June 2026
- STEAM Garden
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
I’m sorry that this month’s entries are late, but I’m behind! I’ve been spending lots of time on a new project and less in the garden now that it is very established. I greatly appreciate Luis and Sara for keeping everything watered and trimmed! This month, I’m sending some of my favorite June photos with quick captions! - Dinah
June 2026
Notice that Luis changed our Touch Table so it has a mesh top instead of a solid surface. It no longer collects water and dust. We still battle leaves, but they are manageable. See photo of original Touch Table to the right.
We have had a lot of Mason Bees in the garden this year. They definitely like this privative Bee & Bee Hotel better than our coffee cans filled with bamboo tubes.
Gulf Fritillary butterflies are beautiful pollinators. They have been abundant this year and their ravenous caterpillars have consumed all of our passion vines. We will cultivate more plants next year, and the ones we have will recover. In this photo, several males are vying for a female. I tried to warn them that there isn’t enough food to feed their young!
Our comfrey tea making process has been a huge success. (See May 14, 2026 for photos on how we make the tea without steeping it in water.) For root feeding, the tea is mixed with water at a ratio of 1:10. Mix it 1:20 for young plants.
These pipevine eggs look like a dot-to-dot activity. Pipevine eggs are usually laid in tight clusters. These are on a leaf of our new wooly pipevine. Anoles feed on moving food like spiders and small insects, but
they are also opportunistic and will feed on eggs. These eggs might not taste good since they contain some of the aristolochic acids that make the female pipevine less palatable.
I think this is a European hornet. They are large with yellow and black stripes, and they frequently nest in hollow trees. They are usually not aggressive unless their nesting colony is disturbed. We will give them lots of space and enjoy watching them. They are the only true hornet in North America, and they were introduced from Europe in the 1800s.
2026 is a typical year for cicadas in Central Texas. We are not experiencing a 13-year or a 17-year emergence. However, our good spring rains and warm nighttime temperatures are making conditions favorable for annual cicadas to be noisy and active. The European hornet pictured in the previous entry is one of their predators.
June 2026
Our chickens roost at dusk and our Queen butterflies roost at dusk, too. We see the butterflies clustered on extended, slightly isolated stems and limbs that allow for quick, unobstructed flight in case of danger.
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