Anise Swallowtail Butterfly bonanza

It’s a banner year for anise swallowtail butterflies, at least in our garden! A few weeks ago we saw a butterfly fluttering around the fennel plant in the back garden, and sure enough we found 13 eggs. We brought them all in and they’ve started to emerge.

We’ve also had some chrysalises incubating for a year or more, and some of them finally decided to emerge as well. Three of the butterflies came out yesterday and four today.

We check the fennel periodically for eggs and babies, and usually find them when they’re small, but this caterpillar eluded us until he had gotten quite large.

This is an extreme closeup, he’s actually a bit over an inch long. Anise swallowtail butterflies, in our area, mostly use fennel for their larval host. It’s plentiful and grows much more easily than the native host, yampah. The problem is that people often cut it down because it gets so large and rangy. Now that you know the beautiful butterflies that rely on the plant, please don’t cut it down until the end of the summer! Want to learn how to raise the butterflies yourself? Drop me an email and I’ll explain how-  HeidiRand@gmail.com

Brian’s Bees

Is there anything more special than friends who share a passionate interest? George’s friend Brian is a twofer – they first met and bonded over their common love of orchids, spiced with a shared cynical smart sense of humor. More lately, Brian discovered that he wanted to keep bees. He had a beautiful hive all ready and waiting for some honeybees to move in, so when George and our friend Alan rescued a swarm, there was no question that they were meant to be Brian’s bees. The swarm settled on a tree limb just above a garden shed.

George and Alan clambered onto the shed. I held the ladder and worried that they’d fall through the roof (they didn’t). When bees are swarming they’re very calm, so George easily brushed most of them into a box. The critical thing is to try to get the queen. If you do, the rest will follow her, because their main imperative is to protect her.

As you’d expect from an orchid and nature lover, Brian has an amazing garden. Here’s George delivering the bees to their new home.

The bees quickly realized they had arrived at nectar heaven. The workers happily began to forage, build comb and make honey, and the queen zealously performed her queenly duties and began laying brood. We went back to do a hive inspection, and this is what we found:

That’s her majesty, surrounded and protected by workers. She’s much larger than the other bees, and is a gorgeous deep golden color. Here’s more of a closeup photograph.

Much of the white you can see filling the comb is larvae or brood. As George finished the inspection, I walked around the garden to see what the workers were up to. They favored a magnificent Spanish Lavender plant.

The intoxicatingly fragrant orange tree was another favorite.

We even got a bit of honey from some extra comb the bees had built on the lid of the hive, so Brian could taste his bees’ honey. Your own bees’ honey is always the sweetest. And here’s to honey and friendship, ever sweetly intertwined.

The Owl and the Pocket Watch

When I’m having a creative block, one thing that gets me moving is a deadline. An art group I’m in issued a challenge: create a design using a pocket watch. Deadline: one month. Scouring the house turned up no less than three pocket watches! I chose the oldest, a broken one that I bought at a garage sale with the intent to take it apart to use in my mixed media artwork. Here’s the base photo:

I took out the background and drew on the watch to make it a little less clean-looking.

Since my favorite thing to do is design fabric, I used elements of the cutout image to make some kaleidoscope designs, which often produce great fabrics. Here’s one:

That was okay, but I wasn’t satisfied. I decided to switch gears (no pun intended) to make a blended collage. What image would work with the watch face? I have a folder on my computer of what I consider to be my best photos, and when I opened it, look who jumped out at me:

Now we’re talking! I was very happy with a few of the different blended images I came up with. I liked this one best:

I printed variations of the collage onto heat transfer paper and decorated a wooden box, but will leave photos of that for another day.

Have you used the pressure of a deadline to make yourself get to work? I’d love to hear how that went and what you created.

Anise swallowtail butterfly in the garden

And so it begins…. You may not know that my wonderful husband George is a vastly talented actor, when he’s not being an amazing gardener and naturalist. He often works at night, doing performances or taking part in improv murder mysteries.  That’s not an ad for him (well maybe a little), but an explanation why he’s often lucky enough to be out in the garden during the day when something wonderful happens.

Like today, when he saw an anise swallowtail butterfly swoop over the fennel and lay an egg. He didn’t get a photo of her, but here is my photo of one that we raised last year – I like to think it might be her, returning to leave her babies.

