Grasshoppers have been a plague, as usual. The only control I have found that works at all is the orb weaver spider. I observed one in my garden wrap up two grasshoppers almost as large as itself in five minutes.
Roundup is no longer Roundup. It used to contain glyphosate, and it was the best chemical solution for most weeds, particularly invasive, difficult-to-dig out grasses like bermuda.1 However, it’s been reformulated without glyphosate, and it no longer reliably kills weeds. I sprayed the above plant above three weeks before I took the picture. With the old Roundup it would have been completely dead and ready to scrape off the pavement. With the new, disimproved formula, it looks uglier than it did before but is still vigorously growing. I checked every herbicide at Home Despot; not one of them contains glyphosate any more.
Sleep, creep, leap: the conventional wisdom is that growing perennials from seed to bloom takes three years. The first year they produce just a few leaves and concentrate on developing their roots; the second year there is more top growth but most of the action still takes place underground; the third year they’re ready to put on a show. I find that this may be true of some, but most are quicker. I’m still waiting for the Baptisias, Asclepias and the rest of the Silphiums that I started last year, but all the Penstemons bloomed this year. Quite a few bloomed well their first year, e.g. Helianthus, Aster Symphyotrichum, Dianthus, Rudbeckia, Echinacea.
I spotted the above while reviewing Monty Python recently. The yellow flowers look like Mentzelia, possibly M. lindleyi — a plant of the American west, and not something I would have expected from a bunch of silly Brits (and an expatriate American).
Notes
- Bermuda is an okay lawn grass if all you want is grass. However, it rapidly spreads by underground rhizomes as well as stolons, as insidiously as Marxism. If you have a bermuda lawn and a garden, unless you are vigilant you will soon have have only bermuda. The northern third of my yard is buffalo grass, which has many virtues, not the least being that it is naturally short and doesn’t need mowing. I think the entire yard was once buffalo, but the bermuda growing in the neighbors’ lawns relentlessly invaded the yard from the south.