Milkweed, Skippers and Mountain Mint

Wildflower Update:  Our milkweed colonies and bee balm are past peak for bloom.  Several common milkweed plants and butterfly weed have small pods present.  Our pollinator pasture still has Dutch white clover blooming.  I also saw this week some soapwort that probably escaped from an nearby old cemetery plot.  We have grey-headed coneflower, maypop, american germander and purple conflower in full bloom.  Just starting to bloom is cup plant and hoary mountain mint.  All our siphiums were planted last year to harvest seed later this summer.  I appears we will get seed from rosin weed and cup plants.  Below,  hoary mountain mint (Pycnanthemum incanum), cup plant bloom and swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) planted this year in bud.

Pollinators and Wildlife Update:  This week while bush-hogging, I saw several raccoons eating blackberries, including two kits with their mother.  The nectar flow is limited this week so there were lots of pollinators at our milkweed patches ... skippers, bumblebees, honeybees, moths and many more. Below, a crowded umbrel with skippers and bumblebees sharing nectar ... three skippers (Sachems ?) on a coneflower ... a Peck's skipper on a coneflower ... Eastern Tailed-Blue on white clover.

Work on the farm:  This week we finished our spring bush-hogging (tractor problems earlier).  We also transplanted native plants in an oasis (600 square feet) along a ridge top overlooking Long Creek (cup plant, compass plant, rosin weed, coneflower, grey-headed coneflower, rattlesnake master, big blue stem, indian grass, common milkweed and more) and we planted some big blue stem, rattlesnake master and cup plant plugs within our existing milkweed colonies.