I already posted the goddamned honeysuckle, and the rest of what I did this weekend is random, including washing a bunch of rugs because I had the pressure washer out to wash the rugs for the front room, but I didn’t take pictures of that. Anyway, just a few pictures.

Roxy, because she’s cute, and she’s not sick anymore. I think she’s abandoned the front yard, but left her sign up until I’m sure she’s in the back yard. ATM, she’s hanging out in the flowerbed beside the patio, so she could go either way.

Pipevine Swallowtail eggs, on the wooly pipevine on the fence. It’s still not a big plant, but it looks better this year than it did last year, and it’s still alive, so I’ll take it. I’m counting at least 22 eggs here; I hope that little vine can handle it! Something ate some of the cats on the Virginia Snakeroot, and whatever it was, I hope it got a good stomachache!

Penstemon ‘Husker Red’ is in full bloom, much to the delight of the bees. I almost wish it was more colourful, but it’s pretty no matter what. Also…a prolific seeder.

Other flowers are starting to choke out my Missouri Primrose, so I may have to move them, but I did still get a couple of beautiful yellow flowers. I’m not a huge fan of yellow as a rule, but these are gorgeous.

I knew we had two eggs, but Mrs. C had a surprise for me today because she laid another one. At least I hope it’s hers; I’ll have to go back and look to see whether the two on the left were the first two, and make sure the one with more white isn’t someone else’s egg. Mrs. C has enough to do; she doesn’t need to be feeding anyone else’s babies. AFAIK, the only birds we have that would do that are cowbirds, but I’m not sure whether #3 is a cowbird egg or not, so I’ll have to do some research.

When it comes to that fucking honeysuckle, there’s always more! If you have ever planted Asian bush honeysuckle or Japanese honeysuckle, then FUCK YOU! Fuck you with a big, thorny stick.

I knew it was going to be 90F today, but it’s supposed to rain tomorrow and Sunday, so I had little choice. I started at about 0730h, determined to get the honeysuckle around the birbs’ elderberry (they planted it, so it’s theirs). There wasn’t that much of it, but it was rough going with osage-orange thorns, and took me 5h. So, I have spent 18h so far, eradicating that godforsaken menace. FUCK non-native honeysuckle.

In the process of disentangling honeysuckle from elderberry, I accidentally cut some new growth, and broke two older branches. Again, fuck non-native honeysuckle. One was too damaged to save, but I gave the other one a shot with a Tanglefoot Band-aid. Maybe it’ll live, maybe not, but it was worth trying.

Three of these motherfuckers grew together. Like I didn’t have enough that are bitches to cut already.

I didn’t take a before picture because I’d initially just gone down there to pull some Japanese honeysuckle, but it was well and truly taking over and would soon have choked out even enthusiastic elderberry. This is the aftermath of my honeysuckle rage. I pulled or dug what I could, and cut/poisoned the bigger ones. Drink up, you sonsabitches; have a nice triclopir cocktail!

The stems of the elderberry look good, and now the plants can spread all they want, and will get more light. Fuck Asian honeysuckle.

Well, potentially. Just a nest so far, but hopefully there will be ugly little babies.

I heard the female in the smoketree at night, so I checked the next day. Same spot as last time!

Poked the camera in. No eggs yet, but fingers crossed!

Just miscellaneous creatures I found while wandering the yard during Honeysuckle Horror weekend.

Roxy, recovered from her respiratory infection, and glad I’ve stopped picking her up to dump drugs on her face!

Male Eastern Box Turtle that I ran across while photographing weigela.

Teeny-tiny baby Pipevine Swallowtail cats on (of course) Virginia Snakeroot. These are a day or two old.

Slightly older guys.

Even older guy, also on Virginia Snakeroot. I have got to find more of that stuff!

Not technically a creature, but a refuge for creatures in the form of tree frogs. Made from leftover PVC that I used for the pond cover. I had 5 pieces long enough; three I painted green, and the other two are painted the closest I could get to the colour of the house with spray paint, but they aren’t up yet.

Random picture of the pond because it’s pretty with the Virginia creeper around it.

05-21-19 – Editing to add the other two tree frog tubes that I finally got drilled and put up. They’re right beside the downspout because tree frogs love to hang out there anyway. Colour isn’t too bad, considering one is faded house paint and the other spray paint for plastic!

