Winter Moths

When I first saw the mass of moths attracted to the lights beside the garage I thought it was an interesting phenomenon.

Then I heard someone say they were winter moths.  That made me think they would make a good blog subject.  I had read something about winter moths in Bernd Heinrich's Winter World.  So I started doing some research.  An insect that flies during the winter, they must have some really cool adaptations.

Then I found out that these winter moths are Operophtera brumata, an invasive species.    That's not so cool.

Winter moths are a European species introduced to this continent last century.  They started showing up in New England early this century and are already becoming a major problem.  Winter moth males fly during November to as late as January, the females are wingless and wait on trees and shrubs for the males to find them.  They lay their eggs under the bark.

In the spring the eggs hatch and the larvae begin feeding on the unopened buds.  As the untouched buds start to open the larvae will move to nearby branches or leaves and continue munching.  They can easily defoliate whole trees, with a preference for fruit trees.  In springs like our last spring with cool weather and delayed bud opening the damage can be intense. 

Not surprisingly the defoliation process is harmful to trees, it can even be fatal if repeated over several years.  On the plus side the spring migrating birds (especially warblers) have plenty to eat at a critical time in their life cycle.  They subsequently arrive relatively plump and ready to go on their nesting grounds.

Our street tree, an American Linden (or Basswood), was heavily infested this past year.  With this massive fall flight I predict it will be heavily infested again this year.  I'm not going to do anything to fight the moths (winter moths are hard to control and professionals should be consulted.  I was unable to find information on an organic option that actually works) at least in part because I think that is the wrong tree for that spot and that spot is really, really bad (directly in front of our front door so people who park on the street have to go around the tree to get to our front walk).  If the tree doesn't survive I'll quietly replace it with something a little more appropriate to the spot and off center from our front door.  Probably not a fruit tree, though.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

Ok.  Let's see if I can post images from my new computer (sadly I haven't found the disc copy of my photo manipulation software so I had to use the old computer to mess with... but you didn't come here to listen to be complain about computer stuff.  You came here to look at pictures!)

Woo-hoo!  An actual flower in my garden in December in New England.  This tough little viola managed to stick a bloom up over the leaf litter by the fireplace just in time for GBBD

Pansies are a reliable winter bloomer in some regions.  I still have some holding on here but I doubt they'll still be here for next month's GBBD.  Then you'll get to see my blooming houseplants.

My Scabiosa were blooming last week but it's just been too cold and the blooms and buds are all bent over.  I think they've given up for the year.

This Helenium Mardi Gras tried to get one more bloom but the freeze got here first

These Pieris japonica buds will survive all winter long, providing some interest in the garden, but they won't bloom until spring.  Still, it's a reminder that spring will come again.

My male Ilex bluesomethingus seems to be confused and has put out some new growth recently.  Since this plant is doomed to be replaced (it was planted WAY too close to the house and is actually snuggled right up to the siding) I won't worry.  Next year when we get the siding repaired and painted I'll have to remove it and buy a new male to put somewhere further from the house.  Poor guy.  It wasn't his fault some landscaper didn't take his adult size into account.

Grasses like this Miscanthus zebra grass can provide nice late fall interest.

Here's another interesting seed head.  It's retaining some of the purple color of the blooms.

So that's it for this month.  I'm sure by next month's GBBD my garden will be under a good snow cover and I'll be taking pictures of my houseplants.  I'm hoping some of my forced bulbs will be in bloom for then.  And I'll be drooling over the catalogs, dreaming and planning for Spring.

Please Stand By

Please Stand By.

We are Experiencing Technical Difficulties.  

I haven't posted in about a week and it will probably be several more days before I post again.  The good news is that we bought a new computer.  The bad news is that I have to dig out all the software for my camera and load it onto the new machine.  In the meantime here are some miscellaneous notes from the Garden.

Winter has hit hard here this week.  The plants have finally frozen and my Pieris japonica is turning colors (the leaves stay on the plant all winter but they do get a yellowish and/or reddish color to the outer leaves). 

Imagine colorful Pieris here.

I clipped a few branches off my Christmas tree and laid them over the borderline hardy Salvias to add some winter protection.  I'll add more after the holidays.

Imagine Christmas tree branches with Salvias sticking out.

You'll notice I didn't prune the Salvias.  They are one of many plants that does better if they aren't pruned until spring.

My Artemesia nana has died back but I'd be willing to bet it comes back in the spring.  It's done quite well in the Hell Strip so far.

