Explore Outdoors ~ Leps in the Garden

 Butterflies and moths are both members of the order, Lepidoptera. The name is derived from the Greek and means "scaly winged." When you look closely, you can see the dust-like scales that cover the wings. Both butterflies and moths play an important role in the environment. Their larvae - caterpillars - are an important food source for birds. The adults pollinate plants. The major difference? Butterflies fly during the day, and moths fly at night - but I found both in my garden one morning.

 

 

 

 

 

Plant some Flowers for Your Pollinators!

 

My Pollinator Garden: How I Plant for Bees, Butterflies, Beetles, and More (Books for a Better Earth) 

by Jordan Zwetchkenbaum; illus. by Kate Cosgrove 

40 pages; ages 3-6 

‎Holiday House, 2025

theme: garden, pollinators, ecology

My garden is full of flowers. I like the pretty colors. I like that they smell good.

Those lovely flower smells attract animals that take pollen from one plant to another, so the flowers can make seeds. And those animals, from bees to birds, butterflies to bats, are called pollinators.  Spread by spread readers learn how flowers attract pollinators and how different pollinators carry the pollen. At the same time, we are introduced to a diversity of native bees, butterflies, moths, hummingbirds and bats, flies, beetles, and wasps.

What I like about this book: It’s fun to look at the different pollinators and flowers on each page. There are short-tongued bees and long-tongued bees. Some bees shake the flowers to release the pollen. There’s a fun fact about each of the featured pollinators: what colors they see; whether they fly during the day or night; what attracts them to a particular flower. Back matter includes and author’s note, how to plant for pollinators, a short glossary, sources, and an index to pollinators and their plants.

Beyond the Books: 

Plant some pollinator flowers that are native to your region. You can find a list of plants for your region here at XERCES. If you don’t have a large space for a pollinator garden, plant a way station. A way station flower spot could be as big as the area inside a hula hoop or a few pots on the balcony.

Make sure to have a watering spot for your pollinators. I use a shallow dish with rocks in it. The rocks serve as landing islands once I pour in water. Make sure you keep it filled, especially on hot and sunny days. 

Today we’re joining Perfect Picture Book Friday. It’s a wonderful gathering where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Keeping Count of Pollinators

 

The Great Pollinator Count (Community Science Counts!) 

by Susan Edwards Richmond; illus. by Stephanie Fizer Coleman 

32 pages; ages 4-8

Margaret Quinlin Books/Peachtree, 2025

One of the things I do every summer is count pollinators for the Great Sunflower Project, a community science project that I’ve been participating in since … oh, my - 2009! So I was really, really looking forward to Susan Richmond’s newest book about pollinator counts, and she doesn’t disappoint.

Mellie and her friends are part of a science club and they’re planning to count pollinators. The science club advisor, aptly named Ms. Bombus (awesome nod to buzzy sounds and bumblebees!) pairs Mellie with a kid who loves dinosaurs and hates stinging insects. As they count, readers are introduced to honeybees and small bees, carpenter bees and bumblebees, flies and wasps and even a hummingbird moth. Back matter highlights the insects in the book and lists the flowers in the school’s pollinator garden.

Back around Earth Day, Susan joined a bunch of us for “The Fifth Annual GROG Arthropod Roundtable” where we chatted about bugs we love (and those we don’t). She talked a bit about why she wrote The Great Pollinator Count.

“Young children are eager to explore their environment and are natural scientists,” she said, adding that many children (and adults) are afraid of bees and wasps. While respect and caution are a healthy response towards stinging insects, Susan wanted folks to appreciate all pollinators, not just the butterflies. A perfect reason for writing a book … but what’s the hook?

“When I learned that Georgia conducted an annual insect pollinator census, which includes schoolchildren, I knew this would be my gateway!” What better than a pollinator count! Pollinator counts are becoming more common, and what began as a Georgia community science project, The Great Southeast Pollinator Census has now expanded to include four more states: North and South Carolina, Florida, and Alabama. 

“May this notion of promoting a healthy pollinator population continue to grow!” Susan says.     

