This website is primarily about my photography, web design and graphics but being a photographer I think there is this natural love of nature that we feel compelled to document. When I finally saw a monarch (now on the endangered species list) flutter around my milkweed plants I was ecstatic!

I live in a very arid environment with well water that can even kill morning glory. Yes, the gardeners at the garden club looked at me like I had an alien disease when I said that and moved away from me. These city water drinkers had no concept of what a California well water can be like! Nevertheless I want to do what I can to help these little beauties so even though this is a design blog I will document what I find out on this post as I learn.

I used to see monarch butterflies every Summer as a kid but at some point I realized I wasn’t seeing them anymore. I actually didn’t see many butterflies at all in this desert landscape but I made sure never to chop down a milkweed knowing it’s the only plant the migrating butterflies can lay their eggs on to survive.

The other bugs!

Tarantula Hawk

The monarch is not the only insect that loves the milkweed. This glossy blue/black fella I see a lot more often! According to Wikipedia the tarantula hawk “has been awarded second place on the Schmidt sting pain index, beaten only by the South American bullet ant). The pain from a bullet ant sting lasts up to 24 hours, whereas that of a wasp usually only aggravates the unlucky victim for five minutes.” I sure don’t want to find out if that’s true! But he seems gets a little high on the nectar and flies around clumsy after feasting for as while, even so, it actually helps the monarch by aiding in the plants pollination.

The wasp below I believe is a male because the antenna are straight instead of curled. As I approached him the wasps circled around my body at least 4 times before settling back on the milkweed as if to say I checked you out and you are not a threat.

Apparently not a threat to a monarch but pretty yucky to read about what happens to the poor tarantula that gets near one!

Milkweed bug

Here is the explosion I am dealing with. From what I read it’s not a problem if you don’t have very many but that is not my situation. Too much for pesticide or the dish soap technique. I am toying with the idea of just vacuuming them up. Anybody got any other environmentally friendly ideas?

Just got a couple more images approved for sale in my Shutterstock account under plants. The bottle gourd I actually grew myself. I was quite proud of it actually since dealing with the aphids and powdery mildew (here I blog about that) was a LOT of work.

The elephant ear I wish was my plant but it was taken in a greenhouse in Golden Gate Park. It was pretty humid in there. I took the picture and then want bursting out so I could breath!

Harvesting these potatoes took me no more than five minutes!

Even though buying them in the store is pretty cheap growing them yourself is fun! It’s the discovery of seeing what is under the soil and wondering how many you’ll find! In addition I swear they are so much more creamier when you grow them yourself and of course you know just exactly what chemicals you did or didn’t put in the soil or on the potato itself.

For these seed potatoes I bought at the local Home Depot I used a couple of old bee boxes we had. Any box will do – these just happened to be around and on the bottom I put a wire mesh with widow screen so that no critters would come up from underneath and to keep the soil from mostly falling through when harvesting later.

Then I filled it with potting soil and then placed 4 seed potatoes in the box a couple of inches down. As the potatoes started to grow they say you are supposed to mount the soil up around the plant. To make that process easier I just put another bee box on top and filled the dirt in around it.

Here is a picture of the plant not quite ready to harvest.

Once it becomes more wilted looking I pulled the plants out and flipped over the box and picked up the potatoes in less than five minutes!

I did 4 bins this way of different varieties and each was a success

I have to brag about how nice my salad bowl lettuce is this season. I think I can attribute this to two things that make it so. One is the raised beds that have no contact with the ground so no chance of little creatures from the ground. And the other is the addition of the mosquito netting on the cage that surrounds the lettuce as you can see from the picture. This netting I bought from Amazon and I like it because I can see through it and it look really pretty when the sunlight hits it. There are no white flies which have been a problem in the past. From what I have heard even if they do get in there the white netting actually blinds them so they don’t stay. I am not sure if that is true but they aren’t there!