The Plant List, So Far

Around this time each year I start to form a plant list. I don't bother with a whole lot of seeds except for annuals like Sunflowers and filler annuals I like more for sentimental reasons and color. The focus is more on plugs and bare roots, often things that will flower in late summer and autumn.

Phlox 'jeana'
I don't have actual photos of this cultivar, but  I was at the Mt. Cuba Center in the fall where they're currently doing a trial run of basically all the true species and cultivars on the market today. They said of all of the verities available this one had twice as many butterflies on it compared to all the rest. They noted the flowers were smaller than most other Phlox which likely makes it easier for the butterflies to work, but other factors like nectar quality and fragrance probably also play a roll. A failing might be that it's otherwise fairly average besides. Flowering wise I'm told other verities did better at offering blooms later int he year so it's still good to diversify. I'm looking forward to their complete trial when it's released in the next year or two.

Ironweed, Vernonia angustifolia 'Plum Peachy'
This perennial turns into a bush of purple flowers in late summer.

I tried planting it in the autumn once but it failed to survive the winter. I think if I plant it in the spring it will have a better chance of establishing.

Aster leavis, 'Bluebird' (actually this is Symphyotrichum leavis but no one seems to care.)
My picture really doesn't do this plant any justice. I have a few planted and love them all, sadly they're not in the most photogenic of places. The one I have nest to a tree with a bird feeder next to it so the squirrels are always snapping the stems off the thing. Even with several dozen stems snapped though it still manages to impress me with tall pyramids of flowers. The perfect compliment to Showy Goldenrod.

Cliff Goldenrod, Solidago drummondii
I bought this plant from some random nursery online and didn't expect much of it. Now that it's established I'm surprised it's not more popular. A failing, if you can call it that, is it forms a rosette of leaves with a couple dozen stems arching out in all directions. The stems tend to get a little long and arch all the way to the ground. I think it's because of the soil I'm growing it in though, too rich. In nature I believe this is meant to be a rock garden plant (hence the name) where the soils tend to be nutrient deprived.

Stiff Goldenrod, Solidago rigida, Actually what's pictured above is Seaside Goldenrod but the two species look similar. They still have broad leaves at the bottom, but Stiff Goldenrod has more flat top flower heads.

Showy Goldenrod, Solidago speciosa
This plant lives up to its name very well.... when it grows right. I bought it because I needed plants for my meadow garden which is dry clay but after flowering great for two years the plants slowly petered out. It's either a short lived perennial or benefits from slightly wetter conditions. Whatever the case I'm willing to give it another chance, perhaps in a more formal setting.

Meadow Blazing Star, Liatris ligulistylis
Same issue as the Showy Goldenrod. I plant these in the Meadow Garden and they do great for two years (being a biannual) but don't reseed on their own. I do have one that has lasted the test of time but it's planted next to our pond. So I'm thinking if I plant more of them in slightly wetter locations, they'll do better.

Bush's Poppy Mallow, Callirhoe bushii
This is a fantastic burst of color. Originally I was against planting these because it's not really a true meadow plant, at least not a plant everyone instantly thinks of when they think of a short grass prairie. Their distribution threw out the US is somewhat limited as well (to the point of being threatened in the wild). Something I noticed about the plant though is that they do well in dry conditions.... making it the perfect candidate for my meadow garden where few other natives seem to be able to establish.

I'm also tempted to buy a second Button Bush. The one I currently have is doing okay, but has a dead limb or two I need to cut out. Also I saw it advertised for in an actual garden brochure I got in the mail. This species is rarely sold and I'd like to support that. I would liken it to Butterfly Bush in terms of attention but it has a far more limited bloom time.

2017 Project Goals

Due to setbacks this past year I wasn't quite able to get out any new ant or bee related videos, at least not of a decent length. I have footage but it's not really enough to call an episode and barely enough to call a segment of something bigger. So for this up coming year I hope to get more footage on a variety of topics to flesh out these segments.

A Video of Wildflowers
I grow a number of these in my yard and they're beautiful though my yard isn't the prettiest setting for a video, hence a lot of my macro heavy photos of them. I'll also likely be visiting the Mt. Cuba Center for more material on this. I may even title the video Wildflowers of the Mt. Cuba Center because that place has been nothing but brilliant inspiration.

