Happy Birthday, George

First Monarch

This is a terrible photo, but I did see my first Monarch of the season on Thursday. This is probably a female, as the butterfly was flying from milkweed to milkweed, and not nectaring. This gives me 20 species I have seen for July at Foulkeways. I did see some "Black swallowtails", but they may all have been female tiger swallowtails.

This song sparrow has an itch.

Here are male and female tiger swallowtils - aren't they grand. I will be away for the next week.

Bees before the storm

The hives will be quickly checked before the storm comes in. We were there by 6:30 and the rain came by 6:50!

Bees are outside the hive cooling off.

The bee on the left has deformed wing virus, which is associated with Verroa mites. Thymol will be used to kill the mites.

Making a bee line for crape myrtle.

Males and Females

Here is the female eastern amberwing dragonfly.

Finally I got to see a male eastern amberwing, in fact there were two in the meadow this morning.

The female redwing blackbird looks very different from the male.

Male redwing blackbird

Female tiger swallowtail. The blue along the back edge is striking on the upper side.

Male tiger swallowtail, no blue along the back edge. This photo was from June.

Foulkeways Garden Tour

It was hot and muggy outside, but this was one of the featured gardens.

Inside there were crafts for sale, including lavender.

Toad on a stick.

Plant for sale outside the Greenhouse.

Inside programs included Garden Tips, Vegetable carving, flower arranging, and a Wissahickon Valley Watershed Talk. Here are the raw materials for the vegetable carving.

Carved vegetable flower display

Carver at work

Final result

Flowers ready for the flower arranging program.

Meadow sightings

Great golden digger wasp. Isn't it beautiful!

Gooseneck loosestrife

Immature grasshopper, which may be 2 inches long by October.

Teasel. If you look carefully there is a bee oin the back. Bugs love this flower!

Drought

These trees in "N" show how the drought has affected our campus.

The grass path in the meadow is brown and dry.

Still much green in the new meadow. These plants are tough.

These milkweed plants have curled their leaves up

One stalk of liatris seen in the old medow.

This purple-headed sneezeweed in the old meadow looks great. I did see 9 species of butterfly today.