Cicadas! And crickets! Songs of summer

The name of the game this week is maintenance, as in weed control, watering, and gutter cleaning. It's hot (again), but I try to work one hour a day outside, usually in the early morning or evening. If I do have to be out in the noonday sun, I wear a neck gaiter that helps immensely. I bought mine at Dick's Sporting Goods; they are near the checkouts.

I stole this image (but its frequent appearance on various sites makes my thievery seem okay). Despite their aggressive behavior, carpenter bees can't hurt you, which was news to me. I have been stung by paper wasps and yes, it hurts! Yellow jackets are mostly benign until autumn, when they get cranky as their food sources disappear.

I've been dipping into How Can I Help? by Doug Tallamy. It's written in question/answer format, and the questions are based on audience response after lectures. Most of it is spot on, but I have a few quibbles with him, specifically regarding mulberry trees. They are the bane of my existance while he considers them part of nature's food network. By his logic, those awful ornamental pear trees that are taking over undeveloped land everywhere are okay because the birds eat the fruit, ditto burning bush, both invasive non-natives.

His take on goutweed is making me rethink its presence under the hydrangea.

It too is an invasive non-native; its sale is banned in several states. An alternative is wild geranium, which I have in my front yard and that I notice is spreading, so there are candidates for transplanting. But first, I would have to wipe out the goutweed. No easy task.

I abandoned my idea of planting a butterflybush, but perhaps I could squeeze in a bottlebrush buckeye behind the oak tree. They have a tendency to spread via rhizome, so I would need to install some edging around it, not an easy task in my clay soil. I'll put it on the list for possibilities for next year.

Sunflowers and cup plants are starting to bloom, along with the 'Goldsturm' rudbeckia. Yellow!

Also, what I call "ditch" daylilies. Orange!

Then there are a couple of surprises. One of my goals for this year was to let some of the amaranth reseed itself. I forgot about that idea, found myself spraying what I thought were seedlings from the long-gone smoke bush, then realized those purple things were amaranth volunteers. They are popping up all over the place, so maybe I will try dyeing yarn with it again, in hopes of better results than I got last year.

Another surprise is this flowering plant. It is safflower, a volunteer growing under the birdfeeders and another candidate for dyeing. Exciting!

While taking photos, I spent some time just standing in the "meadow". Bees, bees, bees! Also, Japanese beetles, again decimating the Virginia creeper, which is okay as long as they leave everything else alone. Still no butterflies, let alone monarchs, but one can hope.