn't decide whether the noise was a threat that required them to hide, or an excuse to tear around the house like a herd of stampeding buffalo.  So they did a little of both.

Anyway, we're grateful for any amount of rain at this time of year.

Fiery Skipper

Fiery Skipper

I've been seeing this small orange and brown butterfly in the butterfly garden in our front yard, but didn't know what it was.  Because it's fairly small and moves so fast, I wasn't able to get a good look at it, let alone a picture of it, until today.

However, now that I've managed to get a photo of it, our trusty San Diego Natural History Museum comes through again with the information that this is a Fiery Skipper, one of the most common butterflies in the area.

These butterflies are "abundant around residential lawns".  Our neighbors provide plenty of the Bermuda Grass the Fiery Skipper larvae favor, and we're happy to provide the plants the adult butterflies like for nectar.

Path of Destruction

Tomato Hornworm

I ran across this photo Cindy and I shot three years ago.

Some of her tomatoes were not doing well, so she started investigating and found this suspicious looking hole in the stem of one of the failing plants.

When she sliced the stem open, she found a path of destruction throughout the stem and finally located the culprit:  a tomato hornworm.

It was unexpected because hornworms usually just chow down on the leaves and stems from above, but this one evidently decided to go inside, thus evading detection for a while.

Cindy used to dispose of them by throwing them over the hedge into the canyon, but now she just picks them off the plant and leaves them on the stones under the bird feeder.  The birds do the dirty work for us and they get a tasty snack.  Works for us.