Pollinator Week Activity: visit a flowery meadow or a garden and count the pollinators you see in 10 minutes.

Susan is a member of #STEAMTeam2025. You can find out more about her at her website at www.susanedwardsrichmond.com  

Explore Outdoors ~ local pollinators

 This is Pollinator Week!  Pollinators, like people, come in all shapes and sizes. Those visiting my garden include bumblebees, carpenter bees, sweat bees and tons of other bees I don't have names for (yet), syrphid flies and other flies, wasps - from bald-faced hornets to paper wasps to tiny wasps, butterflies, skippers, hummingbird moths, beetles, and hummingbirds. I'm sure I've left some out. 

 

Here are a few  of the pollinators visiting my garden and the "weeds" along the road.

Who do you see pollinating your flowers?

 

 

Pollinators are Very Buzzy!

 

The Buzz on Wild Bees: The Little-Known Pollinators that Keep Our Planet Humming 

by Kira Vermond; illust. by June Steube

40 pages; ages 7-10

‎ Owlkids, 2025  

Do you know what bees look like? It’s OK if you don’t. There are more than 20,000 different species of bees on our planet, and most people can only identify a honeybee. This book introduces different kinds of wild bees: leafcutters, oil-collecting bees, cellophane bees, sweat bees and vulture bees and even bees that scrape the fuzz off plants and rolls it up like fluffy wool. It also shows the sorts of places wild bees live, and discusses why they’re so important to the other plants and animals in the environment (including humans).

But … wild bees are in danger and need our help. So this book shares a bunch of ways we can help them thrive, from planting native flowers to ditching pesticides. 

Pollinator Week Activity: Create a wild patch for wild bees! Get permission to let part of your yard go wild and weedy for a month (or the summer!). All you need to do is make sure no one mows that patch. Document the flowers and wild bees that you see in your wild flower patch. Ways to document: draw, paint, photograph, write notes about, write haiku or poetry.  

Explore Outdoors ~ honeybee in flight

 Every now and then I capture a bug commuting to work.... 

Holladay, UT /August 2024

Explore Outdoors ~ noisy moth!

 So there I am in my garden on a quiet morning, listening to the birds and the low hum of bees - when a flirrrr of wings goes past. It sounds like a hummingbird with a muffler...

 

but it's not. It's a moth. A hummingbird moth. Sucking all the yummy nectar out of the monarda before the hummingbirds have finished their first cup of coffee.

I know, I know. I post a photo of them every summer. But hey! They are so cool. Look at that looong proboscis. It's like a giant straw that they uncurl to sip sugary stuff. 

Hummingbird moths are hefty and hairy, and even have little fan tails. And their wings beat in a blur. If this one stopped for just a second, you'd notice that the middle part of the wing is clear, giving it the name "clearwing".

Keep your eyes open for hummingbird moths 

hanging out in your neighborhood this week.

Explore Outdoors ~ face-to-face with bumblebees!

 

If you get the opportunity to watch bumblebees this week, see if you can look one in the eye. Sometimes that means getting on the opposite side of a flower. This bee has their tongue out - sipping nectar perhaps? The flower is wild mondarda (bee balm)- they look cool close-up, too!

Explore Outdoors ~ Mullein Watching

 For the past couple weeks, I've been watching the mullein that grows along the roadside where I walk. It's a tall plant that grows like a spear, topped with yellow flowers that make it look like a torch. Sometimes I'll let it grow in my garden because the bumblebees like it. 

But you know who else likes it? Flies! Every time I walk by, the flowers are busy with syrphid flies. You can tell they're not bees because of their huge eyes and tiny antennae. Also, if you get close enough you can see they have only one pair of wings (bees have 2 pair). 

This week go mullein watching and see who you find on the flowers. You might find flies, bees, beetles, and more. Check out this article to meet some of the mullein visitors.

Pollinators at Work

 

Explore Outdoors ~ Pollinator Scavenger Hunt

 

It's Pollinator Week so of course we're going to head out to look for some pollinators! How many of these can you find? Have Fun!

