Caution, Barn Ahead!

Pipevine Swallowtail on Purple-leaf Honeysuckle

So, has the anticipation built enough yet?  I've stayed away from my blog because it is too cold here to even think about gardening.  The world is not  imposing any gardening musings on me either, since I've only received two seed and bulb catalogues in the mail this year.  Is the lack of catalogues a sign of the garden economy?  Next, will I hear that more mail order nurseries are cutting back or out of business?  I hope not.

I have been forced to brave the cold however to plan and keep track of my huge winter project.  I previously wrote about the home farm sale and my trip back home to gain some tools, but one of the biggest tools is yet to make it to Kansas;  a small tractor with all the trimmings for cutting pasture and garden cultivation!  And before it can come, I've got to have storage space built, so I've finally begun construction of an outbuilding/toolshed/barn which will house the tractor, implements, lawn mowers, hoses, and all the other gardening paraphernalia that Mrs. ProfessorRoush blames for dirtying up her garage.  In short, I'm building a big gardener's playhouse and being banished to it.

In my area, outbuildings have to match the design and roof line of the house according to the local homeowner's agreement, so, to limit the amount of brick I have to buy and to decrease the visibility of the structure, I decided to bury it in the hillside just east of the house, pictured above and below, with the 3-bay entrance facing the pasture.  This hillside was too steep to mow, and years ago I planted it with a dozen seedlings of purple-leaf honeysuckle, which spread rapidly to adequately cover the rocky hillside and provides me plenty of pleasurable perfume each spring.

One day, a couple of weeks back, it was an overgrown mass of honeysuckle, lifeless in winter, and infested with pack rats and snakes.  The next day it was a hole in the ground, exposing the rocky soil profile to the world as I noted in my last post.

So, goodbye to the honeysuckle, hello to the barn!  Well, at least temporarily adios to the honeysuckle because although I've never heard her mention it before, Mrs. ProfessorRoush has made me promise to replant "her" beloved honeysuckle that she now claims she enjoys so much.  I agreed in principle to keep some of the honeysuckle, but primarily for the benefit of the Pipevine Swallowtail butterflies and not at all due to the wailings and tongue-lashing from Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  Tomorrow or the next day, I'll show you the walls that have gone up this week.  One good thing about concrete walls;  they go up fast!

Butterflies are Free....

Variegated Fritillary butterfly

Well, perhaps not free, but they are periodically plentiful at certain times.  I am a bad gardener in the sense that I don't pay a lot of attention under normal circumstances to the butterflies in my garden, although I do give occasional thought to selecting native plants and other plants that will attract them. 

Pipevine Swallowtail

The recent bloom of my 'Blizzard' Mockorange and 'Globemaster' Alium coincided to lure in the butterflies like.....well, like flies. The Pipevine Swallowtail at the left, however, preferred the hillside of Purple-Leaf Honeysuckle for its evening meal.  I took all eight of the different pictures within about 1/2 hour one evening.  Identifying them took much longer. 

Painted Lady butterfly

I'm not very good at identifying them, but I've made my best attempt here and I owe any accuracy strictly to a 1991 Emporia State University publication titled 'The Kansas School Naturalist, Vol 37, #4;  Checklist of Kansas Butterflies. Better experts like GaiaGardener (whose previous posts stimulated me to take a look at my own butterflies) will have to check my identifications carefully. 

Dogface Butterfly

The phrase "Butterflies are free, and so are we" is a line from the theme song to a 1972 movie that was also named Butterflies Are Free. It was one of the first movie roles for beautiful actress Goldie Hawn, memorable to a young teenager primarily for the glimpse of the panty-clad gluteus maximus of the then-young and still just-as-gorgeously-perky Ms. Hawn.  Beauty, indeed, exists in all creatures of God.

Checkered White butterfly

I suppose if you are going to visit a white Mockorange near two colonies of insect-eating Purple Martins, you would be best served to be mostly white yourself, invisible, as long as you stand still.

Virginia Lady butterfly

Some butterflies show signs of being the worst for wear, even though the season is early.  Battle-scarred and missing limbs, the goal of life remains the same; leave behind another generation, and you've done your duty for your species.

Skipper?

The identification of many butterflies seems to hinge on pretty small differences and sometimes, judging by the pictures posted on the WWW, it is important to know the regional differences in color intensity and patterns that may exist.  The "skippers" group defeated me in my attempts to identify the butterfly at the right.

Red Admiral butterfly

I am only a novice here in a foreign land filled by fairy-like aerial wraiths, but I will undoubtedly return again, lured by the ephemeral nature of the prey and the rich legacy of the field.  And maybe, just because I like being able to spot a brief blur and proclaim it "Red Admiral", a regal-sounding name if ever one existed.