Butterfly Bush – Yarn, Books & Roses

The BioGeek Memoirs: Swallowtail and Ash

September 1st. I woke up this morning to the sound of geese flying over the house, honking away as they crossed just above the treetops. It is a bright blue day here in Colorado where I live, and the garden and the lawn are recovering after the extreme heat of the last two months. The robins are now gone, and there is just one bunny left in my yard. The fall plants are getting ready to bloom, the first golden leaves are appearing on the locust trees, and the end of summer is upon me.

The stonecrop is starting to bloom, the viburnum berries are turning red, and the last columbine blooms of the season are appearing in the cooler weather.

Monday was an exciting day for the cats as I had the ash tree out front pruned. The tree was damaged in an early heavy snowfall, and I wanted to make sure it was given every opportunity to flourish in the aftermath of losing several limbs.

I love that ash tree! I have it treated for ash borers every year (the emerald ash borer just arrived in my area of Colorado… not good news for ash trees!), and last year I even had it deep watered during the winter to protect it from drought damage. It puts shade onto my house, is an essential component of squirrel route one over the house, and serves as food for one of my favorite butterflies…

Swallowtails! Here they are feeding on my butterfly bush’s blooms.

Swallowtails are big butterflies! They are so big (they don’t hold still long enough for me to measure, but they are like 3-4 inches…) you can sometimes hear them flapping as they head across the yard, darting to and fro as they check out the various blooms in the area. They are much faster and more robust than your usual butterfly, so they are hard to grab a shot of if they don’t settle down onto a flower to snack on some nectar. They love my butterfly bushes, so I planted more last year hoping to lure them to the yard. I also left the stump of an ash tree that I lost a few years ago in the back yard, too.

This is what is left over from my lost ash tree in the back yard.

Okay, I am a geek for sure. I didn’t cut back the suckers from the stump so it would grow into a shrub with enticing ash leaves for swallowtails to lay eggs on. The shrub is also important shade for baby bunnies, but that is another issue. All that lawn damage around the shrub is from the bunnies eating the grass down to the dirt, and then rolling around in the dirt, and then doing a little digging on the side, but… this is a post about butterflies so I will move on.

Bunny: you should just move on… by the way, do you notice how cute I am?

Several times this summer I saw swallowtails in the ash shrub. Yay! The ash tree isn’t food for the butterflies, but rather food for the developing larvae from the eggs that the butterfly lays on the leaves. It is my hope that there were some eggs laid in there that will lead to new swallowtails in the spring next year. I haven’t seen any of the caterpillars, but something has been munching on the leaves…

Quite a few of the leaves show the evidence of an insect snacking on them!

The caterpillars become pupae eventually and then hide themselves away in a sheltered location for the winter, emerging as butterflies in the spring. It is my hope that there are some pupae tucked away in a bunny-proof location near the ground and along the cut-off trunk of the old tree where they will gradually transform into the fabulous flyers of the summer.

The guys who pruned the ash tree out front also removed a struggling maple tree from my back yard. They gave the ash shrub some side eye and offered to take it away too, but I was like… NOOOOOO… I need that for my backyard wildlife…

Did they not notice my butterfly bushes? This backyard is a whole butterfly ecosystem that I have going…

Summer is on the wane, and the swallowtails are gone along with the robins and almost all of my bunnies. Soon the leaves will fall. Asleep, hidden in the debris of summer, the butterflies are secretly transforming and biding their time until May. Sleep well, little guys. I can’t wait to see you next year.

Koivua Days in my Garden

What a wonderful week it has been. I’ve been out in the yard for a couple of hours every day with MacKenzie and a book or my knitting. The buzz of cicadas echo in the trees over my head, the squirrels frolic along the fence, and the flowers are starting to bloom again after the blazing heat of July. Life is good, I’ve raced through two books and last week started a couple of new knitting projects that are keeping my interest and making me happy. Let me show off my current knitting love, Koivua.

How beautiful is this!! I’ve just separated the arms from the body of the sweater and it is time for me to attach the rose yarn again to start the next colorwork chart for the body. Here are my project notes if you want more info about the yarns. The flowering plant is lantana, and it just burst back into bloom this week. This is what happens when you give plants some Miracle Gro… I’m wondering if this plant will survive the winter if I plant it at the end of the season. It will be a plant experiment!

Sweater in progress. — Sturgill sweater.

I had some issues with the planning of this sweater. The pink is left over from this sweater that I knitted last winter, Sturgill by Caitlin Hunter. I really liked the contrast of the rose variegated yarn with the grey, so I ran right out and bought some grey tweed yarn to use with my leftover rose yarn to make a Koivua. Good plan, right? Then I thought about things a little more. Looking at my Sturgill you can see that the variegated nature of the two yarns made it hard to see the colorwork pattern in the sweater. I liked that effect in Sturgill, but maybe I shouldn’t make another sweater that had the same fuzzy pattern effect going on with the same colorways. I snuck out to the yarn store and bought some yarn that would give me more contrast with the variegated rose yarn. I was on the hunt for a nice neutral cream yarn.

Bingo! Look at what I found at the yarn store that opened just a few miles away from me. This Kelbourne Scout is a new yarn for me, but this won’t be the last time I buy it! It isn’t superwash, but it is really bouncy and soft. Just what I needed to show off the pattern.