As I was killing honeysuckle (and almost killing me!), I took short breaks to walk around and see all the stuff still to be done, but I was rewarded by pretty things, so there’s that.

Lavender almost ready to bloom. Bees will be happy about that!

Penstemon ‘Husker Red’ is blooming. Bees are happy about that!

Weigela out front. These are two “leftovers” that I got on sale at Buchheit. I didn’t really want them, but felt sorry for them. I’m glad I did; they need some pruning, but they are good bloomers! ‘Wine and Roses’, I think (not sure).

Irises that C gave me. There was only one, but not anymore!

Coral honeysuckle on the fence. It’s soooo pretty when it does its big bloom in late spring. No wonder the MLBs are doing their mating dances; Parview is a pretty good place to live if you’re a hummingbird!

I found this little tree over on the north side, while doing an invasive honeysuckle inspection. I thought it might be, but checked with Flower Checker just to be sure, and it is wild black cherry–yaaayyy! Birds must’ve planted this for themselves. About time they contributed. 😉

More weigela in Sarah-Flah’s Giant No-Mow Flowerbed, which is already a jungle. No wonder the MLBs hang around that area; it’s right by the fence of coral honeysuckle. Tubular flowers everywhere!

Baptisia. I still have the one I bought, somewhere in the Sarah-Flah jungle, but this is one that I grew from seed, so it’s special.

Pipevine is going crazy again this year. That stuff is almost scary, but the flowers are cool-looking, if not showy.

I took last Friday off because I’d finally decided to break down and kill the honeysuckle in the northwest corner. I knew it wasn’t going to be fun…and I was right! I started with basically a solid wall of Asian bush and Japanese honeysuckles.

Just to test my battery chain saw, I’d cut a few little bits earlier in the week. Not that it mattered because I jammed my saw on the first cut I tried to make (dead, dry osage-orange), but I can fix that when I have time. Anyway, I didn’t cut enough to really make a difference anyway.

It was pleasant on Friday morning, so I got started early, but it was hotter than hell by 1330h, so I quit for the day. It’s hard, physical labour, and I’m old and tired. 🙂 I did get a lot done, but there was just sooooo much of it, and it wasn’t clear sailing because the tree guys had dumped branches (and actual logs) down there when they cut back the osage-orange; I told them it was okay because I do want a brush pile for wildlife cover, but it’s all so overgrown with honeysuckle now. Anyway, I chugged along, cutting and poisoning, and made progress.

Pretty big pile of honeysuckle. I separated the Japanese because it roots so easily it needs special attention.

Working on a slope is not fun.

I still didn’t get it all–I’m not sure I even can get it all because there’s one right by the creek that’s the size of a fucking tree–but I made a pretty good dent in it. I think I’m going to have to use Roundup on the Japanese, but I don’t want to, and even if I must, I have to wait for a time when there’s no rain forecast for at least a week because I don’t want Roundup running off the foliage and down into the creek. Anyway, it looks a mess right now, but I don’t think I’ll plant anything; I think I’ll just wait and see what plants itself first.

I found a couple of skinny, leaning walnut trees that the squirrels had planted, and one I think is green ash. I left them all; now that they can get more light, I can probably straighten them, and I don’t care if the walnut is allelopathic because I don’t have anything specific I want to plant there, and I’m sure something that isn’t sensitive to juglone will volunteer.

I tripped over a fucking Japanese honeysuckle vine, fell, and my lopping shears hit perfectly on two sides of the bark of one little walnut, so I had to make it a Band-Aid from Tanglefoot and brown paper towel. I thought of that a couple of years ago when Onje made a BANZAI dive into one of the Grey Sticks, which worked out very well and saved the broken branches. Anyway, the damage wasn’t too bad, and I repaired it quickly, so I think the little tree will be okay.

Guess who lives at my house? The Very Hungry Caterpillar…Caterpillars. I will hazard an educated guess that the culprits are Silvery Checkerspot cats, and while it looks like they’ll kill the coneflowers, they won’t. The foliage will recover, and the flowers will bloom to produce nectar for the adults to do this again next year. When humans don’t fuck it up, nature knows exactly what it’s doing.

