six on Saturday, 20 July 2019

This week’s six are somewhat of an update on last week’s post about garden visitors.  Readers can see what is going on around the globe by visiting the site of The Propagator, the originator of Six on Saturday, and following links in the comments.  Doing so is well worth some time.

1. Last Saturday I mentioned that it was rather difficult to get good photos of damselflies without a macro lens, but this week I had some modest success with an iPhone 8.  The silhouette in the featured image obviously does not have great detail; nonetheless, it does show the shape of the damselfly well.   Neither are the two photos below intense detail, but they do show color well.  I believe that they are both Blue-fronted Dancers (Argia apicalis).  Whatever they are, though, they are more colorful than last week’s images and they are all about the garden.

2. The second photo is the first of two new visitors.  I did not mind finding this black snake sunning himself on the concrete.  I just don’t want to find him while I am working on the wooded hill behind the house.

3. This fellow was on the wooded hill.  I have never seen him in the garden before (snakes I have seen before, black snakes, rat snakes, and–unfortunately–even copperheads).  Coming from Maryland, I call him a groundhog; in Alabama, though, I understand he is called a woodchuck.

4. The next visitor is an encore.  The difference this week is that this bold raccoon began appearing in the middle of the day to raid the bird seed and the hummingbird feeders.  For a while, the birds will have to dine elsewhere.  I’m not putting seed and nectar out for the time being in the hope of breaking this thief’s habit of having afternoon tea in my garden.  As horticulturist Tony Tomeo reminded me, in many place in the US he would be called a trash panda.

5. An up date on my propagation of Limelight hydrangeas is number five.  For some reason, two of my three surviving plants have grown so much bigger than the third that I have already repotted them.  The smaller one might have been a smaller cutting to begin with or just got a quicker dipping of rooting compound.  Whatever its cause for being behind the others, I’ll continue to foster it through the summer.

6. My final photo is of the peony that I thought garden visitors had devoured last year.  It has reappeared and, although growing slowly, I have hope that it will survive this year.

I look forward to the time when an update will include a bloom on this plant.  For now, though, my six are complete.