Wildflower Wednesday - Where There Are Flowers, There Are Insects

When I was studying horticulture in college, I was required to take a class in entomology.

Ick. Bugs.

It was a course I dreaded but the university decreed that I must learn about insects.

The professors who taught the course decreed that I must also have an insect collection to pass the class. However, they were sensitive to the seasons and only required you to collect 15 insects if you took

Achieving Happiness In Your Garden: The Eighth Secret

I had worked so hard in the garden that day, starting early when the first rays of sunlight were slowly inching their way above the horizon and finishing hours later as the light faded over the opposite horizon. Weeding, planting, deadheading, harvesting, mowing, hoeing. I got a lot done

I also wore myself out and looked a mess, as they say. Mud on my knees, grass stains on my shirt, dirt and

Thoughts From the Desert

Two flights with a layover in between and I was transported from Indianapolis in the Midwest, where Fall is lowering the temps and changing the leaf color, to Tucson in the Southwest, where it felt like Summer was a permanent resident.

On the drive from the airport to the hotel in Tucson where the annual Garden Writers Symposium took place, our shuttle van driver patiently answered our

We see it all in the Fall, and hear a new secret

We see it all in the Fall.

There's a remnant of spring in the new yellow rose buds, a touch of summer in the white rose flower, and a bit of fall in the orange rosehips, all on the same branch of a rose.

If you look carefully, you'll see that there is also a praying mantis hanging from the rose, looking at me as I happily snapped pictures for the upcoming Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day.

What?

Auditioning insects

Fall, and the insects line up on the flowers like actresses and actors at an open audition.

They hover, waiting to be noticed, to be discovered. Who will be the big star, who will be the next "glamour bug" to be featured on a blog, or in a magazine article, or even in a book?

"All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close up."

Some like this un-named waspy type insect with that menacing

Frass

Back in the day, the college daze that is, I took two entomology classes. I took the first one because I was required to. Then I took the second one because I wanted to.

Insects, as it turned out, were not as scary and creepy as I thought they’d be. They were really rather fascinating.

But in those two classes, no one ever mentioned the word “frass”. I would have remembered such a word. "Frass

Dear Friends and Gardeners July 12, 2010

Dear Dee and Mary Ann and Gardening Friends Everywhere,

Wasn’t Buffa10 just about the most fun you’ve had as a garden blogger?

I got home yesterday well before dark, just in time to see that a tomato hornworm had devoured most of a pepper plant. I’ve never had a hornworm eat a pepper plant, but I guess they do, especially if they want something a little spicier than a tomato plant. (Insert

Garden Fairies Guest Post: Mowing in the Gloaming

Garden fairies here! We have some stuff to write about, and we are garden fairies so we are going to do just that.

You will never believe what Carol did on the longest day of the year. By the way, we are garden fairies and the longest day of the year, the summer solstice, is one of our favorite days of the year. We have a big party to celebrate, starting just as soon as it starts to get

Ants

When I think of spring's arrival, I like to think of crocuses, sounding the all clear to alert the other flowers in my garden that it is time to come out and bloom. "The weather is fine, come out and bloom."

But sometimes spring's beginning is announced by tiny brown ants that show up in my kitchen. "Where are the crumbs?"

I’ve never kept track of when the ants arrive each year, like I keep

Seeking Direction?

Another fascinating bit of insect lore, gleaned from the pages of “Insect Friends and Foes” by William Atherton DuPuy (1925).

The mantis knows the way!

“Its very name, mantis, means diviner, or fortune-teller. The English call it a soothsayer and old-fashioned people over there believe that its long finger will point the way home to a lost child. In France young women go to the crossroads and

Go, go, go. Buzz, buzz, buzz.

We could learn a few things from the bees.

They were out in full force on Friday, the first full day of spring. They buzzed from hellebores to crocuses and then from crocus to crocus. I'm sure they visited the irises and snowdrops, too.

The bees know a sunny day shouldn't be wasted in the springtime. They know the pollen from those early spring flowers
isn't going to be there forever until

Our Insect Friends and Foes

I recently purchased a new-to-me book on entomology, "Our Insect Friends and Foes" by William Atherton DuPuy (The John C. Winston Company, 1925). It is part of a Romance of Science series of books.

I've always advocated for gardeners to learn to like insects, or at least learn enough about them so that when they see them, they don't scream, drop their Felco's and run the other direction as fast

Can you believe this frass?

Photo orig. from The Blogging Nurseryman

Can you believe this frass?

The Hoosier Gardener, perhaps knowing that I like to use the word frass as my own secret gardener's cuss word, sent me this picture of a bag of frass.

Insect frass in a bag.

Can you imagine?  How in the world does a company get enough frass to fill not just one bag, but enough bags to market and sell it as plant food?

Who