Buying 5 skeins of yarn puts me back a little on my yarn destash project, so I need to really start knitting fast now. I casted right on and after a couple of days I had this:

The cream yarn knitted up wonderfully: it is bouncy, has a slight halo, and shows off the pattern well. I’m happier than ever about the yarn color switch as this cream really brightens up the rose yarn.

I’m much happier with the cream colored yarn than I thought I would be. I tend to avoid light colors in yarns, but this time it was the right decision as the colors in the rose yarn are just shining. The yarn is such a joy to handle I’ve been working outside in my garden swing in the late mornings with little gardening breaks.

Butterflybush bloom — My butterfly bush is finally getting its act together and producing some blooms. Okay, I had to baby it a little bit; I sprayed all the baby blooms with Neem oil to protect them from insects and then started deep soaking the bush a couple times a week using a big bucket and a drip line. Success! Doesn’t this bloom remind you of the yarn in my new sweater? I probably should give this bush some Miracle Gro too.

I am on fire to get the sweater done by the end of the month, but that probably won’t happen since I need to keep on babying my wrists (which are much better), and life keeps on getting in the way. Still, I am hopeful that the next report on my destash project will be a good one. 50 skeins… I can do it… must stay out of the yarn stores…

It feels like the height of summer with the flowers and the buzz of insects, but there are a lot of crickets and some of the leaves on the trees are starting to turn yellow. The kids in the neighborhood have all returned to school, and it is only a few weeks away from the colors of fall. Yep. Must knit faster!!

Update on the Suburban Wrap:

The wrap arrived safely in California earlier this week and it has already gone to school!

My knitworthy niece is a music teacher, and the wrap traveled to school with her as she met her students this week.

Where it also looks pretty good on my grandniece, who is a student at the school where my niece teaches. How fitting that this wrap should be in a classroom devoted to artistic expression and worn by such knitworthies!

Snapshots from the Garden

The monsoon arrived right on schedule a couple of weeks ago here in Colorado. The days are now cooler, we get rainy days every week, and almost every afternoon there are thunderstorms. Some of the storms have really been memorable: serious rain, with thunder and hail. The cats have been staying inside, and the closet is getting quite a workout as they shelter in place waiting for the thunderstorms to pass.

Yet, every thunderstorm has its silver lining. After struggling through the heat of July, the yard has burst back into bloom, and with the flowers and water I’m seeing more wildlife. Flocks of birds congregate in the back, and squirrels have been chasing each other across the roof, through the trees, and along the fence, and insects are everywhere. This morning was warm and sunny, so the cats and I returned to the yard. Here are some of the highlights.

Butterfly — The butterfly bush is now covered with blooms, and the butterflies have arrived. I think that this is a Painted Lady.

Yarrow — The yarrow that I planted early this summer is now putting out new blooms.

Squirrel

Squash — My acorn squash survived the hail storms okay, but the plant lost most of its leaves. I’m hoping that the squash will make it to maturity.

Cat drinking from water — The outdoor water dish for the cats was full of fresh water. Yellow Boy moved right in.

I spent the morning drinking my latte, pulling weeds, and tending to plants that were damaged in the storms. By noon the clouds were piling up again over the mountains so the cats and I packed up and went back into the house. As I write this post the thunder is sounding, the rain is on the way, and MacKenzie is back in the closet.

Knitting time!

The Cat Days of Summer

It is still hot here and things are really slowing down. Most of the plants in the garden have stopped blooming and the cats are on strike under the largest bushes in the yard trying to stay cool. Smoke from western USA wildfires have made the air quality where I live less than optimal so I’ve been staying indoors as much as possible; this is easy because… Olympics! Prime knitting weather!! Today I’m watching volleyball (Serbia vs. USA. Go USA!!) and cranking away on the Antarktis shawl. Okay, that’s enough detail. Here are the pictures. 🙂

Close-up of Knitting — I’m loving the colors of my Antarktis shawl

Shawl — Here’s a shot that better shows my progress. I’m now at about the halfway point.

Cowl — I’m about half way through the Hawkshaw cowl too. I love, love, love this yarn from Spincycle Yarns.

Butterfly bush — My butterfly bush has finally started to bloom, about the only color in the entire yard. Not that any butterflies are bothering to come see the bush in the heat. Even the grass has stopped growing. Mostly it is managing to stay alive. Mostly.

Cat — The cats are too hot to chase any butterflies, anyway. Yellow Boy sleeps spread out on the damp ground under a shady bush.

That right. This cat grows new balls of matted fur daily. I’ve been shaving him when they get really bad, but he can get a little scary while this is going on (growling makes me nervous, and then there are those teeth!) so we do what we can. Last night I got almost everything off except some lumps of fur on his chest. This should be an Olympic event! I wonder who would get scored… me or the cat? We could call it single-handed cat clipping. Points are deducted if you resort to using a foot or sustain a scratch.

Cat — MacKenzie: I have superior fur: no fur mats for me!

Last week I went to see my primary care physician and she ordered me the oxygen-to-go equipment and changed my blood pressure meds. Now my heart rate is up, my blood pressure is down, and my oxygen levels are better. I feel pretty good and have stopped the daytime oxygen. OK, I take the support tank with me when I leave the house, but things are still better. It’s a win!!

So that’s the cat days of summer. Olympics, heat, matted cat fur, oxygen level checks, and knitting marathons.

I’m on the home stretch of the Antarktis shawl. Time to decide which shawl to knit next.