Wildlife Weekend :: Gorgeous in Green

This little green dragonfly stayed with me for about an hour while I was working in the yard. I figured he really wanted his photo taken so I went inside the house, got the camera and he was waiting for me in the same spot when I went back outside. Whenever I photograph dragonflies I'm always amazed by how beautiful they are close-up - something you never realize while they're just buzzing around the back yard. It's one those 'stop and smell the roses' moments for me.




Amazing little creatures, aren't they? You can click on any of the photos to view them larger if you'd like.

More Dragonfly Love

We didn't make it out to the garden yesterday because our household seems to be stricken with the back-to-school bubonic plague. I actually laid in bed last night imagining hoards of hornworms stripping my tomato plants clean and then playing volleyball with my new baby tomato. Then I had a dream that I planted barley as a trap crop (I really plan on doing this with millet for other garden bugs) and when I went out and looked at the barley it was covered in hundreds of walking sticks. So we're not only physically sick, but I'm dreaming about bugs in the garden so I'm officially sick in the head.

So I thought I'd post a couple of pics of my new garden friends. Farmer B wandered out into the yard the other day and caught me photographing them and talking to them. "Hello little blue one - who is that stripey one chasing you?" he caught me saying. I had one of those moments where you realize you just looked like a complete freak and the look on Farmer B's face confirmed it. I won't write what he said, but it was something about me being in-freaking-sane and needing some human friends.
(Look at the little hairs on his back)

Because I have an insatiable desire for knowledge, I learned that most of the dragonflies we get in the garden are types of skimmers. The males are usually the pretty ones and the females are usually the brown ones. I've mentioned on here a few times how great dragonflies are for mosquito and gnat removal, so they are my new best friends.
(Their eyes and heads are quite expressive in an odd way)

I also learned that out of about 5,700 known species of dragonflies, as many as 50 species fly to warmer places for the winter, just like migrating birds do. Unlike birds, however, dragonflies appear to migrate in only one direction. Mom and dad may migrate south for the winter, but it's the next generation that probably makes the return trip.
(I am fascinated by this one's back and how the wings seem to 'attach' to the body)

To confirm that certain dragonflies migrate, a researcher used eyelash adhesive to attach tiny radio transmitters to individual insects. Even though the devices were very small, they still weighed about one-third as much as an adult dragonfly. Luckily, dragonflies can carry heavy loads. In their experiment, the team used an airplane to track 14 dragonflies carrying transmitters. Twelve days of observations confirmed that the dragonflies did migrate.

When temperatures dropped two nights in a row, the researchers found, the dragonflies took off southward. In less than 2 weeks, some of the insects covered about 60 kilometers (37 miles). Some dragonflies go even farther and have been known to show up on ships hundreds of miles out at sea.

So there you go - another dragonfly tip of the day. More than you ever wanted to know.

Yard dragons

I've developed quite a nerdy interest in dragonflies since planting our garden. I'd never really spent much time noticing them before, but because they seem to love our garden, I spend entirely too much time watching them fly around the yard and land on our tomato cages. I have started to really enjoy photographing them too. Their wings look just like I imagined fairy wings when I was a kid with all the fine lines and shimmery color. In fact I learned that people have historically mistaken dragonflies for fairies. Fairy tales have been told of little people fluttering about worldwide that turned out to be dragonflies.

I never realized how brightly colored they are either. We seem to have bright pink, blue and brown ones as our regular visitors. I've already mentioned here how great dragonflies are for gardens and the environment, with their mosquito-eating appetite, so I'm always happy to see them.

The boys are quite fascinated with the dragonfly trivia we've uncovered - especially the fact that dragonflies were around during the time of dinosaurs over 300 million years ago. They really like the fact that there is a type of dragonfly in Costa Rica with a 7 1/2 inch wingspan. They're desperate to see that one.

I found a really cool dragonfly craft that I'll do with the boys on our next free day. It's a fun dragonfly mobile from Highlights Kids. They love hanging stuff they make from sticks they find in the yard - this is right up their alley.

Cyril called for Backup

You may remember Cyril the garden gnome. I had an entire post about him with links to all sorts of Gnome Liberation groups and a week after I posted it, it disappeared from this blog altogether. I wonder if the evil Gnome Liberators infiltrated Blogger and deleted it. Regardless, our lucky garden gnome, Cyril, has obviously found himself in over his head with our failing garden. Apparently he called for backup.

My friend Dianne, who lives in Key West and operates a Pub Crawl business with her husband, came up here to visit recently. Thanks to Tropical Storm Fay, we didn't get to actually see each other, but she was kind enough to leave a bag full of presents for us, the kids and the pets. She's good like that. Dianne is full of interesting tidbits and recently told me something I found fascinating. She told me that in Key West mosquito control trucks are currently blasting out dragonfly larvae to help control mosquitoes. The dragonfly larvae eat mosquito larvae and then grow into adult dragonflies. And as we all learned recently, adult dragonflies eat adult mosquitos. Isn't that an eco-friendly way of getting rid of mosquitos? Much better than filling the air with pesticides.

