Tag Archive | Garden

The Journey of the Eastern Leaf-Footed Bug

In the dappled sunlight of a late summer morning, my garden became alive with the soft humming of bees and the silent fluttering of butterfly wings sipping nectar from the backyard flowering bushes. Though it was summer, birds still visited the feeders to feast on various seeds. As I sat on my porch watching the […]

How Do I Know if My Fig Cookies Have Dead Wasps?

The fig tree (Ficus carica) is one of the earliest plants cultivated for its sweet fruit. Originally a native of western Asia, the Romans and Greeks dispersed figs throughout the Mediterranean. Spanish missionaries brought figs to North America in the early 1700s. Here in the United States, there are two fig species—the Florida strangler (Ficus […]

A Holly Without Thorns

In sandy woodlands growing in moist soils along the periphery of bogs and wetlands is a evergreen shrub in the holly family that has no thorns. It is Inkberry holly. It lives in eastern North America from Nova Scotia south to Florida where it is often found in dense colonies. Its shiny dark green leaves […]