Summertime

June's weather statistics for Bean Hill echoed May's, although June had more days of above normal temperatures (23 vs. 14), and more days of 10 degrees or more above normal (6 vs. 2). Like May, June's high average was 1.5 degrees above the historic average high, but the average lows were 2.4 degrees below the historic average. For the second month, precipitation was almost one inch above normal (.98). Overall, the month was beautiful due to low humidity: skies were very blue, and in the shade, even on the hottest days, the breeze was refreshing.

Monarchs and Black Swallowtails have been spotted. Cabbage Whites continue to be seen in abundance. The Mason Bees have completed their life cycle, and left two dozen nesting tubes filled with cocoons. Soon we'll move those to safe keeping, and if all goes well, next spring 5-6 young bees should emerge from each tube.

Hoverfly or flower fly collecting pollen from alyssum

I'm paying a little closer attention to things in nature I've taken for granted, like the tiny flying insects dancing all over the alyssum. With the help of a close-up camera lens, I noticed they were marked like bees, so I snapped a few photos, did a little research, and learned something new. This little guy is a hoverfly, sometimes called a syrphid or flower fly. The hoverflies' bee-like coloration gives them some protection; people (and presumably birds) think they're aggressive and leave them alone. In fact, like native bees, they're gentle and very beneficial pollinators. In addition, their larvae (also known by that unsavory word "maggots") eat aphids and thrips, those unwanted creatures that literally suck the life out of your plants. One insect ID site says if you have these tiny flies in your garden, you can count yourself lucky! We're lucky!

Below are photos of a few other of the smaller summertime residents at Bean Hill.

A tiny grasshopper casts a big shadow

Echinacea (coneflower) and a busy bee

Milkweed community: Monarch-to-be, squash bug eggs, and milkweed bugs

A Perfect(ly) Normal Month

California Poppy

Five-five years ago this week, the first part of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was published in The New Yorker. Carson's work exposed the dangers of the widely-used pesticide, DDT, and gave impetus to the environmental movement and led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. As a result, our air and water got cleaner and safer. It's hard to believe that anyone would think that ensuring clean air and water is a waste of taxpayers' money, but such people exist at the highest levels of our government; the EPA is all but completely gutted now. Unless you're living under a rock (which is a very tempting thing to do these days), you know the person most responsible for destroying EPA protections, also pulled America out of participation in the Paris Climate Agreement at the beginning of this month.

Cabbage White butterfly feasting on Hidcote Lavender

First salad fixin's of the season

Relaxing in the small pond

Pond iris

The somewhat good news is that the withdrawal from the Paris agreement has, like Carson's influential book, heightened environmental consciousness and motivated organizations and individual Americans to take actions to protect the Earth and all living things. On Tuesday, June 13 at 3 P.M. EDT, the Natural Resources Defense Council will hold a teleconference briefing on how we can and will respond to the United States being pulled out of the Paris agreement. If you're interested, you can RSVP at this link NRDC Teleconference on Paris Climate Agreement. If teleconferencing isn't your thing, you might consider donating to NRDC whose lawyers defend the environment in the courts.

Hummingbird landing

As for the weather stats for May at Bean Hill, it was the first month of 2017 during which high and low temperatures were in line with the historic monthly averages, and precipitation was .95" above the historic monthly average. I'm happy to report that not only did our Mason Bees thrive (23 nesting tubes are completely filled, and several partially), I've observed a marked increase in the number of all kinds of bees. Additionally, I saw more butterflies in May than I did all of last summer.

The gardens are lush from all the rain. The heirloom peonies (now in their sixth decade!) bloomed, as did the Siberian irises, and the bright poppies. Sadly, not a single of our many bearded irises bloomed. They were the first to respond with vigorous growth during the overly warm February, and were done in by March frosts. The Killdeer and the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds returned, the Baltimore Oriole made a second visit, and the frogs became active again. Ann and I harvested strawberries and the makings of the season's first home-grown salad.

23 capped nesting tubes

These heirloom peonies have blossomed
every spring for nearly 65 years

May 2017 at Bean Hill was joyfully "normal" and exceptionally beautiful.

May Day...Mayday!

May 2017 began with headlines calling the floods in Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas "unprecedented" and "historic". As I noted in a previous blog (4/6/2017), we are hearing these weather descriptors with great regularity. Other than the melting of the Earth's glaciers and the rise in sea levels, the most obvious result of climate change is frequent severe--literally devastating--weather events. So as this month began, "unprecedented" and "historic" were repeated again and again in describing what was happening in the middle part of the country. Two days before, on April 29, nearly 200,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C. to protest the current administration's unprecedented and historic assault on policies that put the brakes on those human activities scientifically proven to be contributing to, if not causing, climatic changes. That same day Washington tied the record high (90 degrees---19 degrees above normal) for that date, AND the Environmental Protection Agency, now under the "leadership" of climate-change denier Scott Pruitt, scrubbed climate science from its website (see EPA removes climate change data, other scientific information from website).

Serviceberry

As May began, I analyzed the weather records for April 2017 at Bean Hill. No record highs or lows were set or even tied. However, the highs for 24 of April's 30 days were above normal, ranging from a modest 2 degrees to a troubling 20 degrees. Of those days, 15--half of the month's days--saw high temperatures of at least 10 degrees above normal. In all, April's average high was 7 degrees above the month's historical average. The average low for the month was 6 degrees above the historic average.

On April 4, the Bradford pear, which set blossoms in February, burst into bloom, and within the next four days, the serviceberry and crabapple trees began to bloom. All the blooms were beautiful, but lasted only two to four days before fading, possibly as a result of the blossoms having been set much too early in the year. Photographs I've taken in past years of the blooming trees carry dates two to three weeks later than when the blossoms appeared this year. To stay calm, I've taken to telling myself we're actually living somewhere around the Ohio River, and that all of this is perfectly normal---for northern Kentucky. The Arbor Day Foundation has an interesting map showing how hardiness zones have changed across the nation in the past 25 years (see Differences between 1990 USDA hardiness zones and 2015 Arborday.org hardiness zones).

Succulents: Sedum and
hens and chicks

Placing plants in pond

When I'm out in the gardens, I try to focus on the miracle of spring, marveling at nature's resilience, and enjoying the emerging beauty. I think about what I can do personally to preserve and protect. I can't heal the damage to the Earth already done, largely by human greed and stupidity, but here at Bean Hill, in small ways, I can try to counteract some of the damage. This year I'm planting more succulents; they spread nicely and help to control the weeds, which are getting out of control due to the increasing summer heat and dryness. (Last summer I discovered a two and a half foot tall dandelion growing among the echinacea!) I've researched, thanks to Quaker Earthcare Witness, which native pollinator plants should be added to our gardens (see Choosing native plants for pollinators in your area), and made several trips to Baker's Acres.

Mason bees and nesting
tubes. A female has laid
eggs in the sealed tube
in the bottom row

More plants are being added to the larger pond to cut down on evaporation during the heat of summer. Lastly, as I wrote in my previous blog, we've introduced native mason bees, and at the end of the month we plan to introduce native leafcutter bees. By the way, I am happy to report that there already four completed mason bee nests, meaning little mason bees are in the process of forming.