Weekly Photo Challenge: Home (and Garden)

This week’s photo challenge is Home: “share a picture that evokes HOME for you.“ Apart from my family–the one I was born to, and the one that grew around me over the years–my home is the garden that embraces our house.

When I garden, I imagine myself the Little Prince, tending his planet against the catastrophe of the baobabs. Last year, I joined the Wildlife Sanctuary Program with the Audubon Society of Northern Virginia, and that made me more observant and thoughtful about the environment I build. Here is my little planet and the creatures it shelters each year. 

February – With the robins back, our feisty mockingbird resumes her war over holly dominance (she usually wins).

Her highness Mockingbird, on her throne

March – Couples begin to form, and nests spring up in the oddest of places.

Cardinals, basking in cool sunset rays

Inevitably, I forget the old wreath, and Carolina wrens move in–right outside our front door

April –We notice our first chicks, usually Carolina chickadees and wrens.

A chickadee couple comes back to this cherry hollow every spring

Always within view, the wren nest soon explodes with tiny sounds. Happy story: Last year’s trio survived into adolescence (we lost track of them in mid-summer).

Carolina wren chicks

By late April, azaleas are in bloom, and everything around looks new and fresh.

A robin, having his elevenses

If it is warm enough, a black rat snake slithers out for a sunbath.

And we even get an occasional mammal–in the least cultivated corner of the yard.

An Eastern cottontail?

May – More nests! More babies hatch, and anxious, frantic parents begin the feeding frenzy. 

Cardinal babies, so unnervingly reptilian

Always a shock, the mulberry season arrives. Berry stains are a pain, but the birds  these berries bring are worth the mess.

A red-bellied woodpecker on his daily visit

Toads and frogs make a gentle, unobtrusive appearance.

A Fowler’s toad, we think

And insects come into their own. I am especially happy to greet the lady beetles, my steadfast allies against aphids.

June – Native wildflowers are teeming with bees, butterflies, and a myriad of other winged creatures. Every morning, we awaken to birdsong.

There is always buzzing around butterfly weed blooms

A spicebush swallowtail resting after visiting our spice bush, its host plant

An early phlox bloom opens up for its first customer

A song sparrow, singing

One of my favorite crooners, a gray catbird

Last month’s chicks are now juveniles and the same size as their parents, but looking decidedly under-baked, haphazard. They cry out for food and are promptly satisfied by their exhausted caregivers.

A juvenile grackle, demanding to be fed

July – Just as the entire DC area turns into an insufferable sauna, EVERYthing blooms and buzzes in the yard. Charismatic garden visits occur daily. 

An Eastern tiger swallowtail on purple phlox

A monarch butterfly and a bee feast on early swamp milkweed blooms

A ruby-throated hummingbird and her obedient plants

An American lady butterfly on a purple coneflower

August – Virginia gardens begin to look a tad tired and thirsty, but many native plants are just reaching their crescendo. A family of ruby-throated hummingbirds–we usually see several in our garden, an unusual sight for these territorial creatures, so we assume they are related–attack the scarlet cardinal flowers twice daily.

American goldfinches and other small birds descend on black-eyed susans and coneflowers, their seeds now quickly ripening.

An American goldfinch on black-eyed susans

September – Days begin to cool. Hardy asters take over, but August stars are still present. I watch milkweeds with particular zeal this month: The generation of monarch caterpillars that are devouring them now are the Methuselah generation, the only monarch cohort that lives up to nine months, enough to travel across the country to the same oyamel fir grove in Mexico. You can help this grand migration, so vulnerable to habitat loss, by supporting The Monarch Watch and joining its Monarch Waystation Program. 

A Methuselah monarch butterfly caterpillar munching on milkweed

Chipmunks, whom we’ve hardly seen through summer, are now back in view, swift and gratuitously cute. 

October – Rough clouds of white snakeroot flowers swathe my garden, still bright and buzzing with activity–the last hurrah before the cold season.

A common buckeye butterfly on white snakeroot

A backscratching bee on a late Tennessee coneflower

Chipmunk gymnastics

November – A trace of winter is in the air. The leaves are falling, flowers turn brown, and we come to know the squirrels by name.

Molly

Migrants from the north stop by. We are grateful to get a glimpse of them, if only for a few days.

An ovenbird, the resident of Eastern forests

And we get to see our regulars at a far closer range.

A white-breasted nuthatch

December – The garden sleeps. Bright holly berries are the toast of winter.

A male cardinal in a holly

A grackle, “singing”

As it gets cold, a hawk begins to pay menacing visits.

January – Another year begins, weeks of grey still ahead. Life in the yard goes on. 

Opossum prints

We peer out, restlessly, counting minutes to spring. 

Read on: 

• Our Backyard Weekend: The Hatchlings!
• Family Matters at Dyke Marsh
• Travel Theme: Pale