Old fashioned gardens and butterflies

[Dale Roberts/Bill Yule]

Hi everyone,
     This post is a ramble in the bramble. It's about old fashioned perennial gardens, Spicebush Swallowtails, Little Wood Satyrs, two Skippers, a moth, ants and who likes what. If these things don't interest you be safe and delete now.
     I have an old-timey perennial garden. It's a mess! I like it that way. Funky, overgrown, out-of-control. Every couple years I clean house to see what's been hiding there. It's fun not knowing what's been suppressed by the mess and then having something completely unexpected pop up the next year after I cut stuff back.  My wife's grandmother planted this garden sometime around WWII.  A perennial flower version of the "victory garden". She tended it 'til the late '70's and since the early '80's I've been alternately neglecting it and tweaking it.
      Today I sat in the garden tweaking. The deep purple French Lilacs are almost gone but wafts of the-way-too--sweet perfume still pull in passing Tiger Swallowtails for a quick shot of nectar.  They slam one down and then they're on their way, zipping over treetops to whatever important business they always seem to be en route to.
       The purple mustard called "Dame's Rocket" (Hesperis matronalis) is a favorite of local Spicebush Swallowtails and today two methodically worked over the blossoms and then had one for the road on the lilacs and left.
       Smack in the middle of it all is a big ole raggy-ass double Spiraea (Spiraea prunifolia), one that old-timers call "Bridalwreath."  It has so many blossoms this year it looks like snowdrift.  It's fragrant but subtle like a good Savignon Blanc. Butterflies aren't crazy about these flowers but today two fresh Little Wood Satyrs couldn't seem to get enough and were there most of  mid-day. Now Little Wood Satyrs don't seem nectar that often but today, these two were tanking up on Spiraea. Something else was tanking up too.  A moth. The breezy little day-flying, black-and-white-spotted flower moth called Anania funebris glomeralis.  It has no common name.  Let's call it AFG. AFG looks and acts like a butterfly but for technical reasons it's a moth. Many people in the northeast mistake this little guy for it's bigger, flashier look-alike, the "Eight-Spotted Forester" (Alypia octomaculata). But once you see them both there isn't any comparison.  AFG is a weak flier; timid, low and slow like a restored Volkswagon. The "Forester" is bold, fast, big and lean, like an overpowered black and yellow SUV, cornering tight and in a moment out of sight. But that's another story.
      Finally the Peonies.  Gramma Fowler must have loved Peonies.  There's lots of 'em. Whites and pinks, singles and doubles. Intoxicating when they bloom. But not yet. Almost there.  The ants have been tending the unopened buds for a week.  Like diligent little gardeners the ants patrol the surface of each and every bud before it opens. I had been taught (and always believed) that the ants HAD to tend the buds or the flowers would never blossom. I can't remember when or where I got this rustic wisdom but I never questioned it before. But today was different. Today the unopened peony buds were being tended, not by ants, but by Skippers!  Where's the ants?  Did they lose their jobs? Who were these "scabs", these skippers, Hobomak and Zabulon, who had crossed the line and taken the peony ants rightful job?  What was the world coming to?  Will the center not hold?  I did what I always do in times of crisis.  I went to Google.  I typed in "Ants and Peonies." It seems the Peonies don't need the ants after all. It seems that the Peonies begin to produce nectar even before the bud opens and it leaks to the surface as a "sugary exudate" according to Google, free for the taking.  Today the takers were Skippers of the genus Poanes, zabulon and hobomak, teaching me how little I know.

                                               Bill Yule 

     

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