Lilacs, Lavender, & Lepidoptera

ProfessorRoush fully realizes this entry may seem like a rerun of last week's post,  but he came back from a short trip today to see that Syringa vulgaris ‘Nazecker’ had bloomed in his absence; more blush pink than the springtime blue tones it normally holds, but blooming gloriously nonetheless.  And fragrant, sweetening the air, detectable by my non-discerning nose for 10 feet around it!

Once again, these blooms are covered in butterflies, luring in this beauty with its folded upper wings and slightly green body as one example of the attention it captures.  I'm terrible at butterfly identification, but I think I can legitimately limit this one down to the Skipper family, and further, as a Grass Skipper  (subfamily Hesperiinae) due to the vertically-held upper wing pair and other characteristics, such as the oval club ( or "apiculus") on the antennae tip.   But which Grass Skipper?  It could be a Sachem, or another Skipper entirely.  I can't find a perfectly matching picture and there is a lot of variation within the species and genders of this group.  I don't believe it's a Fiery Skipper because it has longer antennae than that species, but I need an assist to ID this one correctly.   Phone a friend, please?

In contrast, the Common Buckeye (Junonia coenia) feeding on this nearby lavender is easily identified by the large, colorful eye spots on both upper wings.  I enjoyed reading and learning about this widespread species, including the fact that it was featured in 2006 as a US Postage Stamp.

The 'Nazecker' lilac pictured here provides a backdrop to my lavender "hedge", so these two species and more are concentrated and attracted to a small area of bloom right now.   Are they drawn to the area by fragrance, bloom color, bloom form, or some other factor?   I'll never know, but I do know it was first the sight of the  bountiful lilac and then the movement of the Lepidoptera that drew my attention here.

I wish I could identify a few more of the Skippers that were moving around, but, as you can see, many are shy about opening their wings to help a fellow out.  Oh, if only I could make time stand still at will, to freeze a moment so I could experience it fully and examine them to my deep content!  Alas, like the life of a butterfly, these instants pass quickly in my own life, experienced briefly, but never still.  I'm just not willing, as the Lepidopterists of old, to kill and "pin" these specimens for my leisurely examination.

Lilac Libations

Earlier this week, ProfessorRoush noticed that one of his "old French" lilacs was blooming.  It is not, in itself, an unusual occurrence for a lilac to bloom here in the Fall, although I am always grateful and attentive when they do.  This year, this old and anonymous Syringa vulgaris has already dropped most of its leaves but is quite prolific in bloom, a half-dozen inflorescences adding fragrance to the cool morning air.  A neighboring pink 'Maiden's Blush' and lilac-colored 'Wonderblue' are also blooming in this row, more sparsely, but blooming nonetheless.

When I first noticed the bloom, I merely thought "well, that will be my blog subject for the week," and snapped a few pictures to document the occasion in time and memory.  The shrub is ugly at this time of the year, bare and worn, and the panicles mildly out of place against a background of drying prairie, but the presence of a lilac out-of-season is still a gift from the gods and an occasion to celebrate.

I was entirely unprepared, however, two days later, when I saw a Monarch (Danaus plexippus) butterfly flitting about the blooms, and I failed to capture more than a blurred butterfly-silhouette at the time.  I was more deliberate and careful today, however, when I noticed, not one, but several Monarchs on the fragrant blooms.

They were patient, these Monarchs, uncaring that I hovered nearby as they slowly made their way over the panicles, briefly feeding at each floret as they went round and round the inflorescences, silhouetted and then in full glory to my phone camera.  One of my frequent failings as a photographer is to capture images of insects in perfect focus on plants, but these golden subjects were nearly posing still, allowing the lens and the photographer to sync up for a frozen moment of glory.

As I marveled and frantically took photo after photo, I finally noticed that not just Monarchs, but other butterflies were taking advantage of the offering of late-season nectar.  The fuzzy-bodied Silver-Spotted Skipper (Epargyreus clarus) in the photo at the right, is likely the third "flight" or generation of this year, but it too was patient enough to pose for the admiring ProfessorRoush.  I owe the ID, by the way, to this amazing Pocket Guide to Kansas butterflies.

A "libation" is a ritual pouring of a liquid as an offering to a deity or spirit, and in this time, in this place, the lilac is surely offering a libation, its precious remaining energy as nectar, to these delicate deities of the wind.  God Speed, Monarchs and Skippers all, on your travels to the future.   May the flowers in your path be sweet and the wind be always at your back. 