Imagine some gray foliage but mostly brown (tan) and curled.

The winds have been blowing strong all week.  It makes for challenging photography.

Imagine some really bad image of dried grasses blowing in the wind.

Coming soon - birding in the winter garden and my adaptation of A Christmas Carol (with apologies to Dickens).  As soon as I can find the software I need....  I know those discs are somewhere in the office closet...

Today in the Garden - UPDATED

Today is a two post day - be sure to scroll down to see the post about the December Surprise I found in the garden on Thursday.

I definately am not in my typical habitat today.  Being a hot-house flower I usually live in warm climates.  But now I'm in New England and today there is snow!

We got about 2.75 inches of snow overnight, the first plowable snow of the year.  I'm sure it won't be the last but the first snow is always the prettiest.  So turn up the heat, light a fire in the fireplace and enjoy.  This is what my garden looks like today.

Poor Rosemary.  I'll have to bring her into the garage this afternoon to try and get her to survive the winter.  My smaller pot of Rosemary is inside on my desk.

Contorted Filbert.  Looking very contorted.

Hmmm.   I don't have as many good images as I thought.  I'd better pull on the boots and go outside with the camera for another photo shoot.
 ***********************************************************************************

Well, I had to wait a while until some of the snow either melted or compacted so that I could see anything besides bumps where my perennials are hiding.  This is my first major effort to photograph in snow so please be patient.  I clearly could use more practice.  I'm afraid I'll get plenty this winter.

Scabiosa Butterfly Blue (I know it looks pinkish in this photo).  This is one long-blooming plant!  If it doesn't get completely covered with snow by the 15th I should have at least one outdoor plant for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.

African Blue Basil.  The only reason it's sticking up through the snow is because I haven't brought in all of my plant supports yet.  I left these plants in place to hold the leaves in the bed as free mulch.

Gold Thread-leaf Cypress and unknown Azalea

Italian Parsley by the plowed driveway.  I only put annuals near the driveway so that I don't have to worry about damage to plants during the plowing season.

Sedum 'Autumn Fire'  Not so hot now, huh?

Miscanthus Zebra and Holly Blue Something.  I didn't get the Miscanthus in the ground this year but since it's in a (cheap) plastic pot I left it over the winter.  In the spring (if it survives) it will go in the ground basically where it's currently sitting.  It provides a strong contrast to the dark green holly leaves.

Mexican Feather Grass.  I'm really pushing this plant.  It's planted right up by the house, between the driveway, the garage and the walk to the front door.  I'm hoping the microclimate there will be warm enough for it to survive the winter.  If not I'll buy more next year.  I really like this little grass (and it's not invasive here).

December Surprise

Imagine my surprise when I stepped outside on Thursday to get the mail and I found this:

A Painted Lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui) nectoring on my pansies.  The winds had been blowing strongly from the South so I suspect she was blown up here from somewhere warmer. 

In New England Painted Lady butterflies show up mid to late summer.  They do not overwinter here, instead the butterflies we see migrate up here from their wintering grounds further South.  Monarchs are the butterflies best known from their migration but it turns out that many butterfly species, dragonflies, and probably other flying insects also migrate.  It's hard to study these migrations.  Monarchs are large butterflies and they can be tagged with numbers but most other insect migrants can't due to their smaller size.  Add to that the fact that scientists are dependent on people finding the insects and reporting the numbers on the wings and you can see how challenging the study of insect migration must be.

I'm glad I planted those pansies.  The Painted Lady was just a nice December surprise.

A sea turtle in New England

Today we're having a guest blog by a Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle who's currently in care at the New England Aquarium where I spend my Wednesdays as a volunteer. I mentioned that I was planning to blog about sea turtles and he wanted to tell his story himself. So without further ado here's Dan.

Hi. I'm Dan, a Kemp's Ridley sea turtle. I'm only a few years old and my life is off to a rocky start. Normally some of us Kemp's Ridleys come up to New England for the summers (lots of yummy crabs!) and migrate back south in the fall. This year I messed up and instead of going out into the Atlantic I stuck too close to shore and got stuck in Cape Cod Bay. It's a common mistake for us young turtles. I guess the older ones learn better how to get around this obstacle. All I know is that I was headed south and instead of finding warmer water I found land.