Last year, I noticed a couple of little seedlings with heart-shaped leaves. At first glance, I thought they were lilac because one is right next to the old lady’s lilac bush (supplemented with a couple of little stick lilacs I got for free), but when I looked closer, I knew they weren’t. I thought about pulling them because at our house, chances are pretty good that a volunteer is an invasive, but something kind of said, “Just leave them and see what they are.” I forgot all about them for the rest of the season because they’re in Sarah-Flah’s Giant No-Mow Flowerbed, and that’s a fucking jungle any time after June. This spring, I noticed they’d come back, and again, thought about pulling them, but instead, I submitted a few pictures to Flower Checker. With 99%-plus certainty, they said “Catalpa”, either speciosa or bignonioides. Considering there’s that big old speciosa down by the creek even if it’s too tall and the blooms too far up to see well, I’m going to go with speciosa. So, at long last (not counting my one remaining baby dogwood), I have a volunteer tree that isn’t either a trash tree or an invasive! I will have to move these ones because they’re in the flowerbed, but don’t yet know where they’ll go. Hopefully, they’ll survive the move.

When we moved to Parview, there were several random plants on the north side of the patio. Given the shit soil and the shade from the garage and the osage-orange trees, none of them was doing well at all. I recognized the leaves on a little string of a plant, but couldn’t place them. C happened to be here one day, and I asked her. She said they were clematis, so I gave the little string a sort of ghetto-looking trellis to climb, then once I had made the Bee Happy bed, I moved it over there. From a sad-looking string on the shady north side to the southwest corner of the house has done well for it!

I don’t have any floating plants yet (might just toss in a handful of duckweed and call it good), and when we stop getting rain, the jewelweed will croak, but for the time being, my pond looks…like it belongs. I’d moved some false Virginia Creeper over there to sort of half-cover the rocks so it wouldn’t look so much like I’d dug a hole in the ground, put in a black rubber liner and stuck rocks around it to hold the edges, and my plan succeeded. The creeper is kind of aggressive, but not too bad, and it looks really nice. I don’t mind the creeper, either, because if it gets enough sun, it’ll produce berries that birds will eat. I’ll just keep it from choking out my Allegheny Spurge, and Canadian Ginger, and that’ll be good enough. It looks so fresh and green.

…the mulberry…cuttings. Probably an exercise in futility, but I decided to try it anyway. 16 red mulberry cuttings arrived yesterday, and FWIW, I dutifully potted them. Since they were barely damp upon arrival, I set the pots in a tray of water overnight, and removed it this morning because it’s raining anyway. They most likely won’t root, so I might also try seeds. Dunno. Anyway, they’re in pots with seed starting soil that holds moisture well, and rooting hormone.

Since the sun was out…more Canadian Columbine. Yes, again.

It was sunny when I got home, but I had to go trim the honeysuckle on E’s side of the fence, and it had clouded over by the time I’d finished and could wander around, looking at flowers. Still, flowers are pretty even without the sun!

I will never not take pictures of Canadian Columbine. I don’t have a “favourite” flower, but these are definitely in the top ten!

They look so delicate, but they’re tough little bastards; these practically never get watered, but they manage somehow (so far…now that I’ve said it, they’ll all drop dead).

This one volunteered in the bed that is supposed to be Virginia Snakeroot, and I didn’t have the heart to pull it. The snakeroot on that side is sort of “iffy” anyway, and I don’t think it’s going to last for too much longer. It gets a LOT of abuse once the Pipevine Swallowtails find it and lay eggs.

My beloved Lonicera flava. This stuff smells amazing, too. Not strong–you have to stick your nose right in the flowers–but amazing.

This flower had a bonus in the form of a baby Zelus assassin bug. Those little dudes are so cute!

I’d got a couple of little sticks that claimed to be lilac. They were free from the Arbor Day Foundation (I think it was them), but I figured they’d just die anyway, so I stuck them in at the base of the old lady’s white lilac. This is the first year one of them has bloomed. The flowers don’t look like much, but considering the skinny little stick that I jammed into the ground two or three years ago, I’ll take what I can get.

I moved it, then cut it back to about 3′ high because it was all crooked and didn’t bloom for shit. It had only a few flowers last year, but this year it has more, and it’s a lot fuller, which was my goal in the first place. They’d had this poor thing at the corner of the patio on the north side, and that was before I had so much overhanging osage-orange cut back. How it even survived at all is a miracle, but it’s happier now, and the flowers are fluffy, smell nice, and are pretty even if they’re white instead of the purple I like better.