Buds & Spring flowers
I came back from Senegal to find buds and new leaves everywhere. A few trees had finished flowering, but in two days the quince and the apple were clouds of blossom, more impressive against the blue sky. The hedge at the front is full of flowering trees, lilac, red bud, and beauty bush are the most stunning—and towering at 10 – 12 feet tall, bigger than they are supposed to be and packed with flowers. Later we will have butterfly bush (trees), crape myrtle, and various other flowering trees that I have let to identify, but what we have already is beautiful intermixed with a variety of green-leafed bushes. Behind the gate is a peony tree—something I did not even know existed— and as the day comes to an end the scent fills the courtyard. I’d like to try to root some lower branches and try to grow another over near the washing line but I gather they take a long time to grow.
Meanwhile, one kind of lavender has tiny dark blue-purple flowers about to open while the other is putting up flower stems with little buds. Within a week of being home I was touring the property by following my nose. You don’t notice the absence of scent in winter until spring arrives!
I am most excited that the buds on the Lindens uncurled to that agony of little yellow-green hearts that looks so fragile and then burst into full leaves and threw the front courtyard totally in shade. We miss seeing the stars through their winter branches, but the blossom was starting to come on yesterday so we await all-encompassing honey-lemon scent and every bee in the neighborhood stopping by for a taste and coming back all day (especially the bees from the hives across the road!). New leaves appeared on the olives, to my pleasure, and all of the roses have fat buds with thin stripes of color promising what is to come. The pears and apricots have inch long fruitlettes, and the big cherry has cherries the size of pits. We need to get tough and prune the pear rosettes so each stem has one or max two fruits, not five or six as we did last year giving us small fruit that was easier for the bugs to make trails across.
. . . and bugs
Speaking of bugs. With the roses came aphids. And the oleanders had aphids too, but they were oleander aphids rather than rose aphids. Who knew? Both small and not yet winged, they could be removed by wiping the stems and spraying with insecticidal soap, or regular dish soap and water as my mother used to do for her roses. She loved those roses, so I was used to being on aphid watch ready to kill or alert her to any infestations. Even after I became vegetarian and learned to catch and release any bugs I found inside the house, I still have no compunction about killing aphids. And now I have one more nemesis: The box tree moth.
The Box Tree Moth (Cydalima perspectalis) still trying to destroy the hedges in the region. They almost destroyed ours last year but we saw the caterpillars and their webs and sprayed in time to at least have the chance of regrowth. This year, little green leaves hid wriggly green caterpillars again. Walter bought a pump spray so we could reach the top of the bushes and has been taking no prisoners. My general sense is if possible we should leave things be. I hate killing anything. But not these. They don’t take a little and share, they kill the host — unless we get them first. I remember the first year they arrived, 2009 I think, hedge after hedge was reduced to twigs draped with the left-over pupae webbing. Since then, they have been reported in the US as well. In their native Japan, Korea, and China they have a place in the food chain, but in Europe with no predators they simply reproduced. Some hedges came back as our is still trying to do, but it is not clear who will win in the end. Like the spotted lantern fly in the US, these killer moths are beautiful. Shimmery almost iridescent metallic-white bodies and gossamer wings edges with a brown border. That first summer we sat outside trying to capture pictures of them without knowing what they were (this was before “picture insect”). But their caterpillars are voracious.
The other bug making itself known is the Soldier Bug (Pyrrhocoris apterus), also known as Firebugs and Linden Bugs. These are everything the Box Moth is not and I hopscotch across the courtyard in an effort not to step on a single one as they move in groups or mating pairs between the Linden Trees. Allegedly they eat aphids and other bugs, but I have only ever seen them eating Linden seeds, or rather, the rock hard casings around them. We had some soldier bugs all winter, but now the weather is warmer they are out en masse to mate and enjoy the sun. Mating can take many days, during which they scurry around joined end to end apparently impervious to what their reproductive parts are doing. They serve a purpose swarming onto linden seed casings and softening them so they might grow into a new tree. There used to be six lindens in our front courtyard, but one was removed 50+ years ago to make a bigger gate (so the farm implements could get through). I am secretly, and not so secretly, cheering on the soldier bugs to plant a replacement that will close up the hole in the canopy.
There’s another thing about these bugs. When it gets cold they all pile onto each other to create a living nest. If there are babies they are on the bottom. On a really chilly morning the piles will be on the tarpaulin over the logs by the garage where it is a bit more sheltered, and near the bottom of the lindens in the thick moss on the south side.
A few other cooler multi-legged co-tenants for those who love bugs (and that includes me, aside from aphids, mosquitoes, Box Moths, and Spotted Lantern Flies). The images in order: Ruby Tailed Cuckoo Wasp (Masaridae), Checkered Beetle (Cleridae), Southern Six Spot Burnet Moth (Zygaenidae), and Metallic Wood-Boring Beetle or Jewel Beetle (Buprestidae). Interestingly, the first two feed on bee pupae, while the second and third produce noxious smells when threatened (the Burnet produces hydrogen cyanide), and the last two are vegetarian feeding on pollen. There are more bugs, including the run of the mill ants, spiders, bees, wasps crickets, and cicadas, but these are a more interesting selection.
And then there is my favorite orchid, the bumble bee orchid, which grows in the field and never ceases to entertain me with how much it looks like bees feeding on a flower until you get close!
