This is the fancy flowering okra that C got for me, and it’s one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen–love the colour!

This Tiger Swallowtail did not want to be photographed! I must’ve gone after him three times, and I’m well experienced in taking photos of butterflies, but he’d let me kind of close, and then flutter two feet away. I’m pretty sure he also stuck out his proboscis at me. I kind of got him in the end, at least. Not a great shot, but good enough to see him.

I had thought that the big, black wasps that were tearing up the spotted bee balm were Sphex pennsylvanicus, but the Great Black Wasp doesn’t have a pale yellow thorax, so I looked more closely, and they actually do…if it’s covered with spotted bee balm pollen!

Monarchs have been few and far between this year; I think this beautiful male is only the 6th I’ve seen. I told him to go sit on the milkweed and be a hottie.

Sarah’s volunteer tomatoes are ripening, and I think yellow is going to be as ripe as they get. C said they look like pear tomatoes, which means they stay small, and may very well be yellow when they are fully ripe (some pear tomatoes are red, some are yellow).

How do I hate Japanese beetles…let me count the ways. Bastards destroy my beautiful hibiscus blooms before they even have a chance to open. GRRRRR!

I was beginning to think it would never stop raining long enough for us to set the posts for the trumpet creeper “trellis” (at 8′ high and roughly 8′ across, it’s pretty big to call a trellis), and in the end, I did have to bail the holes Friday after work, but they stayed dry, so we were good to go. We started fairly early yesterday morning, since the temperature was going to be approximately 5000 degrees with 1200% humidity. (Or, about 95F with a heat index around 100F.)

We have to mix the concrete in small batches because that’s the only way we can mix it by hand, and this is fast-setting, so we can’t dick around; we have to move fast! P had got 5 bags to start because the amounts suggested by concrete calculators didn’t seem right. Good thing he did, too, because these two posts took 4.5 bags, and if we’d followed the calculator, we’d have had too much extra. I guess the calculators were assuming steel posts…dunno.

Holes are about 28″ deep; we were aiming for 24″ of concrete, but there’s gravel at the bottom, and besides, it was a mudfest when we were doing the holes, so it was hard to judge. Anyway, they’re 10′ posts, and they’re 8′ above ground. Holes could maybe have been an inch or so wider, but this is just to hold trumpet creeper on lattice(or possibly vinyl-coated welded wire) in an area protected by trees; it’s not like it’s a privacy fence in a wind tunnel, so it’ll be fine.

P got more concrete when he went on his supply run. After he got back, we had an attack of The Tireds, so we had to take naps, and once we got up, we did the other two posts. Thankfully, we were working mostly in the shade because it was hotter than the hinges on the gates of hell out there.

This morning, I moved the 2×4 props, just to get a better idea of how it will look when it’s complete.

Then, I got really curious, so I hauled the crosspieces down and wrangled them atop the posts. My original intent had been to cut them even with the edges of the uprights, but the more I looked at it this way, the more I liked it. Kind of like a pergola, but I’m not going to 45 the ends because I think it’d look weird. Pergola-ish, but it’s going to have lattice for the trumpet creeper to climb, and I think the ends need to stay the way they are. It does give a nice vertical element to that side of the yard, and along with the Tornado Honeysuckle, keeps everything from looking too flat and one-dimensional. I’m going to put a flowerbed all around this, and put circular stepping stones through it for a sort of path effect. The path really doesn’t lead anywhere except to the brush pile and compost area, but I think it’ll look nice, especially once I put some vegetation in front of the brush pile (haven’t yet decided what).

Photos are 2D, so it looks like the Honeysuckle Horseshoe and the Pergola-ish are side-by-side, but they’re not, and it does add some depth and vertical elements to a lawn that would otherwise be flat and (without flowers) boring.

Sarah’s garden doesn’t look like much this year, but if the teardrop flowerbed is anything by which to judge, it’ll be nice next year. The scarlet runner beans and cardinal climber got planted late, but they’re slowly taking over what P has termed my “baseball backstop”. I don’t care if it looks like a backstop; it’s a place where those vines can grow however the hell they want, and nobody can make me trim them, or complain about them!

All that rain (rain, rain, rain…) has stunted 544’s Bright Lights, but the heat and sun over the past week has got them blooming. They should still top the posts we drove to contain them; it’s only the third week in July, and they’ll keep going until frost.

C gave me some of what she thinks is German camomile, which I put out front in the ex-ditch lily bed. I already have white coneflower there, but camomile has tiny white flowers, and feathery-looking leaves, which I think is different enough that it’ll look good even right next to the coneflower.

My morning glory weeds that I pulled out here and there and potted decided they were going to live even if I waited too long to transplant them and had to cut them back to practically nothing, so I went down this morning and cut some thin branches of bush honeysuckle to make a sort of trellis. That stuff is nasty and needs to die, but even if it does sprout because it’s fresh-cut, it’s not going to do anything in a pot except freeze to death in the winter. Besides, it’s convenient to have something I can chop up at will if I need thin, flexible branches for something!

Pretty little Red-Spotted Purple (that would be more appropriately named Rust-spotted Blue) in the Honeysuckle Horseshoe. I had to lean into some flowers to get close enough, so I took this photo with a fat bumblebee literally 1″ from my nose. Bumbles are mellow, though, and any bee that’s feeding pays little attention to anything else.