Another thing I'd love to do one year is set out baits at the Mt. Cuba Center to see what species of ants they have in the woodland gardens. They are technically gardens but mostly planted as a woodland setting in sweeps to look somewhat natural. So it's not really simulating a garden but also not really simulating nature as we'd find it; it's something all its own in a lot of places. So I think that would be neat do a quick survey of. (I doubt they'd let me chop into logs and things for the more cryptic hunting species but these don't have much to do with "living" plants anyway.) 

More Myrmecochory updates.
My wildflowers has been flourishing the past couple of years with small patches of it growing to look slightly Mt. Cuba-esque. Several new plants have started to sprout as a result of ants planting the seeds. It will only truly be rewarding for me when some of these plants make it to a flowering age, such as the very young Trilliums that have started coming up but we're still a few years off from that. 

Exploring A Rotting Stump.
Almost a decade ago we had a Norway Maple chopped down and reduced to a waste high stump. It's now teaming with life including some rather hard to find ant species. I'd love to film more of this and do a video about it to show you all.

Lastly over this past year I started walking my dog at a different time of day. And I found out that just by doing that I was finding all sorts of ant species having nuptial flights, often with queen ants and males landing directly on me. One thing about the hobby a lot of people don't seem to get is just how easy it can be to find a queen ant. I'll admit though it does take some devotion. I might get a new point and shoot camera just for this task.

Anyway those are my 2017 goals. I hope I'm able to bring them all of them to life in the coming year.

I Survived 2016

Well this has probably been the worst year in recent memory.


On A Personal Level:
My grandfather passed away over the summer and I found myself saying things I never thought I would have. Things like "I don't want to stay for the whole funeral. I was there when they pulled the plug on him on that's more than several of my cousins can say." To put that into context I was just going to pay my respects to my grandmother and graciously then leave. Instead what happened was I was lined up with other family members and had to shake hands over three-hundred friends of the family including a couple dozen servicemen and fire fighters. To enter the parking lot you had to drive under two ladder truck with the American flag hanging between them. There were two chaplains who each had something to say, neither wishing to graciously step down as both had been tremendous friends with my grandfather. The only odd moment came when it was time for two military personnel to preform the flag ceremony. They were a man of color and a women which was presumable intentional, though that wasn't the odd part. He'd been cremated so there was no casket for the flag to be laid upon before hand, thus it was already folded... so a room of 300 plus people watched two military personal unfold a flag, then fold it back up again. 

At the reception I had to face a grim realization. When I posted the details of my grandfather's funeral on Facebook it received 91 likes and an uncounted number of comments of support and condolences.. of whom only one person attended from my social circle. Oddly enough it was the one person who I made the above statement to. He saved me a seat and stayed with me the whole night. He took pictures of everything and even tried to get some of his friends to stop by. 


On A Political Level:
Hopefully four years from now we'll be able to look back and laugh. You know, like that time the president made fun of cripples and grabbing women inappropriately. Not that Hillary Clinton was any prize. She offered nothing more than what Bernie Sanders wasn't offering in spade. And my friends were personally screwed over by the DNC for supporting Bernie and getting his name on the ballet. WHY they were even invited to Hillary's announcement celebration only to be kicked out by seat fillers simply because they went to use the rest room just shows how stupid political parties can get.

In a nut shell, no matter who the president is, they are virtually powerless to do anything without the Senate and House of Representatives under the control of the same political party. Even if Bernie Sanders had won the Democratic ticket and won the election, I don't believe for one second that he could have done half the stuff he promised he would do. Hillary Clinton may not have been perfect but at least the crap being said about her sounded like something that would happen to a politician.

I don't understand the E-mail controversy and hope not to. I know this sounds odd but I really don't care about the content of her E-mails. The fact that her E-mails were able to be leaked in the first place is the Red Flag that makes her unfit to be president. Whether it was just spam she was receiving or the nuclear launch codes, this shouldn't be getting out there. On the other hand though I was hearing people saying things like "She is directly responsible for the deaths of ...." however many people died. No, that would be like saying anyone who gets hacked is directly funding terrorism.

Anyway the election is over and Donald Trump is president which may or may not have been because Russia hacked the system, or maybe more likely Facebook algorithms keep people trapped inside of social network vacuums. Now that the election is over it's WAY more apparent to me. All the people who were writing those articles to push the buttons of people to get them to click their articles didn't know how to write actual news so they're still harping on the same old issues. I've made it a habit to remove these sources from my Facebook feed. It's really odd turning on CNN and hearing them report on Trump saying something that actually sounded like he'd make a great leader, instead of articles saying what he Tweeted at 4:00am.


Lastly, it was made clear to me that that gun ownership is a religion and I will treat it as such in the future.