- (Focus Area) Yard & Garden
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's getting to look a lot like...Halloween.
If you haven't noticed, stores are gearing up for Halloween with assorted ghosts, goblins and ghouls for you.
We remember the 2023 Halloween when a female migratory monarch fluttered into our pollinator garden. She checked out the milkweed (several native and one non-native species) and chose to sip nectar on the tropical milkweed, Asclepias curassavica, a non-native.
We managed to capture several images of her around 5:30 p.m. before she left on her journey to overwinter in coastal California.
The
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
So, here you are, a newly eclosed Western tiger swallowtail, Papilio rutulus, eager to sip some nectar from a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, in a Vacaville garden.
It's a warm, windless day, and you're anxious to score, score, score.
You touch down on a Tithonia, but something whizzes by your tails.
Whoa! What was that?
You're startled, alarmed, and irritated. It's a territorial male long-horned bee, probably a Melissodes agilis. He aims to dislodge you from your blossom in his attempt to save the nectar for his would-be girlfriends.
You teeter, then totter, then take off. You touch down on another...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
On Sept. 6, 2016, it happened.
A monarch fluttered into our pollinator garden in Vacaville and touched down on a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola.
It wasn't just "any ol' monarch"--if there's ever such a thing as "any ol' monarch."
This one, tagged with my alma mater, Washington State University, came from Ashland, Ore., as part of a migratory monarch research project launched by entomologist David James.
The tag's serial number read “Monarch@wsu.edu A6093.” It hung around for about five hours and then left.
James, an associate professor at Washington State...
It's an exasperating experience. You go to the nursery, pick out a flowering plant, shrub, or tree and bring it home only to have some critter damage or destroy it within the first week. Pests cause damage and waste time and money. The most common pests in the home landscape and garden are voles, moles, and gophers. By knowing what you're dealing with, it will be easier to eradicate the problem.
Voles. Also referred to as field or meadow mice, voles are small rodents three to nine inches in size (depending upon the species). They look a lot like hamsters, which are their close relatives. Damage done by voles is often mistaken for that of gophers. Voles are herbivores; they can gnaw on the bark of trees and...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
When a tiger meets a Tithonia, or a Tithonia meets a tiger, Nature bursts forth in all its glory.
Such was the case when we spotted a Western tiger swallowtail, Papilio rutulus, foraging for nectar on a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, in a Vacaville garden.
It was a newly eclosed swallowtail in perfect form, devoid of ripped, stripped and shattered wings signifying non-successful predatory attempts.
The magnificent butterfly fluttered over the Tithonia, sometimes chased by a territorial longhorned bee. But still it cruised. It raced. It...