He found the egg, but left it there for me to find when I got home. We really had to search, the wind had blown the fennel fronds around and it was hidden. But finally he saw the tiny jewel.

This is an extreme closeup, it’s the size of the head of a pin!

We brought it inside so it won’t fall prey to the weather or another menace. We’ll  feed the caterpillar and protect the chrysalis until the butterfly emerges, and then we’ll release it, to start the cycle over. If you haven’t yet seen my photos of the life cycle of the anise swallowtail butterfly, and of the life cycle of the monarch butterfly, click here to get to my smugmug photo gallery.  Pull down and click on the links for the two sets of photographs.

Oh, and a plea – if you have fennel in your yard, please please don’t cut it down until the fall. If you’re in the El Cerrito area and you must cut it, contact us and we’ll rescue the eggs and caterpillars that are sure to be hiding in it.

Great Blue Heron visits the garden

A creek runs behind our house. During drought years it trickles, but recent rains have brought torrents of water rushing through the channel. We think a Great Blue Heron (GBH) that visited us the other day may have flown to us by following the creek, which goes underground for a bit just past our property.  We also have a small garden pond with some fish, and it could be that the heron had heard tell of tasty treats in a pair of backyard ponds – our next door neighbors also have one. And yes, some of the fancy koi that we had in past years were eaten by marauding herons and egrets, so now we stick to less costly goldfish and mosquito fish. George saw the GBH circling above the garden. Although George was sitting quite still, perhaps the heron spotted him and decided not to try for the pond. I was inside the house, and after grabbing my camera I quickly scanned and saw that it had landed on our neighbor’s roof.

It strode across and perched at the highest point to survey the possibilities.

Patiently looked in all directions.

Gave me a final shot at its gorgeous profile.

And finally turned and flew away over the rooftops, perhaps to find a garden pond without a guardian.

Mad hens

No, this isn’t about the character of any of the chickens that we know and love. Going through my vintage postcards, I noticed that some of the little chicks in the Easter cards look kinda angry. Here’s one:

Maybe it’s not mad, just peeping? These two look sweet:

Here’s one made in France. I think this little guy looks pretty peeved, maybe it’s just a bit of Gallic attitude:

Funny, I took French in high school and college but can’t remember the word for “angry.”  Online translators tell me it’s “être en colère.”

The top card is postmarked 1912 and the second one 1915. They’re both addressed to “Miss Ada May Rhodes” and they’re from her “Aunties.” The cost of the stamps? A penny.

Pipevine dreams

One of my favorite local butterflies is the Pipevine Swallowtail (Battus philenor). Here’s a photo of one that we raised a few years ago. Strikingly dramatic, it has black wings fringed with large white spots.

The underside is equally as exciting — I like Wikipedia’s description: “The underside of the hind wing has seven orange submarginal spots surrounded by iridescent blue.”

Its host plant in our area is the Pipevine (Aristolochia), also known as Dutchman’s Pipe. Once you see it you’ll understand the name:

We’ve been growing pipevine in a few spots in our garden for several years, but haven’t yet been lucky enough to attract a butterfly to lay eggs on any of them. The vine in the front garden put out a profusion of pipes last week. This photo shows one string of them – there are many more pipes zigzagging up the tree that the vine is twined around.

The plants need to get really large to attract the female to lay eggs. We have raised caterpillars from eggs that we rescued, and they ate the pipevine leaves voraciously. We had to forage to find them enough to eat!

This is an “artsy” piece I made from my photo of a Pipevine Swallowtail on a buddleia flower.

So this year we’re having pipevine dreams that a butterfly will visit our garden and lay some eggs. If you see one, please send her our way!

Evolon and Transfer Artist Paper

I’ve had a swatch of Evolon laying on my worktable for months, but hadn’t worked up the courage to do anything with it. Evolon is a microfiber fabric made by the company that makes Lutradur. Like Lutradur, it has a lot of industrial and practical uses, but artists and crafters have seized on both of these products to use for our own nefarious purposes. Evolon isn’t readily available in the US yet. I found one online source, Meinke Toy, but alas, the owner is giving up the business. Hopefully she’ll decide to find a buyer rather than completely close the store down. As she describes it, “Evolon is a nonwoven microfiber material made of nylon and polyester. You can paint, dye, print and heat distress Evolon. It will not fray when cut with a scissors and can also be cut using a soldering iron. It excels as a base for stitch, by hand or machine and works well layered with sheer elements above it.” It comes in Soft, which feels a bit like chamois, and Regular, which feels like a leather-like paper. I love the feeling of both of them.