Back to the bag of gifts...When I opened up the bag this happy little garden gnome was peaking up at me. He's a fancier gnome than poor old Cyril and he comes complete with a dangling birdhouse and a red bird. He must mean business because he has gardening tools in his pocket.

I waited a week or so before the garden dried out enough to introduce our new gnome to the garden. I put him next to the row of pumpkins since I feel like those need the most luck at this point. He's firmly planted in his new home, so we'll see if this gnome brings us more luck. He still needs a name though...

After the rain: Final Verdict

I've been carrying on about what TS Fay did to our already failing garden, but now it's time to belly up and show some pictures. It wasn't pretty before, but the saddest part for me is that we had beautiful green bean plants, pumpkins, sunflowers and peanuts starting. They were the only plants that were a nice shade of green and actually looked promising. Now even they don't look so hot.

I think I've figured out why we have so many beautiful dragonflies in the garden. Did you know they eat mosquitoes? Yup. They usually eat other flying insects, particularly midges and mosquitoes. The fact that I can't even go out in the garden to weed without being overrun by blood-sucking biting mosquitoes makes me welcome the dragonflies.Back to the plants. Fay's flooding killed off the rest of the tomatoes that were clinging to life. They are just brown sticks now. I do have one tomato plant in a cage that is still managing to grow, but it's not a pretty shade of green at all.
Oddly there are nice green tufts on the carrots, so I'm still wondering if they'll grow into anything. Is it allowed to annoy me that I accidentally planted the carrots out of season and they are the greenest thing in the garden right now? The peanuts look all right, although they aren't great - the sunflowers have yellowed and are drooping. I hold out hope that a few may pull through.

The pumpkins are the worst part for me. They were so green and leafy and promising. Now they look just plain sad. I'm clinging to hope that at least one will pull through. Here's the before and after pictures of my best pumpkin plant.

Before
AfterI did learn something new about pumpkins thanks to a highly credible source on gardening: the Halloween issue of Highlights magazine. They did an article on a little girl who grew a monster pumpkin that won a biggest pumpkin competition in California at 948 lbs. Apparently this little girl has more mad skills than I do. "Amber" says that the best way to get a pumpkin to grow better and bigger is to bury the vines as they grow. She carried buckets of dirt from other parts of the garden and scooped soil around each leaf joint. If the vine stays buried, a new root grows down from each leaf joint and sucks up extra water and nutrients for the pumpkin. She says that the big leaves are like waterspouts that channel water right to the root. I'd like to bring that little girl down here and watch her try to grow a one-pound pumpkin in our death dirt and then I'd send a hurricane or two her way and see how she rolls. Hmph.

Oh, I also read a very interesting pumpkin fact - a giant pumpkin can gain 25 lbs in one day. Fascinating. Not that I'll ever need this tidbit, but I liked it nonetheless.

So there you have it. The best pumpkin advice I've read so far. Highlights magazine. Go figure.

Damage Done

There was a break in the rain today that allowed me to wander out to the garden and take a look at the damage. It's flooded. The plants have either washed away or are floppy and submerged. I suppose there is a chance that some of them might perk up if the soil drains and the sun comes out. But it's quite obvious that the majority of the garden is a complete failure. If it wasn't bad enough before the storm - it's done for now.

Here's the once-beautiful row of pumpkins.

And the once-vibrant green beans.

Oh and these…these are sunflowers.

The yard is a lake. You have to wear knee-high wellies to wade through the grass. The frogs are so loud at night that you can barely speak over them. At least someone is happy.


On a bright note, there are more butterflies and dragonflies in the yard than I've ever seen before. It's funny, all the birds go away when there's a hurricane and you know it's past when you see them come back. Apparently butterflies and dragonflies follow the same logic.

One of our back rooms has started to flood. We have heavy gym equipment on the carpet so we can't pull back the carpet all the way to see how much of it is wet. It's quite clear that the edges are very wet though. It's heavy gym equipment that requires a professional to assemble/disassemble so we don't know what we'll do at this point. We discovered it last night and spent the night drying out the room with a fan and a humidifier - then today we got torrential rains again and it's even wetter than it was the night before. These pictures are not that exciting, but they're a real cause of stress for us.

Wet carpet - mildew on the baseboards - saturated carpet padding.

And we lifted up the black gym mats and found mildew underneath.


But, this is a gardening blog, so we will wait for the soil to dry out and continue with the mission. We will replant. And I will learn how to grow something if it kills me. I realize this blog has turned into a bit of drama over almost losing our dog and now the events of Tropical Storm Fay, but as soon as we dry out enough to get back to normal, we'll be back to figuring out how this garden growing thing works again! Thanks for sticking with us while we deal with all of this...