Sunday Yardening

[ysabetwordsmith]

Today is warm and cloudy.  I went outside to remove a mushroom.

I also took some pictures.  My pink gladiolus is still blooming and a scarlet one is budding.  :D  Something else under them is putting out white, bell-shaped flowers.

When I got to the end of the south lot, I startled a deer in the road. <3  It galloped away, white flag flying, and then bounded.  It stayed on the margin for a long time, until it got down to the cornfield.

As I was walking past the white garden, I smelled an unfamiliar fetid odor.  Having seen stinkhorns recently in Champaign, I thought of them.  When I checked the nearest mulch pile, there they were, skinny red fungi that look like doggy dicks.  <3 my detritus food web.

In the prairie garden, the cup plants are still blooming like mad.  Blackberry lilies are done.  Hardly any action from coneflowers this year.  :(  Zinnias are going nuts, though.  Monarch butterflies are everywhere, some of them mating.  That made me think to check the milkweed and I found a caterpillar.  \o/

Comments

[redsixwing]

All delightful things. Congrats on the monarchs! I want to plant some milkweed, and it does seem to like fall seeding... hm.

We've finally gotten enough rain that my wood mulch developed a mushroom. I left it alone; I'm trying to establish a strong fungal web in that area, and this is the second time I've seen them by that particular stone.

[fyreharper]

Remove a mushroom? :headtilt:

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Dig up the fruiting body of a fungus before it can spread spores.

[(Anonymous)]

Yay prairie plants! I don’t know how far south you are, but I live in Northwest Chicagoland, and the Silphiums in general are doing great up here, especially compass plant, although cup plant is also doing well. Funny enough our coneflowers did well too, unlike yours. But we got some good rains early in the season, which may have helped. I work for a forest preserve district and love seeing all of the bees and butterflies that use the native plants.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'm in central Illinois.

[songspinner]

We've just discovered the latest batch of monarch caterpillars in our front yard, too! We've paused getting to the front door in order to let the egg-laying happen in peace a few times this week. I may take some of them to my classroom when I can this week - my students are mostly 12, but I've found that one is never too old to get excited about caterpillars turning into butterflies! :)