Beautiful, fresh Spicebush Swallowtail guy. Loved the Cindeh-golds. I told him to go sit on the spicebush and try to look sexy.

Weird little Hackberry Emperor, upside down on the rain gutter. Emps have strange tastes; they love sweaty people, and seem to go for minerals in even odder places than other flutter-guys. I love them, though. <3

I’ve been a but lazy about preparing photos. Not that I’ve done much this week, but…

Volunteer phlox from the stuff P planted last year.

A very small volunteer holly. Too small to tell if it’s American holly, but I flagged it for replanting.

C brought me some doods, which I glued to a stick and placed on the east side of the Mexican sunflower bed.

I believe they’re Silvery Checkerspot.

Bad photo, but he kept bashing himself into the house, flying around the light last night, then landing upside down. He’s a big (big!) prionid; haven’t looked up likely species yet.

It really will grow anywhere! I understood the volunteer in with my Peperomia, and even sort of understood the one in my tree-whose-name-I-always-forget, but the pregnant onion plant is on the other side of the room, in a hanging pot! EDIT: Oh, yeah…Ardisia humilis.

A hundred degrees and humid is not the ideal time to be messing with concrete pavers, but it was only a small job, so…

I dug out the dirt a little bit; took out weeds, leaves, sticks and anything that would negatively affect the stability of the paver base. I had…I think five bags, and used them all.

Packed down the sand same as I did on the patio. I think I had six bags of sand, but used only three.

All of the pavers in place, cracks packed with sand and paver base.

Packed dirt all around the Trash Pad. Done! It took me just a few hours from start to finish, and I didn’t need to cut anything. I hope the paver base will stay in between the pavers when it rains hard and all that water goes flowing across it!

Now flowers and bugs…because they go with concrete. A nice surprise from columbine, which is a spring bloomer.

Leaf-cutter bee. I think this is an alfalfa leaf cutter, but I can’t swear to it; those little dudes look a lot alike.

Native hibiscus. I have three colours; dark pink, light pink, and nearly white with crimson centre.

I think this is my favourite.

The very rare Apis oriole.

Vicious attack by a southern flying squirrel. Oh my GAWD. Onje had something, so I went to look. I thought the little flying squirrel was dead, so I went down to put deer repellent around the mountain-ash and morning glory. I went to take it from Onje when I got back, but then it started to move. Thinking it needed to be put out of its misery, I reached for it…and it jumped. As I was chasing the cats away, the squirrel made a run for it, and, mistaking my leg for a tree, tried to climb me! He eventually made it over to the sweetgum, and he was gone. I hope the little dude doesn’t get an infection from the cat attack; I didn’t see any blood, but…anyway, I hope he lives, and I can honestly say this is the first time I’ve been scratched by a flying squirrel!

Sweet Tea looks like shit, but its leaves are regrowing, and it’s blooming again. I’ll forgive it.

Just one berry on it.

Pano from Sunday morning, blown highlights, harsh sunlight and all. Don’t forget to link to the full size.

It’s Monday morning, and I did this on Friday, but it was such an adventure that it needs acknowledgement.

I have more catching up to do, so I’ll fill in details later…possibly.

Oh, my…between my forgetting stupid stuff (like making the gateway IP 192.168.1.1 when it…wasn’t), and Debian being Debian, and Hylafax being highly configurable, but only in CLI, it took me ages, but my fax server works. I still can’t get it to email confirmation, but I didn’t get the intarwebz working properly until Friday afternoon, so I’ll figure that out once I’m caught up. In the meantime, I’m faxin’like it’s 1995!

I went to Buchheit at lunch to get pavers for the Trash Faerie, and snagged the last two scabiosa. I’d kind of thought that since they’re small, I should’ve got more than three. Anyway, I put them in with the rest, and for the record, they’re ‘Pink Diamonds’. I understand they’re tough to overwinter because they won’t tolerate being soaked, but we’ll see. Hell, if it doesn’t quit raining one of these days, they won’t make it through the summer!

I took some friends to work with me yesterday. I laughed the whole way there at my little firefly, hunkered down on the windshield with his antennae streaming in the wind. I didn’t see the hopper until I got to work.

One of my Patio Pink mallows bloomed. They didn’t get very tall, but not much has this year; so far, summer has been cool and very rainy.

I ended up going back to Buchheit after work to get the pavers, and found out they hadn’t had any out because they had none left. I got red; it’s only for the trash can, which is hidden from sight and not exactly pretty in the first place. I hope to get that done on the weekend, though it’s going to be 91 degrees.

EDIT: Almost forgot this lovely little lady; a common true katydid, Pterophylla camellifolia.

The cup plants were waiting for me when I got home, and although it rained much of the day and the ground was very wet, I had to plant them. They don’t mind wet conditions, and they’re native, so I think they’ll be okay.

Blurry picture, but I took only one of the clump where I had planted boneset last year. Those were a bitch to dig up, but I replanted them over by the creek.

These are in the spot where I had the canna lily that didn’t survive (because it’s wet there, and they’re technically not hardy).

Found this little dude on my car yesterday morning. He was cold, so I shared some warmth and then put him on a screen on the south side of the house, out of the rain.

Sadly, I had to go back to work in order to get a chance to sit down and rest, so not much to post. Flowers weren’t resting, though.

Midnight Marvel

Annual mallow. Patio Pink is coming, but not there yet. Mallows are so pretty!