How to make Beetle Pancakes

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A Trip to Longwood Gardens

I spent yesterday, July 4th, at Longwood Gardens, though not for the fireworks. Really the place was a bit of a disappointment and ran differently than I expected.

For starters the ticket system is confusing. You buy tickets to arrive at a specific time in half hour intervals but you can stay as long as you want and I didn't understand why this was necessary at all. What's wrong with just selling tickets and having a recommended time of arrival? Their parking lot is big enough for special events like the 4th of July, there were even people setting up camp outside on the hills around the parking lot having little BBQ's of their own.

Getting inside and walking the gardens for a day I started to realize why they limit the number of tickets they sell in half hour intervals. There is ONLY ONE place that sells food and drinks for people to eat lunch or dinner. Now they were holding a special event for fireworks and additional vendors were setup but they were all in one area! So you can't get a drink if you visit the entire right side of the facility or walk all the way out into the meadow garden other than a public water fountain they have hidden way back in this end building. I almost died of dehydration walking around this place.

Finally I found some sort of delicious-looking BBQ happening but this was only for people who spent the money on the fireworks show happening later that night. I asked the girl if I could upgrade to get some real food, and she said Nope! So inside the regular building I went where I paid $8 for the smallest peperoni pizza in the world that tasted like air. And the glass they gave me was tiny, like what they sell as a Small everywhere else, which was only about $2 though. And it came with "unlimited refills" but frankly there didn't seem to be anyone watching the drink area; it's all self serve so I could have fill up a 2 liter for all they knew. 

They should be selling collectable water bottles that come with free refills the day you buy it and setup more stations around the park where people can buy and refill them, similar to how an amusement park does it. I should be able to upgrade my dinning choice right then and there to special BBQ's, Buffets, and wine tastings etc... instead of having to walk all the way back to the main entrance for a wrist band.

I would have voiced all this to the little suggestion survey card but someone made off with the pen or pencil for doing so... so I just tossed a blank card inside to show what I thought of the place which was not much.

Most of the gardens were vast stretches of lawn with plantings only right next to the pathways. These plantings did look nice and worked well with a corridor effect (looking down the hall). There were points of interests such as sculptures and fountains and the occasional neat plant they highlighted but the amount of lawns this place has really drags the whole place down.

There was a Japanese Stewartia that was absolutely infested with Japanese Beetles.. which might not be a bad thing but generally no one wants this pest insect.

There's a main conservatory that's full of all sorts of tropical plants, and even included a rather nice pond section but it would have benefited from a guide or two or audio tour like a museum exhibit to highlight what I'm looking at and why it's important. 

Something where they'd put a number on the plant tag and you could listen to a botanist, curator, landscape designer, translator, or voice actor, talk about why the plant or feature is so impressive. They could rotate which ones are of interest in and out or limit it to specific gardens. Generally without the information and history behind it, it's really just another pretty flower among hundreds. 

I was happy to see a grove of Bottlebrush Buckeye but disappointing to see absolutely nothing was pollinating them. Actually there were almost no butterflies flying about at all. The only ones I saw were out in the meadow garden and I know from the Mt. Cuba Center that this plant is normally covered in hummingbirds, and large butterflies. They're growing it correctly at least. The plant wants to push up an army of suckering stems to form it's own grove which was extensive. The photo above was taken at the top of a hill and they extended all the way down around the pathway.

This is what it was like looking in. 

But the real reason for going was for the newly installed Meadow Garden, which I'm happy to say was drawing a decent crowd. All of the bird watchers and generally non-handicap guests were at least giving one pathway a stroll. 

Early on I was a little confused though. I thought they had sprayed Round UP on the pathways which is why they looked like dead grass but then I realized, nope, someone started to roll out the sod for god knows why and it's just dying from lack of water. A bizarre choice but perhaps it was something left over from last year. A good design choice I thought were these corner sections where instead of seeding in plants randomly, they had plugs to specific plants. Eventually this will ensure guests get to see specific plants up close and personal.

