Mine was my butterfly garden. Being the mother of two preschool aged girls, I had fantastic dreams of having my daughters help me create this magnificent haven for butterflies, where they could learn all about nature and its cycles firsthand. The only thing magnificent in the end was how it failed. Oh, we had no trouble creating the bed in the place I had in mind. My daughter Sofia had lots of fun with her little plastic cultivator while I did the actual work of digging out the turf. Juliana drooled and watched from her blanket in the shade. After two days of work, the bed was complete, and this is where I made my first mistake. I opened a pack of pre-mixed "Butterfly garden seeds" and Sofia helped me spread it into our newly tilled bed.
Now, don't get me wrong- the manufactured seed mixes certainly have their place. I haven't quite figured out what that place is, exactly, but I'm sure it's out there somewhere.
As far as I can tell, not a single one of those seeds ever sprouted. Most likely at least half the seed would have been inviable for our climate anyway, as (I've come to learn) the companies who make those seed mixes fill them up with plants for all across the country. When looking at the bed 2 weeks later and seeing only the varied assortment of weeds I had everywhere else, I was livid. I convinced myself this whole butterfly garden was the stupidest idea I'd ever had, and ended up just throwing some random borage seeds into the empty bed. (Borage, by the way, turned out to be another disappointment. They tell you the leaves taste like cucumber, and are "fuzzy"; I was expecting fuzzy like a kiwi, what I got was fuzzy like a Brillo pad.)
Throughout the summer, the bed languished. The borage started to topple over, and the whole thing was just an eyesore; a further reminder of my failure. But something happened to melt that icy frustration, and ironically it was another failure that caused it.
My herb bed was doing well, probably because herbs are some of the most forgiving plants I know. Something weird was happening to my parsley though. Tall, heavy stalks began to appear on the plant. When those stalks started to bloom, I knew the plant was doomed. My parsley had bolted. How could this have happened? I'd just bought the plant from a nursery that spring, and it was obviously a first year plant (parsley is a biennial, it grows leaves its first year, then flowers and dies the second). My guess is that it had been exposed to a brief period of deep chill at the nursery where I'd bought it, fooling the plant into thinking it had survived a winter and not it was time to bloom. I had to go out and buy a new parsley to replace it, but I decided to leave my bolted parsley for the time being. After all, there were still some leaves under all those flowers, I might need those while the new plant established itself.
When the first parsleyworms appeared on the flowers, I didn't even shrug. Far as I was concerned, they could eat all the parsley flowers they wanted; and far as I could tell, the flowers was all they ate. As they got bigger (and more numerous) it's no surprise that Sofia noticed them. She loved to "pet" the caterpillars, and would giggle when they popped out the little orange horns on their heads. Memories of doing the same thing myself to the caterpillars on my father's parsley softened my resolve to give up on butterflies.
Sofia with her newly-emerged Black Swallowtail
By the end of the summer, we had a chrysalis of our own, picked from the caterpillars on the parsley and put into a jug in our kitchen. I also had a rough draft of our butterfly bed. It was the polar opposite of the futile seed-squandering attempt I'd made in the spring. I spent days researching all the best plants for butterflies, both host and nectar sources. Selecting the best plants (all perennials, where I could) I plotted a to-scale chart of the new bed and where every plant would go before I even broke ground. By the time my first perennials arrived in the fall, I had the bed ready. It's huge, easily the biggest thing I'd even done in the garden. It fills the entire northeast corner of the backyard, a rough triangle about 15 feet on one side and 12 feet on the other. I even put in a short paved path leading to the center, alongside which I hope to put a bench where one can sit and watch the butterflies.
The centerpiece of the garden is Buddelia davidii "Royal red". I knew they could get huge (about 8-10') so I made sure to give it plenty of room. Also in the bed is Echinacea purpurea "Magnus", Phlox paniculata "Blue Ice" and Monarda "Jacob Cline", all planted last fall. Now that spring is here, I'm starting from seed even more plants to fill in the holes. Sprouting in my kitchen right now is Agastache cana "Purple Pygmy" Achillea millefolium "Summer Berries" Gaillardia pulchella "Dazzler mix". I also have seeds for direct sowing, namely Asclepias incarnata "Cinderella" and Cosmos bipinnatus. Have I set myself up for failure again? Perhaps, but this time I know it's all part of the learning process. By the time this fall comes around, I'll know what worked and what didn't, and be better prepared to make my next plant order.
In the meantime, I still have that old bed where I grew the borage. I wonder what new blunders I can grow there. I have been eyeing those raspberry canes at the nursery . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment