Butterfly Garden

My neighbor, Rita, emailed me today to ask me to help her put in a butterfly garden at her house.  What a fun project!!  She found this link on the U of M extension website and we have plans to do something similar.

Figure 1. A sample butterfly border garden has a large variety of host plants.

		Tawny daylily ‘Marine’ heliotrope Gayfeather Butterfly weed Petunia Mountain bluet Annual aster ‘Autumn Joy’ sedum Rock cress French marigold ‘Happy Returns’ daylily Blanket flower Nasturtium Goldenrod
Purple coneflower Dill Hollyhock Joe-Pye weed Globe centaurea	Peony Turtlehead Swamp milkweed Yarrow Queen Anne’s lace

Rita has been gracious enough to open her garden to us for our use, which is where we grow most of our veggies, in true neighborhood gardening fashion.  She has a great spot to add a butterfly garden as she has a large, sunny lot.  I have some of these plants here that we can divide, but for the most part, we'll have to spend some serious time at the greenhouse or at my favorite plant stop, Glorified Weeds!

I'm not a butterfly expert, and I'm only an amateur plant enthusiast, so I'd love to have some feedback or suggestions for this project.

Snow Free Gardens!

I can't believe it - it's actually 61 degrees here this afternoon!  I came home from work to discover that all of the snow in the gardens has melted.  Wow, do I have my work cut out for me! 

National Frog Month

Leopard Frog

April is National Frog Month.  Frogs are one of my favorite little critters.  They're harmless, stealth little guys, hiding out under the big leaves of the rhubarb, waiting to snatch up some tasty little bugs.  And when you spot one, it usually causes you to do a double take as they blend in so well you're not sure if you actually saw one or not.  As kids growing up in an area full of natural wetlands, we loved spending time catching the little guys, collecting them in a pail, pretending we were going to have a frog farm, only to send them off their merry little way before we had to run in to dinner.  Often one of my brothers would suggest we sell them to fishermen, which probably prompted the rescue release mission. 

Here's hoping I have the pleasure of running into one of these little guys soon!

"They're gonna put me in the movies..."

Okay, so not ME, exactly, but my little hometown of Moose Lake, MN, for which this blog gets its name, is featured in the upcoming animated movie RIO.  Opening April 15, Rio is a 3-D animation feature from the makers of "Ice Age."  Set in the city of Rio de Janeiro, the comedy-adventure centers on Blu, a rare macaw who thinks he is the last of his kind.  When Blu discovers there is another - and that she is a she - he leaves the comforts of his cage in the small town of Moose Lake, Minnesota, and heads to Rio.   Blu and his female counterpart are soon birdnapped, escape, and have to find their way back to Moose Lake, to the only true friend Blu has ever known- his owner, Linda. 

Our little town is all a-buzz with the movie mania.  Film crews have been in town all weekend and the movie apparently premieres in our vintage, one screen, little movie theater here this week before opening across the country later this month.  We'll take our 15 minutes, thank you.  Congratulations, Moose Lake, for being the quintessential little Minnesota small town!

April Fools, Indeed!

A view of the lake from the house this morning

Weather

Tonight   Mar 31

Fri Apr 1

Sat 2

Sun 3

Mon 4

Rain / Snow	Rain / Snow Showers	Mostly Cloudy	Rain / Snow Showers	Snow Shower
--	43°	46°	40°	35°
High	High	High	High	High
30°	29°	29°	31°	23°
Low	Low	Low	Low	Low

				I wish I could get excited about spring, but you can clearly see that there isn't much to get excited about.  We still have snow on the ground, but hopefully the coming rain will get rid of the remaining snow, at least until Monday's snow shower.
				*SIGH*

Cruel, cruel winter

Oh, cruel, cruel winter of 10-11, when will you release your death grip on us?!  In an act of self-torture, I decided to re-read my posts from last March, and discovered that I had the following peeking out of the ground on March 21:

daffodils
creeping yellow sedum
geum
pink mallow
bee balm
evening primrose
jacobs ladder
Autumn Joy sedum
bachelor button
rudbekia

Now we still have at least 10 inches of snow on the ground thanks to the storm earlier in the week, and it's snowing again today.

Thanks to all of this late season snow, instead of spending my day outdoors cleaning out gardens and expanding my front yard foundation planting as planned, I'm spending it reading my newest addition to my gardening library, Edible Front Yard:  The Mow-Less, Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful Garden, by Ivette Soler.  I purchased this after reading about it on the Garden Rant blog.  It's a fast, easy read, and is giving me some glorious ideas!  The longer this snow is on the ground, the more grandiose my plans become.  While a lot of the plants in this book will not work in my northern garden, the book was still a worthwhile read.