My lemon lilies are finally flowering! Of all my day lilies, I love them the best so of course they are the ones that haven't spread. They are a different species than the orange ones but closely related. The flowers do smell like lemon.
The new hollies are flowering! Boring girl flowers have opened on the girl holly, and boring boy flowers have opened on the boy holly. Fingers crossed that the bees find both and do some fertilizing so the birds have berries to eat this winter.
Several leaves on the espaliered pear tree are curling and turning brown. Hopefully, it is only drought stress because some of the pear diseases are just about impossible to treat. After the water-logged spring, the ground is now surprisingly dry in my yard. I snipped off the worst of the damaged leaves, gave it a long drink and will keep an eye on it.
A few carpenter bees have taken up residence in the fence posts. Luckily, Michael noticed a pile of sawdust below one of them. Since they are pollinators, I have been researching humane or at least environmentally-friendly ways to evict them and prevent future incursions. I also contacted the local beekeepers' society for ideas, though I haven't heard back yet.
In other pollinator news (there is a lot of that this week), a monarch butterfly found the wild milkweed patch beside the driveway! The first monarch I have seen this year and the first one I've ever seen around the milkweed (it's been there a couple years). I didn't manage to get a photo of the butterfly, but here are the leaves it was eating. Edit: someone who knows more about butterflies than I do says that it is the caterpillars that eat the leaves so now I need to look under the leaves. The milkweed is in bloom so the butterfly might have been interested in the flowers.
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