Insect Artists

This is about as good as it gets with insect pests: neatly nibbling interesting designs on an unwanted plant.

Spotted

First monarch butterfly passing through my garden.

Tap Roots

Tap Roots, a raingarden initiative, kicks off Monday, June 8, with a gathering at the Hamline United Methodist Church raingarden, at the corner of Minnehaha Avenue and Simpson Avenue. Directions

Snacks will be provided, ideas will be exchanged, and we'll see what a ragtag bunch of neighbors/gardeners can do to promote raingardens and native plants.

Natives, with their deep root structures, are ideal for raingardens. Jonathan Dregni, the spark behind this meeting, has more to say about the benefits of natives in home gardens.

Raingardens don't have to be elaborate. I've found that there are some simple things we can do when designing a boulevard garden to capture rainwater and slow runoff.

Super Soaker

Little rain, lots of wind, and warm temps have combined to dry out the soil.

As Connie Nelson points out today, infrequent, deep watering is best. Watering the top inch of the soil helps the weeds more than it helps the perennials and trees.

Pictured above is my homemade soaker, an empty bleach bottle with a ring of tiny holes around the bottom. I put a couple dozen small rocks inside to help keep it from tipping over. The hose is set to a small trickle -- not enough to make the bottle overflow -- and I can go about my gardening for 15 minutes or so before moving it to a new location.

I'm not trying to water the whole garden with this method, but when I'm puttering in the evening, when it's too late to use a sprinkler, this is an ideal way to give deep watering to a few specific spots that need it.

Note: Even a tiny bit of bleach irritates worms, so you want to make sure you rinse the bottle thoroughly before you start using it the first time.

Hardy, indeed

I've got a bin full of rocks that's been sitting on the north side of the house for a while. I moved it today and discovered this tiny Geranium macrorrhizum seedling, barely an inch across. It's commonly called cranesbill, bigroot geranium, or hardy geranium.

GreenGirls Plant Swap

The GreenGirls hosted a plant swap in the little park across from the StarTribune building in downtown Minneapolis this morning. I finally got to meet Connie, Robyn, and Jaime in person, along with some of the regular commenters, like Judybusy.

Thanks to everyone who helped me identify the mystery plant I brought along. Turns out it was the much-coveted Pearly Everlasting, a Minnesota native. In addition, I gave away Siberian iris, columbine, black raspberries, yarrow, asiatic lilies, liatrus, bigroot geranium, and seeds from my blackberry lilies. I left with a poppy, some anemones, and a tray of allyssum 'Tiny Tim.'

Not a bad way to spend a Saturday morning.

Mayday!

Okay, 40 degrees is not cause for alarm, unless you've got tender tomato plants sitting outside in these temps. Tonight's lows are forecast to dip into the 30s. The tomatoes and tropical annuals will be spending another night indoors before resuming their hardening.

Roadside Attractions

Driving back from Ellsworth, Wisconsin, I passed this patch of trillium growing under some trees on the side of the road.

You know you're a gardening addict when . . .

. . . you see a sidebar ad for a company that makes natural beds and you start to wonder exactly what makes their garden beds more natural than any other garden bed.

But it's not like the concept of artificial garden beds is completely alien. Consider the tree circle.

Friends School Plant Sale

This is the weekend of the BIG plant sale. And yes, there are big plants for sale.

It's the 20th annual Friends School Plant Sale. Like many perennials, it gets bigger every year. A few years ago, it outgrew the school grounds and was transplanted to the State Fair Grandstand. Now it's spilling out into the area around the Grandstand.

This was my first year volunteering at the sale. For a couple hours, I directed people to the checkout line and answered questions. I spent the next two hours tidying up and returning plants that had been misplaced.

The folks running the sale managed to wrangle a few hundred shopping carts to make it easier to buy too many plants, but the traditional way to do the sale involves bringing your own tricked out wagon.

The wagon in the photo above belongs to one of my neighbors. Check out the Plant Sale blog for photos of other improvised plant carts.

UPDATE: On Sunday, I saw this tricked out wagon. Now I know what I'm gonna be doing in the middle of next winter.

Late Risers

Liatris takes its time waking from winter dormancy.

Nancy, the chief cook and bottle washer of The Vagary explains that liatris and some other prairie perennials have adapted to emerge after the risk of spring wildfires has passed.

Many perennial grasses fall into this category, too. I had been worried about the little bluestem I got from a neighbor late last fall, but it is finally showing signs of new growth.

I'm glad I didn't rip out the grasses, thinking that they had died. There's a reason to hold off working in the dirt until the second week of May.

Hello Lily

This lily emerges from the soil looking like a blossom.

I was overrun with lily bulbs last fall, so I put some of them on the boulevard to see how they stand up to the conditions right next to the curb. So far, so good.

I've put up a Flickr set for this plant.