Category: Nature

Swallowtail Surprise

Today’s Back Porch Nature: a surprise Swallowtail!
It was fluttering inside the Southwest corner of our screened porch, trying to get out. I have no idea where the chrysalis was hidden all winter, but it was somewhere among my Show ‘n’ Tell twigs and leaves and seeds and nests and other treasures.
If the porch was tidier, I’d probably find the telltale meconium stain from when the butterfly eclosed this morning.

Black Swallowtail, male.
If he was female, he’d have less yellow on top, but more blue.
I put him in a butterfly cage just long enough to show him to my family, and to get a picture for ID.

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Toothbrush Bug

Superman and I were the only witnesses to this nighttime scene. After which, I released the bug and retired the toothbrush.

I have not told the owner of the toothbrush.

“MOM,” he yelled to me next morning, “Is the new green toothbrush mine?”

“YES,” I yelled back, “The white one was worn out.” 

But what I didn’t add was, “and it’s in the trash because a giant Western Conifer Seed Bug was sucking on it.”

The Western Conifer Seed Bug’s genus name is Leptoglossus.
Lepto is “fine, thin, delicate,” and glossus is tongue.
You’d need a “fine, thin, delicate” tongue in order to suck sap from immature pine cones.

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Spring Beauties: Bee + Bloom

[Spring Beauty bee]

I usually use the ol’ Monarch butterfly example to talk to beginners about “host” plants and “specialization,” which can illustrate “Why Native Matters.”

But right now, in lucky lawns all over town, there buzzes another great example: the Spring Beauty bee.

Monarchs can’t raise babies on anything but Milkweed, right?
Well, Spring Beauty bees can’t raise babies without Spring Beauty pollen.

Spring Beauty is Claytonia virginica, a not-common-enough “common” wildflower in Nashville.
And Spring Beauty bees are Andrena erigeniae, a native mining bee.

Continue reading “Spring Beauties: Bee + Bloom” →

You, too, can be a Tool of Destruction

[Second Sunday Gardeners WeedWrangle® 2022]

[Or: “How to Borrow a Weed Wrench”]

People volunteer at a WeedWrangle® for countless reasons, but one reason, I propose, is the Weed Wrench.
It is more than just the Tool of Choice.
It is the tool we covet; the tool that—thanks to the magic of leverage—offers the most gratification for the least effort;
and the tool that gives us mild-mannered nature-lovers the rare and oh-so-welcome frisson of AUTHORIZED DESTRUCTION.

At a WeedWrangle®, we wield a Weed Wrench as AGENTS OF DEMOLITION,
as ANGELS OF DOOM.
We bite, rip, and kill any exotic, invasive plant that can fit inside the metal jaws of a Weed Wrench.

And we do this in the service of a higher purpose: to bring back the birds, butterflies, and lightning bugs.

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“It’s Full of Stars” of Bethlehem

[caption: upon looking at my yard]

While recovering from migraine during freakishly warm February days, I pull weeds. Slowly, gently, quietly, and in the shade. So far, I have filled an entire 30 gallon Leaf Bag with nothing but one kind of weed. My worst weed. The weed I wish would die in a supernova: the Star of Bethlehem.

I’ve ranted about this plant before (here), but I rant again because on every public occasion when I point to the foliage or the flowers and proclaim the thuggery of this twinkling plant, I am met with disbelief.
“Oh, but it’s so sweet!” gush the disbelievers. Sweet, pretty, adorable, etc.

All true. I used to make sweet, pretty, adorable bouquets of the flowers—all the flowers—in hopes that plucking them would prevent seed-formation, and perhaps reduce the number of new Stars next Spring.

But plucking did not work. Digging did not work. Smothering with cardboard did not work. Repeated removal of leaves did not work. Nothing works. New constellations continue to spread across the yard.

Continue reading ““It’s Full of Stars” of Bethlehem” →

Dashboard Nature: Car Spider

Today’s Dashboard Nature: the spider who lives in my car.

Funnel spider or Wolf spider?  Either way, it dashes in and out of the windshield gasket as I drive. 

