Wildflower Plantings

I didn't get a chance to visit the health club today, so I took my 2-mile walk up the road instead. Along the way I noticed there was some Stiff Goldenrod growing in the roadside ditch. I've been wanting to get some of this for my backyard for quite a while -- the flowers are an excellent source of nectar and very attractive to butterflies and bees. I dug up at least 8 plants from the ditch. I also dug up some sunflowers -- Woodland Sunflowers, I think. My plan was to put all of these plants out in that wild, unmowed acre of my backyard.

I also found and dug up several of these interesting looking plants. The seed pod on them led me to believe they were some sort of milkweed. When I cracked open one of the seed pods, they definitely looked like milkweed seeds inside. What do you think?

After I got everything planted and came back in to my computer, I went to the MonarchWatch website because they have photos of all the different varieties of milkweeds. To me this plant looked exactly like Plains Milkweed, which supposedly is not found in Minnesota. OK, now I was really curious, so I googled "Plains Milkweed" and here's what I found on the USDA Plants Database website for Plains Milkweed. Check out the range map on this website -- it also shows this plant is not found in Minnesota! I got all 4 plants in the ground and marked so I'll be able to check and see if they make it through the winter. I hope they do because I want to see if it grows and spreads on its own and how attractive it will be for the monarch caterpillars and other butterflies and insects next spring.

Most of the wildflowers I've planted previously in this wild acre haven't survived (the soil is really crappy), but I was happy to see that this plant and another just like it had survived and were thriving. It's one of the hyssops and the leaves have a wonderful sweet minty-licorice scent when you rub them between your fingers.

While I walking through the tall grass searching for spots to plant my new wildflowers, I noticed there were lots of spider webs created and populated by these beautiful Banded Garden Spiders.

The webs were hard to spot in the bright afternoon sunshine and I hope I didn't accidentally destroy any of them.

It was a beautiful afternoon to be outdoors, a light breeze, and about 65 degrees. The only negative thing was the swarms of hungry mosquitoes just waiting for me to walk through the tall grass. Where are those dragonflies when you need them?