I was swimming around and around, trying to find my way South and it started getting colder and colder and next thing I knew I was too cold to swim anymore. I just floated there until a strong wind blew me onto the beach. Now I've been on a beach. Once. When I was born. Us male turtles don't ever go back onto a beach if we can help it. The females do, but only to lay eggs.

Along came a nice man from a place called Wellfleet Audubon. I'm not sure what that means but I heard him talking about how volunteers from there patrol the beaches for 6 - 8 weeks at this time of year looking for all of us young turtles who get caught in the Bay. I'm so glad they found me. I was really worried for a while there. Or as worried as you can get when your body temperature drops into the 50s!

You see, us sea turtles are exothermic. That means we depend on the warmth from the environment around us to keep us warm. So when it gets cold (like now) we get sluggish. On the positive side it does mean we can survive body temperatures almost down to freezing! I heard that one turtle last year had a body temperature in the mid-30s and survived to be released back into the wild this summer! Can you do that?

So I got loaded into a box and taken to the New England Aquarium. The nice people at this place have a whole group dedicated to helping us stranded sea turtles at this time of year (they help other stranded animals, too, like seals, porpoises, dolphins and even small whales). They hauled me out of my box and set me on a table and gave me a through physical exam. The next turtle over looked really bad, I thought he was dead and the vet couldn't find a heartbeat. They stuck a tube in his throat and forced him to breathe. I guess they knew something I didn't because later that afternoon he started to move around and they disconnected the ventilator and took the tube out.

After looking me over they found some algae on my shell but that was it. Since I was so cold but otherwise healthy they let me have a swim in fresh water. It was cold, too. After being stuck on the beach it felt good to move around, even if I wasn't warm yet.


That night I got to sleep in an incubator. Other turtles were in there, too. One had been too cold to avoid a boat and had some major shell damage but the vet thinks he can fix that. One sounds really funny when she breaths. She turned out to have pneumonia and is on medication.


They gradually warmed me back up and every day I got to swim. First in the kiddie pool but later I got to swim in the small tanks. These are only about 3 or 4 feet deep but it felt good to stretch my cold muscles.


Now that my body temperature is up to 75 degrees they're letting me swim in the big pool. I hear that when I'm able to swim for a couple of days without coming out of the water they'll start feeding me. Good. I'm starting to get hungry! Word among us turtles is that they fatten us up all winter and put us back out into the wild next summer. I'll be glad to stay indoors all winter but next year I'll be ready to go. And I won't make the same mistake next time I migrate! Thanks for listening to my story and thanks to everyone who volunteered their time and money to help get me back on track. My life depended on you all.


Diana here again. Kemp's Ridley sea turtles are endangered but their numbers have been rising in recent years (thanks to dedicated people who have helped change human behavior with regards to sea turtles). The New England Aquarium is just one of many facilities that helps turtles stranded in too cold water.

We have attached radio tags to several released animals and it looks like the turtles do quite well after release. We also microchip them. The females get microchiped and scanned on the nesting beaches as a way to monitor the population size. Since we can't tell genders when they as young as the ones that end up in rehabilitation we microchip them all. This year one of the earliest turtles rehabilitated at the New England Aquarium came ashore at a nesting beach to lay eggs. She was rehabilitated in 1999. You go, girl!

Waiting

Not much is happening in the garden now. Winter is setting in. I'd like to get some more mulch down but my local supplier is completely out and won't have more till spring. I'll just have to hope the plants survive. Soon I'll be able to use trimmings from the Christmas tree to cover particularly sensitive plants.

I'm transitioning to indoor gardening. My houseplants require more attention during the dry winter months when watering checks occur twice weekly (this is where I check to see who needs watering). I'll probably be able to get a few blogs out of the houseplants this winter.

I'm also transitioning to blogging more about nature. Watch for upcoming posts on the winter moth explosion here in New England and my volunteer work with the New England Aquarium where I help with cold stunned sea turtles (the Rescue and Rehab department has it's own blog here).

In between all these activities I'll be waiting.

Waiting for my amaryllis to start blooming.


Waiting for it to be time to bring my Paperwhites into the house.


Waiting for the spring blooms of the Pieris japonica.


Waiting for the spring blooms of the Rhododendron previoushomeownerii.


Waiting for the buds to open signaling the return of spring and the return of gardening season.


Oh, yeah, I'm still waiting for my first seed catalog, too. I guess I haven't gotten any because I've moved since last season. I've been watching the lists of recommended seed catalog companies at Greensparrow Gardens and have been requesting catalogs. I hope to be inundated soon.