Another specific plug planting next to one of the rest and viewing areas. Behind me there were some benches, sheltered by the sun with built in telescopes for everyone to look out upon the meadow. 

The occasional butterfly would flap about but for the most part they found a bit of butterflyweed and clung to it.

Black-eyed Susans speckled parts of the meadow with their little yellow disks.

There were a few places where they seemed to be better established and taller.

Red-winged Blackbirds fluttered about the meadow and all the bird watchers seemed to enjoy them particularly. I accidentally interrupted more than one person trying to take a photo I'm sorry to say.

Butterflyweed, Asclepias tuberosa, was a real highlight here.

I love the way the color of the dried grasses adds to this, still blowing with the breeze along with the green, and still with yellow flowers dotting all over.

False Sunflower, Heliopsis helianthoides, was another draw but mostly for bumblebees.

I really enjoyed the meadow garden a lot because there weren't big boring patches of lawn. If you're going to have big sweeps of lawn, at least do something with them; maybe even take that "golf course look" literally and maybe a mini-golfing or croquet. Or even make it more perfect than it already looks? A large carpet of moss maybe?

So the Meadow garden has my interest enough that I think I'll return sometime, maybe in September and I'll be sure to give the whole place another chance.

Golden Net-wing Beetle

Dictyoptera aurora, Golden Net-wing Beetle. The adult stage is mostly active for about two months in the springtime. The grubs are predators of other insects. These are found around conifer forests... suggesting that I may have planted one too many trees in my yard.

It's something of a mystery to me that I haven't noticed this species in my yard before. We have a pine tree, which I didn't plant. It was a "gift" my brother gave my mom at the age of 5, though I'm sure my dad helped there. We aren't that close to the pine barrens or too many stands of pine trees, so I'm wondering it it took 25+ years for our one evergreen tree to become substantial enough to attract this species to my yard.

2013 Best of Nature

The year in what I would consider to be nature started in my backyard. I just loved how the Pipevine was leafing out. This little plant has grown a few feet every year where it may eventually attract in the prized Pipevine Swallowtail. 

Farther south in Delaware, the Mt. Cuba Center's windflower celebration was amazing that year. Fern Leaf Phacelia, Virginia Bluebells, and Woodland Poppy basically carpeted the entire woodland there in patches. I honestly think it would be a brilliant seed mix. Throw in some other woodland plants like Trilliums, Bloodroot, and MayApple and you got yourself some amazing early color.

Fiddler heads to a fern rising up out of the carpet of flowers.

Trillium erectum, which actually smells awful but you do have to shove your nose in the flower to get that effect. It's very pretty otherwise and I'm learning to appreciate the red flowering Trilliums more.

 

Swamp Pink, Helonias bullata, lined up around their pond this year.

And of course they brought back their raptor bird demonstration. This is always a lot of fun because they have all the birds flying over your head.

One of the Turkey Vultures soaring up in the sky. At one point it landed on the mansion and you immediately saw the inspiration for stone gargoyles in the shape of birds.

Back at my house in New Jersey my own Wildflowers were slowly coming into bloom. Here a Columbine in the front garden is flowering. This plant has gotten bigger and better every year. It's also been seeding itself all over in that particular location.

Woodland Poppy is becoming one of my favorites. They flower for long periods and set seed relatively quick. Ants plant the seeds too which is always a plus with me.

Here in a log I started seeing a few things growing. Among them is a young Woodland Poppy planted no doubt by ants. I've found a few others seedlings growing out from under flower beds and logs where ants like to nest.

Not a caterpillar but the larval stage to a Sawfly. These are very odd group of insects because the larval stage is vegetarian while the adults are either social parasites on beetle grubs and things or predators of other insects. It's eating the flowers to my Elderberry.