Anyway, finally having a free minute to do a small project, I decided to try out the Evolon. I printed one of my favorite photographs of a hovering hummingbird onto Transfer Artist Paper (TAP), my favorite heat transfer paper. This is the photo:

Whenever I print on TAP I make sure to fill up the whole page so I don’t waste any of it (it’s not cheap), so I added a row of one of my new kaleidoscopes, which I made from my photo of a black and white feather. After I kaleidoscoped the image using Kaleider, I played with the colors for a psychedelic effect. This is a single tile of the kaleidoscope:

It’s best to use TAP soon after printing it — if you can’t, put it back into the sealable plastic bag that it comes in. I headed right down to my studio and ironed the hummingbird onto the Evolon. I set the iron for the polyester setting, but didn’t hold it on the surface for too long. The transfer worked great, going on really smoothly except for a few bits here and there, which added an uneven effect that I like. Then I cut up pieces of the kaleidoscope and ironed it around the edges as a frame. I ironed the Evolon to a piece of stabilizer for a backing, and sewed around the edges. Finally, I stitched on a hen’s feather. This is the piece:

Not sure yet how I’m going to mount or hang it. I’m just enjoying having it here to look at and feel. Really love the smooth, leather-like texture of the Evolon.

I know I didn’t take full advantage of Evolon’s special properties, I just wanted to see how it took the TAP. Next experiment, I’ll coat it with Digital Ground or inkAid and print directly onto it. Now, that’s REALLY my idea of fun!

You call this February?

Is the wonderful weather we’re having in the Bay Area right now supposed to be consolation for our miserable, cold summer? What were we calling July 2011 — Jul-uary, or something clever like that. Well I guess this is Febru-ly? Febru-gust? Okay, so I’m not so great with the slogans. But anyway, it’s February 2nd, and this is the ornamental plum tree in our front garden.

As you approach, it sounds like the whole tree is buzzing. It’s covered with bees.

These trees bloom gloriously for a brief time, usually later in the season, but the first rain strips the pink ruffles away and they’re bare for most of the year. If a strong wind hits, the blooms swirl off the tree and it looks like a fantastical pink rainstorm. But oh my, other than the beauty and the buzz, look what will come from the marriage of the blooms and the bees:

Monarch butterfly emerges

The first monarch butterfly of the batch of eggs that we found on the milkweed in our garden has emerged! Picking up where my last blog post, Monarch caterpillar to chrysalis, left off – this is how the chrysalises have looked for the past few weeks:

The first one to form a chrysalis started to darken yesterday. Actually it looks dark, but what’s happening is that the chrysalis is becoming transparent, so you can see the butterfly inside. Soon you can see the pattern and color of the wings.

3:32 p.m.

I took the photo above around 3:30.  I was running upstairs every so often to check, but I finally just settled down next to the butterfly house with a book. I looked up at about 4:15 and saw that the chrysalis was cracked!

4:17 p.m.

The butterfly holds onto the chrysalis with its legs – the wings and body drop out.

The picture above shows the abdomen hanging down. The abdomen is filled with fluid that the butterfly uses to inflate its wings.

The wings are filling and lengthening.

This is an extreme closeup showing the curled proboscis, and the legs holding onto the chrysalis.

4:20 p.m.

The forewings are now showing (peeking out from under the hindwing at the bottom right).

The forewings continue to lengthen.

Some more…

Just a bit more…

4:37 p.m.

And finally, about a half hour after the butterfly began to emerge, it’s in its final form. It continues to hang, letting its wings dry and harden. Soon we’ll release the butterfly, to continue the cycle!

These are my other posts about the monarch who laid the eggs, the caterpillars, and the chrysalis:

Monarch in the Garden

Monarch Eggs in the Garden!

First Monarch Caterpillar Emerges

Monarch Caterpillar to Chrysalis