Weekly Yard Report

[lady_branwyn]

Weekly yard report. Another butterfly sighting. This one was drinking/eating from the day lilies. The colors reminded me of a monarch, but it had fancier, scalloped wings. A swallowtail?
We've started scrubbing the fence in preparation for another coat of stain. Lots of algae and black mold, partly due to the wet spring and partly due to the shade. We keep having to stop to relocate the daddy long-legs and other spiders.
The local beekeeping society put me in a touch with an exterminator who does hive relocations. He says there is no way to evict the carpenter bees without killing them. Sigh. After reading about crashing insect populations, I really don't want to kill these guys, but I'm not going to let them eat our fence either. Various citrus sprays are sold to repel them so I've been spraying lemon essential oil around their nests. Apparently, they hate noise and vibrations so our fence washing and staining may also send them packing. We will need to plug the holes they made (I've found only three so far).
The anise hyssop that I planted last fall survived the winter and is flowering now.
Anise Hyssop

Comments

[just_ann_now]

Anise hyssop is a guaranteed bee-pleaser! Also pleasing bees around here today: Mountain Mint.

[lady_branwyn]

Not many bees around mine yet. I don't know why--they were all over it last fall. Does the mountain mint smell like mint and spread like mint? Its leaves look more like rosemary than mint.

[just_ann_now]

This mountain mint grows quite tall and straight (I actually have it tomato cages) and, though not really spready, has shown up on surprising places throughout the yard. It smells heavenly, in fact I first heard of it when the flower lady at the farmers' market put it in her summer bouquets. These plants came from Sally's farm.

[shirebound]

It's wonderful that you're doing so much to preserve the bees and little spidery beings.

[lady_branwyn]

I've been reading about the precipitous decline in many insect populations. It is very alarming, both for the insects and for us. I have always repatriated spiders that I found in the house to the outdoors, but now I am trying to make our yard a safer and more inviting habitat for insects.