The foliage of my meadow garden had started attracting more life higher up on the food chain. A rabbit or two got stuck in the yard and for weeks we on end our dog just couldn't chase the things out. They kept darting through the various gardens and patches of grass that we allow to grow knee high. I try to keep things looking as orderly as I can but it's clear the abundance of seeds and foliage are attracting more advanced rodents and mammals.

I didn't see any Monarchs this year but the Milkweed Seed Beetles had their fill of the milkweed. These are rather colorful beetles who's larva feed on the milkweed leaves. If I recall right they over winter in the adult stage and lay eggs each spring. So I should see even more of these beetles flying around assuming the snows don't kill them.

I found a spider which resembled the milkweed flowers around it.

Purple Milkweed, Asclepias purpurascens, started to flower in my yard finally.

Also flowering for the first time was Red Milkweed, Asclepias rubra.

I'm not sure I agree on the common name "Red" becasue their flowers are clearly a shade of hot pink.

Tall Bellflower, Campanula americana. This was the little seedling that could. Of a whole pack of seeds I got six plants to grow, of those only one survived the winter.

This started flowering in July or August and kept flowering well into November, which amazed me. Basically after the main flowers finished blooming it quickly developed new ones along side the ones that had already developed into seed pods. So it constantly rebloomed on places where it had already flowered. This was very neat, but sadly a biannual. I already have four more plants potted and planted which should bloom next year. Hopefully this parent plant though was able to seed it self around a little and I'll have a more consistent blooming each year.

Wild Senna. I've had this plant for a while but it's always been in a dry spot. This year was so wet though that it didn't matter.

Testing out my new camera.

Ground Cherry. I was happy to find a nursery selling this edible plant. Word of Warning: you have to wait for the berries to ripen fully before eating them. They taste just like cherry tomatoes only with a hint more acid to them. Not something you want to eat more than a few at a time, just in case there's some lingering toxin about but really they can just make you sick and probably won't kill you. The taste good.

Cup Plant, basking in the sun.

Rudbeckia flowers ready to open.

Hairy Swamp Milkweed.

A Four-Eyes Beetle which you find on Milkweed. I've seen them in my yard but they never seem to have population explosions.

Another nice thing about my new camera was being able to take shots of hummingbirds.

Not a good shot but taken to demonstrate that the Coral Honeysuckle is getting attention.

Hummingbirds are fun to watch because it's almost like they play with one anther. Really they're bopping one another on the head to mark which food source is theirs but fun to watch all the same.

Here they are taking a time out on the cloths line.... which I tried to grow cucumbers up. Note the buttonbush in the background.

Western Sunflower, Helianthus occidentalis, was a neat one to try. It's a short rosette of leaves with a long flower stem that comes up a few feet.

Here is a shot of the meadow garden. I still don't have an answer to get rid of the unwanted grass species other than to plant more wildflowers. It seems to be going okay.

Great Blue Lobelia, Lobelia siphilitica. This is one I bought at a local nursery as a spontaneous buy. I'm actually really happy with it. They're short lived though but I'm told to cut the flower stem when it's done and lay it down right where the plant was to encourage seeds to grow back again.

The many shades of New England Asters. Violet.

Purple.

Hot Pink/Magenta.

Blanket Flower.

A Violet growing in the clump of dirt in an uprooted tree.

The fall color of Virginia Creeper.

Showy Goldenrod being Showy. Solidago speciosa.

Narrow-leaf Sunflower, Helianthus angustifolius, which I think is one of the prettier perennial sunflowers.

It's one of the latest species to bloom, and boasts these deep dark centers to the flowers.

I found one of the Golden Aster species growing in the wild this year. This was down in Cape May too. It's very sunflower like but at the same time it's not a true Aster either. I honestly don't know what would keep it from being put in one group or the other but it is related and in a category all it's own.

I found what had to be a strip of four miles or so along the shore down in Cape May where someone had planted foot ball field sized patches of Sea Side Goldenrod, Solidago sempervirens.

Monarchs were flying off for their migration down in Mexico.

And I ended the year down in Cape May watching the sunset with some fellow gardening friends.