Garden Status

Lots of heavy rain over the past couple weeks, which combined with the heat caused several more bent and snapped branches.

After picking up one of the fallen branches I felt a stinging pain on the back of my hand. I flipped it over and discovered a saddleback caterpillar under one of the leaves.

I assume my hand brushed against it. The spines break off in your skin and contain venom. I did the recommended procedure of using tape to pull out any broken ends, then washed with soap and water and applied a topical analgesic and antihistamine. I apparently got off pretty light, because I didn’t get nasuea or headaches or other stronger symptoms, and by 18 hours it was no longer hurting.

Also on further inspection I discovered there were several more hiding on that same stalk, so it’s a good thing I put it down right away.

These are the first I can remember seeing in several years, and I haven’t found any more [yet], so I’m guessing some eggs must have been laid nearby for them to be clustered on one branch this way.

I’ve got one plant which suddenly collapsed and wilted a bunch of its branches, but so far this is the only one to fail that hard:

After several days the remaining stalk seems to be improving.

I also have a few plants which are just sticking to the ground without gaining any height. There’s two Tahoma Moonshot pictured here doing this, and they’re both holdovers from last year so it’s probably just a symptom of them not being divided over the Winter. The Poppers plant by the driveway is in its third year and is having similar issues.

I’ve got some hibiscus around the yard and those have started producing flowers:

And I still see mantids around:

Overall the beds are doing okay. I really need to get out there with a lawnmower and weed trimmer as soon as it dries out, though.