Retrospective (6/3/2016)
Patch #126 Monarch caterpillar ...
Stitched from this photo ...
taken a couple of weeks after the original post was written.
Original Post
Case in point, the briars which I used to cut back without mercy are now known to me as dewberries ...
As I love these tart little pops of juiciness, I now leave the briars untouched in order that there might be more next year ...
in spite of the fact that the vines catch around my ankles as I walk through the high grass.
My land management mission today was frost weed discouragement ...
Frost weed is actually a native and not a bad sort in and of itself. Butterflies are fond of the blooms and the foliage is obviously fodder for someone.
However, large stands of frost weed compete with the prairie grasses ...
So these days I cut back the tall stems, giving the grasses a fighting chance, but also enabling the frost weed to send up a second, lower growth in time for flowering ...
Sadly, our milkweed is not nearly weed-eaten enough. Even though the current blooms are swarming with butterflies ...
the large, healthy spreads of foliage like this one are an indicator that there haven't been nearly enough Monarch butterfly caterpillars eating them ...
Still, the Monarchs are not completely absent, as this series of ever-closer shots reveals ...
While I've always left milkweed undisturbed for future Monarch egg-laying, I did wage war against the thistles several years ago. Knowing that eradication is a fool's errand, still I hoped that pulling out the non-native invasives would encourage growth of the Texas thistles so loved by the native birds. Fortunately, that gamble paid off, as most of the current thistle crop is the good kind ...
But as I walked the path back to the house, my eye was caught by an unfamiliar form: a fluff of feathers with the delicate architecture of its supporting structure revealed ...
a reminder yet again of the fragile balance that governs our existence.