A Hawk's Garden

It never fails.  Every spring, ProfessorRoush is a neat freak in his garden, and then, come every autumn, I'm exhausted by the constant effort to stay atop the endless chores, acceding to the clamor of chaos, and waving the white flag in surrender to the wildness of weather and weeds.  And yet, somewhere in between spring and autumn, there always appears an opportunity to choose.  To choose between anarchy and intent in my garden, to choose between disorder and design, between entropy and enlightenment.

Such was my choice, this past summer, to perhaps remove this blackened Cottonwood stump or to leave it in place.  Once a mighty, young, and hearty tree, its health was wrecked by an ice storm years ago and it spent a decade struggling to regrow damaged limbs from exposed heartwood and then, last year, the final large branches fell and it failed to grow any leaves at all.  I let it burn with the prairie around it this spring, and indeed encouraged it to burn by piling dry debris at its base, hoping to erase its presence and its memory from my landscape, but this blackened and hardened stump persisted.

For some time, I contemplated asking a friend to fell this stump along with another dead and starkly-branched tree in the back yard, but then one day I saw a plethora of Tufted Titmouse (Titmice?) using the latter as a gathering spot and decided on the spot to postpone removing these blights from my yard.  Blessedly, what was once a spur-of-the-moment random decision has become a monument to my garden's nature.  Thank you to the Titmice and the Hawk.

The Red-Tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) pictured here and above has been hanging around for the past few months, using the cottonwood stump as a primary hunting perch as it lives out its hawk-life existence on the prairie.   I've also caught it sitting higher on the house roof twice as I came home from work, and once on the frame of my shade house, as you can see pictured here and below.  In the meantime, the eternally hungry rabbits have all but disappeared from my garden beds and I have high hopes that the local pack rats are quaking in their urine-soaked, disgusting debris-pile homes.  Red-tailed Hawks are the most common and the largest bird of prey on the tallgrass prairie and you can see that this one believes it is King (or Queen?) of all its domain.

Once, while mowing, I barely missed snapping a picture of what I call "my" Hawk lifting off from the ground, snake carcass in its talons, but I will never forget the thrill of that final "swoop" and the calm Hawk sitting in the grass looking satisfied at its catch. Gardening friends, if you face a similar choice, I promise you won't regret letting hawks be hawks, and in a broader sense occasionally allowing nature to be in control for a day, for a week, maybe even for a season.  Some say a garden is defined by its boundaries, by the vision of the Gardener, but I submit for your consideration that our best efforts are spent in concert with the natural world around us, not fighting against it. And I can't help but feel that this Hawk agrees with me.    

Clear Skies and Long Views

It occurs to me that some of you may fear that this blog is, at times, in danger of becoming a "weather report", justifiably so since ProfessorRoush shares that same fear with you, and yet I still cannot resist showing you this view, as it presented to me a couple of evenings back as I turned onto my road:

In the west, I saw this view and thought, "that's a rain cloud," and yet we had no rain predicted.  I was not prepared, however to check the weather on my phone and see that this thunderhead belonged to a single isolated cell that was still more than 60 miles distant (radar screenshot taken at 6:49 p.m.)!   Salina Kansas, to the storm's south, is 66 miles from me!  How's that for clear air quality?

I haven't calculated the earth's curvature over that distance, and I know this storm probably reached tens of thousands of feet into the air, but, still, I can scarcely believe I was able to see it coming at that distance.  The world is a wonderful place, full of surprises if we only let them in.

I watched the cloud through the evening as the storm tracked from our direct west.  At 8:07 p.m., it was still more than 25 miles away to our west, but it ended up passing barely to the south later that evening.   My  last view of it below is at dusk, 8:07 p.m., still to the west and at the same time as the radar capture seen to the left, with barely enough light from the setting sun remaining to outline the storm cell.  Lightning was flashing in the storm itself as I watched, and it is no wonder that the Vikings could conclude that Thor was angry in the center of that cloud.

Perhaps now you can better understand my fascination with weather events here in my view from these semi-arid, rolling grasslands where rain is sometimes measured in drops and the wind can strike fear in a brave heart.   Better at times, I wonder, would we be if we were this garden spider, a Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia)  that has patiently tended its web in this exact spot near my back patio for over a month.  I can't tell you how many times I've almost shortcut across this bed into this web, but so far it has survived obliteration from myself, Bella, the neighbor dog, and the weather.  I'm happy for the spider's presence because  it is another sign that Fall is coming and it seems to justify my seasonal neglect and provides some natural pest control for my garden.