“HELLO!” “GOODBYE!” “HELLO!” “GOODBYE!” etc, super-fast.
All the way to school, every day this week.

Today, it stood perfectly still through a red light at Music Row, which led me to imagine I had a chance to catch it. I pulled the car over, but my Spider Tupperware lives in the kitchen, not my car, and all I had on hand was yesterday’s teabag. Luckily, the bag was a nice, roomy pyramid which, I’ve just learned, can be pressed into a dome the perfect size to trap but not squish a car spider. 

But, if it’s a Wolf spider, all 8 eyes saw me coming, and if it’s a Funnel spider, all 8 eyes (in a different arrangement) saw me coming;
so the spider said “GOODBYE!” before my teabag got halfway there.

There were no more HELLOS! all the way home.

Continue reading “Dashboard Nature: Car Spider” →

Five Reasons to not Hate February

Although February gets some love on the 14th, it remains a month most of us hate. 
I hated it until Naturalist training, during which a series of seasonal epiphanies taught me otherwise.

So, here is my Valentine to you: 5 Reasons to not Hate February.

#1 First-of-Year Spring Beauty

Claytonia virginica is the aptly named Spring Beauty: one of the most common native wildflowers in Nashville. Mostly white, or mostly pink, but always with pink veins that act as landing strips to pollinators. And the pollen is pink, too!

And get this, Nashville has a specialist, native bee that depends on that pollen to feed her babies. No other pollen will do.
No Spring Beauties = No specialist bee.
In March and April, watch Spring Beauties for a small, dark bee with pale pink pollen on her leg baskets, and then try to follow her to the nest. After a load, she’ll fly back to a pencil-sized hole in the ground to provision the nursery.

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Foundation Shrubs that Feed Nature, not Fight it

Skip the Skip Laurel, Say No to Nandina: Choose NATIVE

If your exotic evergreens are “ever-brown” from the recent freeze, now is an ideal time to upgrade to natives.


It doesn’t make sense to simply plant more of the same: the same non-native foundation shrubs that are anything but foundational to our ecosystem. Schip laurel, boxwood, nandina, Chinese holly, euonymus, false cypress, red-tips, cryptomeria, and so forth: all are plants that evolved with creatures and conditions on different continents.

[Mockingbird on Black Chokeberry, Photo by Richard Hitt]

What we need in Tennessee are more shrubs that evolved nearby.
Native shrubs can be more likely to survive extreme weather, year-round. And most importantly, natives are the only sustainable choice: they contribute to local foodwebs in countless, critical ways that non-native plants cannot. 

But, which native shrubs give us the color, texture, and size we want, while giving birds, bees, and butterflies what they need?

Eastern Red-cedar, female with “berries”

-WHAT TO BUY:

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Free the Trees

“But it’s pretty!” is how some gardeners defend the English ivy and Wintercreeper climbing (and killing) trees.
“Pretty” = evergreen, even in winter.

But it’s not pretty THIS winter, thanks to the deep freeze that browned even these invasive vines. 

So, now is the perfect time to kill these killers.

As a friend noticed last month, the vines “already look like sh*t,” so people “have nothing to lose by cutting the stems.” 

Cutting the stems can save our trees,
and save our neighborhoods from millions of new invasive seeds each year.

Cutting is fast, easy, and cheap.

Why cut? and How to cut?

Let Margie Hunter tell you, step by step.
Margie is on the board of the Tennessee Invasive Plant Council, is the author of Gardening with the Native Plants of Tennessee, is a founder of the Tennessee Naturalist Program (where she creates curriculum and teaches), and is a Conservation Communicator of the Year. And, she’s a neighbor!

(For a printable PDF version of Margie’s article, scroll to the end.)

Now is the Time to Free the Trees!  

by Margie Hunter, for the HWEN newsletter

Hillsboro-West End Neighborhood received a wonderful holiday gift in December — frigid temperatures killed the foliage of the English Ivy and Wintercreeper vines climbing our trees — presenting a unique opportunity to cast off their arboreal tyranny without suffering the sad sight of slowly wilting leaves. 

Why should we remove these vines from our trees? 

Continue reading “Free the Trees” →