Finished eating

When I went to check on the gulf fritillary caterpillars, this is all I found.  They have successfully pruned every single leaf, flower, and bud in my backyard.  A casual search did not reveal any chrysalises, but there are still plenty of butterflies enjoying the last flowers of September.

Take two

Our satsuma tree had an extremely stressful year.  Last summer, white scale set up housekeeping, investing practically every leaf on the tree.  The professional advice I received was to destroy the tree and start over but I just couldn't bring myself to do that without trying to save it first. 

We had oranges on the tree so my first choices were natural attempts:  blasting the scale with the jet selection of my hose, hand washing the leaves with dish soap, and smashing them with gloved hands.  Nothing worked.

After harvesting our orange crop in November, I decided to try the chemical "big guns," three doses of malathion spray over the next three months. 

With spring's arrival this year, the scale seemed to be gone and our little tree burst into bloom.  However, whether it was because of the stress from the scale infestation or from the heavy doses of malathion or both, every immature orange dropped from the tree before mid-summer.

Last week, I noticed that our satsuma was putting on some new growth, and upon closer inspection, I discovered a few orange blossoms.  They appear to have pollinated as well.  Of course, these baby oranges will fall off when the cool evenings of autumn arrive but I am encouraged that our tough little satsuma has survived to produce sweet mandarin oranges once again.

Shhhh . . . the babies are eating

This is butterfly season in my backyard.  Because I have masses of purple passion flower vine in my garden, it is filled with gulf fritillary butterflies.  Every afternoon they float about the last of summer blooms and lay hundreds of eggs. 

Its a good thing that I have masses of passion flower vine because those ravenous baby caterpillars are devouring them.  This is all just fine with me because they are doing a fabulous job of pruning the vines for me.  If I am very quiet, I can literally hear them chomping away.

I've seen a few of the pupa hiding under the vines but since they look exactly like a dead passion flower leaf, they are difficult to spot.  I know they are there, however, because I keep seeing more butterflies. 

Native plants support native wildlife.
 

If root beer plant doesn't make you smile

If the flower of the root beer plant doesn't make you smile, then you definitely do not have a well-developed sense of humor.

The fuzzy white stalk in this photo IS the flower of the root beer plant.  Sometimes they are upright like this one and sometimes they curve down into white candy canes. 

A native of Mexico, the leaves of Piper auritum are used in traditional cooking, chopped into salads, and used as meat wraps.  They are supposed to add a mild root beer flavor to food.  The raw leaves taste bitter to me and I couldn't detect anything like root beer.  However, when I crushed a leaf in my hands, the fragrance of a cold bottle of Dad's Rootbeer filled the air around me. 

In my garden, the root beer plants grows as a perennial shrubs in the shade garden.  It propagates itself through its root system.  Whenever I feel a need to know that God smiles, I visit my root beer plants.