Portsmouth Caterpillar Club

2021 is drawing to a close, faster, perhaps, than I would have wanted.  So feeling nostalgic, I looked back at photos I took in 2019 and I was surprised by the number of caterpillars I saw compared to this year.  This year was not a good one for a gardener trying to host insects.  Maybe my first and best wildlife siting in the spring of 2021, a brown water snake, was an ill omen.   Let's not pretend.  2021 was a year of poverty in the garden:  voles destroyed perennials; painted ladies did not show up at all; there were no caterpillars at all on the viburnums; ferocious winds assaulted perennials; wasps ferociously devoured the caterpillars on pearly everlastings faster than they could hatch.  It is hard to recall anything positive about nature.   Is there any positive?  I suppose that I should be thankful that the drought of 2020 ended; I built a rain garden that infiltrated the worst that hurricane Elsa could throw at me; my lawn ...

A New Mask!   The end of 2020 could not come soon enough!  I bought a new mask for the end of the year holidays;  I survived the year; my gardens survived the drought.  But before 2020, survival was never the measure of success or happiness.  Let's hope that 2021 brings us back closer to the lives we once knew.    Here are some of my gardening goals for the new year:   Goal 1 : Continue to Re-wild , reduce lawns and expand natural areas!   Goal 2 : Create solutions and opportunities by building a rain garden to capture storm-water and create new habitats for water-tolerant plants and insects!   Goal 3 :  Learn to adapt by putting drought-tolerant species in full-sun areas and moving others that required excessive watering during last year's drought to a part-sun garden that I expanded in the fall!  These are not my only goals for the year, but they match the theme of recovery for the new year.  So with...

Summit of Borestone Mountain Audubon Sanctuary, Maine.   I love native plants.   If you don't know that already, just get a really nice frying pan and bang it against your head a few times and see if that helps get the message though.  Oh my, did I just write that?  Sorry.  It is just really tough to watch the natural world get erased by the force of human disregard for nature:  big box stores and the finest retailers alike sell foreign plants to decorate lawns that are no better in ecological terms than your average parking lot; armies of landscape contractors use machines blow away leaves in the fall that would otherwise feed the soil and harbor eggs and larvae and bury the hew survivors with bark mulch made from the chipped and dyed remains of our forests. Biddeford Pool, Maine.  Nature is being systematically destroyed and your local garden center claiming to sell native plants is an accomplice.  Nursery plants are clone...

I post the plants I start from seeds every year and, if I am lucky, only 1 or 2 people take me up on my offer for free plants.  I think people do not feel comfortable taking something offered for free.  I am not really sure.  But from my perspective, I offer plants for free because I want to help slow the decline of nature and the more the yards around our neighborhoods can feed caterpillars, the more butterflies there will be for me.  I am really being selfish, right?  Well not really, but it would be a great reward not only to see my seedlings grow and feed butterflies, but also to know that somewhere out in our suburban jungle, they might be doing the same.  So don't hesitate to contact me if any of these plants may interest you.  I have some good ones this year and hopefully a few that I have started from wild seeds. From the Wild Seed Project, which uses seeds collected in Maine: Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) .  This is a st...

Does full sun even need a design? A shaded yard is a real challenge for the amateur gardener.  When working with full or partial sun, all of the biggest and most immediate rewards are on the table.  All you need is space and a layout and whether or not you have the eye of Van Gogh, Kandinsky, Monet or Dali, the explosion of colors and textures fueled by the full force of the sun will deliver flowers, insects and caterpillars, even if, like me, you are a 'painting by numbers' guy when it comes to landscape design.  This is not to sell short the amazing work of landscape designers, not in the least.  My point is just that in the full sign, the dynamism of nature is on full display. Viburnum acerfolium. But gardening in the shade presents challenges for amateurs.  The beauty and diversity of nature can still be found, but they are revealed more slowly and with less fanfare.  There are no towering cathedrals of rudbeckias or vibrant purple hazes of th...

Mountain Holly (Ilex mucronata) Borestone Mountain, ME Shrubs and woody perennials can be wonderful not only majestic in their appearance in a garden landscape, but also in terms of the resources they provide to insects and birds.  Because they can store energy, they often bloom even as the snows melt (e.g. willows) or as the earliest bees appear or signal the return of fish to their spawning grounds (shadbush). The problem is that unlike smaller plants, they Hopefully not to dry... represent a major investment of both time and capital.  This creates the perfect opportunity for the landscape industry to cut corners by selling cuttings from factory nurseries to our south that lack genetic diversity and are not as well adapted to our climate and the timing of our seasons.  Natives can also be replaced with cultivars that do not provide the same benefits.  Insects diminish and a recent article published in Scientific American suggests that bird populations ...

Last year I bought four chokeberry plants at the Fedco tree sale:  two native Red Chokeberry (Aronia arbutifolia) and two european ones identified as Viking Chokecherry.  I planted them inside my chicken pen so they might benefit from the shade, insect visitors and any falling fruits in the fall.  Shown on the left here are the viking chokecherries that I understand may be used for culinary purposes.  These plants were larger from the start but they have adapted very well to their new home. click to see the cool bug! Only one of the two plants actually flowered and I am not sure why that is the case.  However, notice how beautiful the leaves are.... they are almost completely untouched by insects.  Fortunately, however, the flowers are gorgeous and are already providing some benefit, at least for this one visitor on the left side of this photo!  I don't have any idea what it might be.  If you have any possible leads please post them in the...