Countdown to Butterfly Weed

 

This is orange milkweed also known as butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa. It is a pretty native plant that is important to monarch butterflies. Adult butterflies feed on its nectar. Click to enlargre.

It is also a host plant for monarch caterpillars. Here's one now, eating foliage.

It's really pretty in the garden, producing pods at the end of the growing season. Here is a patch I grew from seeds. At the end of the season I collected seeds from these pods.

They've been in a paper bag since then.

Look how delicate and pretty they are. They are incredibly well engineered, lighter than feathers and ready to fly on the slightest puff of air. As soon as I opened the bag they commenced flying all over my house. 

These two were making their way across the floor. Looking for the garden?

My bounty of milkweed seeds. 

Eventually I removed all the fluff. After a little vacuuming all is OK again. I'm going to cold treat them by keeping them moist in the refrigerator for 30 days. It will simulate winter and increase the percentage that germinate when I plant them later. I mentioned above that I grew my plants from seeds. I bought those seeds from a nursery at 40 seeds for $6. Behold my seed wealth now!

I  wet a paper towel, squeezed out excess water, sprinkled about 40 seeds on one side.

Folded once.

Folded again. I made four of these.

I put them all in a big sealable plastic bag. Then into the refrigerator until the end of March when I will plant them in little pots indoors. At the end of April, after fear of frost, they'll be ready to plant outside. And then...

February Continues...

 

What can I say? The last full week of February opens cold.

Remember this? It's Pakim Pond in Brendan T. Byrne State Forest in south Jersey last autumn. Click to enlarge.

It looks like this now. I am looking forward to adding a spring shot of the location to the series. Meanwhile, here is the February stanza from A Year's Windfalls, a poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti. 

 

"On the wind in February

Snowflakes float still, 

Half inclined to turn to rain, 

Nipping, dripping, chill. 

Then the thaws swell the streams, 

And swollen rivers swell the sea. -- 

If the winter ever ends

How pleasant it will be."

Snow Crocus

 

Purple crocuses popped up in my yard this week. A promise of spring, right?

Fast forward to today's little snowstorm. This is the same group as above Click to enlarge. One more little blossom stuck its head up but all of them are tightly closed. Crocus flowers close for night, for rain, and for dark snowy days.

Gotta love a flower that sleeps in when the weather is bad. Spring's still coming.

My Spider

This spider showed up at my place a few weeks ago. Click to enlarge. It's a female tan jumping spider, Platycryptus undatus. She watched me while I took her picture.

I've read that tan jumping spiders are famous for being curious about humans, that they approach us and seem to be checking us out. Seems to be happening here, right? She's darned cute for a spider.

Here's her top side. She's about half an inch from tip to tip. Jumping spiders do not spin webs. They stalk insect prey, spitting a strand of silk called a drag line at the victim before pouncing. They can jump approximately five times their body length. I'm really glad she didn't do that during our photo shoot!

 

Snow!

 

It snowed! Click to enlarge.

 

The snow reminds me of this stanza from In the Bleak Midwinter by Christina Rossetti: 

 

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

 

Bleak indeed. No bugs or worms to eat, only dry berries.

Late January

I took a walk early this morning. Here's my report from outside -- it's cold (about 25F when I went out) but not windy, so tolerable for a well-bundled person. There's a lot of ice on the Delaware River. That's the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge. Click to enlarge.

Frosty!

A pair of swans navigated the unfrozen channels.

Geese flew overhead.

It was surprisingly noisy by the river. The ice was making a racket, cracking and popping, pushed around by the river's flow and starting to melt in the rising January sunshine. 

Snowdrops

 

Despite that it was just 10 stunningly cold degrees around here this morning, I went out looking for snowdrops -- and I found some! This little droopy patch was all, but I have no doubt that more of the scrappy little rhings will follow. Click to enlarge.

Not just any flower can pop up in mid-January. Snowdrops have special cold-weather adaptations. They produce proteins that act like biological antifreeze to keep their sap from freezing. They have strong leaf tips that let them push up through frozen soil and snow. And they usually reproduce asexually from bulbs dividing underground.                   No bees, no problem.

For me, snowdrops are an incentive for taking chilly walks in January. It's possible to come across a big patch of them, like in the picture above that I took a few years ago in Central Park in New York City. It might be just me but they always make me feel that although it is winter, the seasons are playing out according to plan and spring is not so far away.