And another

Someone (possibly one of the fine folks on the Wildlife Gardeners  forum) recommended the mountain mints as tough, pollinator-friendly plants, so when I found some at a plant sale, I nabbed one. (Note to Ohio gardeners: Natives in Harmony offers healthy plants at good prices.) The plant is in its first summer and so has not come into its full glory, but hoary mountain mint (Pycnanthemum incanum) seems to be another winner.

First, I love the coolness of its white leaves on the hottest summer days.

A blogger on The Natural Web describes says the upper leaves look "as if they had been lightly but evenly dusted with powdered sugar," a description that is not far off.

Second, like all mints, this one is deer-resistant, a plus even though deer have not yet found their way to our neighborhood.

Third, the plant is drought-resistant, a plus for those of us looking for garden plants that can fend for themselves. (I have read that it can become invasive, but given that in my yard it has to share space with rudbeckia hirta and hardy ageratum, two favorite thugs, I am not worried about it taking over.)

Fourth, mountain mints are reputed to be pollinator magnets. Each of the plant's many heads is actually an infloresence of dozens of tiny flowers, each containing nectar.

For all that this is our lone specimen's first summer, it seems to be doing its job.

Another new favorite

I am way too fond of way too many plants, as the merest glance at my undisciplined garden would tell anyone. I do generally have the discipline to restrict myself to plants that our native pollinators need (with exceptions for daffodils and tulips, which are mental health necessities for humans after an Ohio winter) and try to grow as many regional natives as possible.

But then there are alliums. Who could resist an utterly, improbably gorgeous plant that also happens to be called Star of Persia? Or Purple Sensation? I grow both, along with the lovely oddity called Bulgarian allium. All these members of the onion family are reasonably carefree (although it is possible to drown them), and Ohio does boast a few species of its own. The most decorative is probably nodding onion, allium cernuum,  a beauty that I managed not to bring from the old house. Intending to order some, I somehow ordered a Western native, allium amplectens, instead. And I am in love.

This allium is blooming now, months after most of its cousins have gone dormant for the year, adding puffballs of cool white to the midsummer lawn strip.

Playing well with others is an important trait in a flower, and this one does. It is holding its own with (and having its tatty foliage, a common allium failing, hidden by) echinacea, asters, wild ageratum, and whatever else we have growing. Its tiny flowers, several dozen of which make up a single flower head, are also intricate and lovely.

 
Perhaps its most important benefit in a wildlife garden, however, is that it is a magnet for bees and butterflies. A single globe can host several pollinating insects at once, making it a plant that more than earns its keep. Skippers seem particularly fond of it, and no garden can have too many skippers.

And did I mention that deer leave it alone? Unlike humans, deer seem not to like spicy food.

Could a plant be more perfect?

A guilty pleasure

One of many, I'm afraid. In this case, it's daylilies. I grow quite a few varieties and would grow more if we had the room.

I am well aware that the old-fashioned ditch lily, hemerocallis fulva, is an invasive species. One need only look at Ohio roadsides for confirmation. (In fact, the classic summer combination of orange tawny daylily, blue chicory, and white Queen Anne's lace is composed of three plants from the national invasive species database. Sigh. I love them all, but then I, too, am a member of what is arguably the most invasive species of them all.)

But daylilies are not all bad, for all that they are Asian invaders brought here by 17th-century Europeans who loved their flagrant beauty too much to do without them. For one, they are hummingbird magnets, and any plant that attracts hummingbirds has at least that redeeming quality. For another, they attract butterflies, also a good quality. Daylilies are also hard to kill, a positive for negligent gardeners, and they grow fast and are easy to propagate, although their toughness contributes to the invasive qualities of the straight species. To control the population, one could always eat them, although I have never sampled the plants myself.

No, I grow daylilies for their utter gorgeousness and indestructibility. The current favorite in my yard is a heavily-scented once-bloomer finally identified as "Chance Encounter."

But the daylily walk at the Toledo Botanical Gardens has inspired serious plant lust. Here are a few that would greatly benefit the Second Street collection:

Skinwalker

Frances Joiner

Almost Indecent

Double Bourbon

and one that I must have.

Raspberry Goosebumps

So many plants, so little space.

Life happens just about everywhere

Today found me at another favorite park, this one Sidecut Metropark in Maumee, Ohio. The trail where I took my brief meander runs along the Maumee River, which, while on some levels not as impressive as the Ohio, is certainly gorgeous

(even with the US 20 bridge and a War of 1812 monument visible from some spots).

Despite the proximity of lots of humans and dogs, lots of wild life was going on this afternoon. Geese and swallows were doing their avian thing in great abundance, as were butterflies (mostly cabbage whites, but dancing white butterflies are still a cheering sight, and there were a few tiger swallowtails and an exquisite tiny blue of some kind). Everyplace, even the edge of a well-traveled paved trail, was bursting with life.

The forest floor (if tiny patches of second-and third-growth woods can be called forest) was covered with greenery that thrives under low-light conditions, and every patch of sun found something blooming, even if much of it was European wild mustard (which plant was doing a lot of business with butterflies, sweat bees, and tiny flies).

A dead tree stump was host to a colony of quite handsome fungi.

Some kind of polypore, maybe?

 In the water, the remnants of a dead tree's roots have formed their own small ecosystem.

It didn't find its way into the picture, but when I approached, a northern water snake, which had been sunning itself on the flat section of tree on the lower right, plopped itself back into the river before the large potential predator (me) could get too close.           

Today brought nothing exotic, nothing exciting, no life birds or rare plants--but lots of the kinds of life that goes on in very ordinary places every day.

Where Life Begins

I love marshes of all varieties. (And yes, I realize that the distinctive "salt marsh smell" is not for everyone.) Something about a spread of waving grass and water mesmerizes me. This beauty is on Hatteras Island, North Carolina.

 

I would not recommend walking on those lovely tussocks of grass, as we suspected water underneath..

 

This particular marsh is an estuary, a lively place where fresh and salt water meet. Areas like this are probably where the first tetrapods emerged from the sea, leading to the variety of land-dwelling vertebrates we have today. Estuaries are rich ecosystems, providing places for fish to spawn, insects to lay eggs, and migrating birds to rest and feed. Without marshes, the fish populations on which so many human cultures have depended for food would undergo an even sharper decline than they have.

 The largest grass clumps here are spartina, a plant that has evolved to expel salt from its tissues. Most grass would die quickly under these conditions, but not spartina. The roots of this tough plant hold onto whatever soil they can grab and form part of the matrix of the shoreline. Without plants like marshgrass and mangrove, the flow of all that water might well eventually turn Ohio into oceanfront property.

For all their toughness, however, marshes are globally threatened--often by development. Some of this development results from our human desire to control water, particularly the desire to pave over places where water wants to be. Often, though, the threat comes from being loved to death. People tend to like having views like these off their decks and porches. (I certainly would, and we did indeed spend a couple of nights on this island.)

 This doesn't look so bad. Surely the occasional house or hotel or boardwalk can't hurt anything as primeval and ubiquitous as a marsh.

However, just a few miles away, on the edge of a preserve, this is the view:

Hatteras Island is considered relatively undeveloped, but I doubt that any fish are spawning or herons hunting in neighborhoods like the one in the distance.

Urban gardening

has its challenges. Foremost is the lack of space, given that the area is (no surprise) heavily populated with humans and contains the roads on which humans like to drive their motor vehicles. Plants have to be tucked into the areas between buildings, sidewalks, and streets. What I have discovered, however, is that many don't mind. Our front lawn strip has become quite a lively, colorful place.This bed of mostly native plants and their cultivars is always busy with butterflies, bees, and other pollinators.

 

Because I have no discipline when it comes to plants, another bed between the sidewalk, street, and stop sign is home to daylilies, irises, and other lovelies that I can't resist (and that attract hummingbirds). 

Tough plants like rudbeckia, monarda, and echinacea ask for almost nothing and put on quite a show. They really don't seem to mind being three feet from the sidewalk.

 

A streetside garden is a strange mix of public and private. Before such a garden can exist, someone has to decide to create it, hoping that the neighbors won't mind. Once it exists, it becomes an object of public comment and, one hopes, enjoyment. Many conversations have taken place while puttering in the garden, and I have enjoyed the sight of total strangers taking photographs, not realizing that the gardener was weeding, hidden behind a tall plant.

Of course, the public nature of an urban garden can have disadvantages. This Orienpet lily lost the top two feet of its bloom stem when a passerby decided to remove it and take it home.

But the plant keeps blooming, anyway. There is probably a message there.

Evidently...

birds can't read. All the standard information about hummingbirds indicates that they have a preference for tubular flowers, particularly those in the red-to-hot-pink color range, and that they are usually seen in flight. The hummers in our neighborhood have not gotten the memo.

In the old neighborhood, two red flowers fought for the title of Best Early Hummingbird Magnet. The red monarda "Jacob Cline" probably won for most intense activity,

and its ridiculous-looking flowers certainly tick all the boxes for "traits that attract hummingbirds." Just look at those tubes!

But our native honeysuckle, lonicera sempervirens, is no slouch. It climbs high, has a long bloom season, and sports blossoms that are usually the equivalent of an "eat here" sign for hummingbirds and clearwing moths.

And we have lots of it, rambling over a fence, and have had for some weeks.
 

However, we saw our first 2016 hummingbird just a few days ago. It zoomed in and perched for several minutes on the top branch of a kousa dogwood, then swooped over to a white rose of sharon, an old-fashioned variety with flattish blossoms, where it spent the next several minutes evidently finding something to its liking.

No accounting for tastes.