• a bumble bee
• a beetle on a flower
• a shiny green bee
• a fly that looks like a bee or wasp
• a hummingbird
• a moth that looks like a hummingbird
• an ant on a flower
• a bee with pollen on its body or face
• a fuzzy fly that looks like a bumble bee
• a wasp on a flower
• a butterfly on a flower
• a fuzzy beetle that looks like a bumble bee
  

Pollen-faces!

It's Pollinator Week!

 It's Pollinator Week! That means every day I'll have something fun on this blog. Tomorrow and Thursday it's a look at pollinators at work. On Wednesday there's a pollinator scavenger hunt, and on Friday a review of a special book about bees.

 

 Before the Seed: How Pollen Moves
by Susannah Buhrman-Deever; illus. by Gina Triplett & Matt Curtius
40 pages; ages 7-9
‎MIT Kids Press, 2024

 

 If you want to grow a flower - or a tomato - you need to plant a seed. But before you can have a seed, you've got to move pollen. And if you've ever seen a pollen grain, you know they're too tiny to pick up. So how does pollen get moved? By animals. From beetles to bees, from bats to birds and butterflies, pollen is on the move!

 

 

 The Mighty Pollinators
by Helen Frost; photographs by Rick Lieder
32 pages; ages 2-5
Candlewick, 2024

Meet the pollinators through playful poems and stunning photographs. There are bumble bees and honey bees that carry pollen back to their hive, and solitary bees that live alone. There are beautiful photos of flies and butterflies, bats and fireflies, and back matter that explains more about pollen and pollination. Want to observe pollinators in your garden or park? Just find a flower and stand a few feet away and watch. Once you're still, you'll notice the pollinators visiting the blooms. They are busy working, so if you don't bother them they won't bother you.

Want to learn more about these books and the authors? Head over to the GROG blog and check out my interview with Susannah and Helen at the GROG's Fourth Annual Arthropod Roundtable

For Plants It's All About The Soil

 

 The Soil in Jackie’s Garden
by Peggy Thomas; illus. by Neely Daggett
32 pages; ages 5-8
‎Feeding Minds Press, 2024

theme: gardening, compost, pollinators

This is the soil in Jackie’s garden.

For those of us who garden, everything begins with the soil. And so it is with this book. Even before seeds can grow, we have soil. And worms. In this cumulative story, Jackie and her friends sow seeds, nurture plants, harvest fruit, and recycle scraps in the compost bin to ensure that the cycle of growth continues.  

What I like about this book: With it’s “house that Jack built” structure, this story is fun to read and will have kids repeating some lines before long. In addition to the story, Peggy Thomas tucks extra information into text boxes: explanations of xylem and phloem, a closer look at root tips and leaves, how plants breathe. Readers will see the garden through seasons of growth, ripening, and harvest. And then there are the close-ups of compost critters – one of my favorite spreads. Back matter contains more information about the soil cycle. 

While I love books that include the occasional vertical spread, I found that having an entire book open that way was difficult for me to hold on my lap. But if you’ve got kids who lay on their tummies to look at books, this format makes perfect sense!

Beyond the Books:

Watch how a seed grows. You’ll need bean or pumpkin seeds, a clear glass jar or plastic cup, paper towels, and an old t-shirt. You can find instructions under “Watch pumpkin seeds sprout” at Patricia Newman’s lit links.

Make some compost. But if you don’t have room to build a compost pile in your yard, you can make compost in a plastic soda bottle. Here’s how. When I did it I used newspapers, banana peels, apple cores, orange peels, egg shells, carrot peelings, and dried leaves.

Plant a bucket garden for pollinators. I use five-gallon buckets, but you can use smaller containers – even a plastic waste basket will work. You’ll need to drill some holes in the bottom for drainage and fill with potting soil. Here’s how to create a $5 bee garden.

Today we’re joining Perfect Picture Book Friday. It’s a wonderful gathering where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Explore Outdoors ~ apple blossom pollinators

 Last week I was walking by my friend's garden and the air was filled with the sweetness of apple blossoms. The tree was busy with pollinators: honey bees, flies, wild bees. Here are a couple of the pollinators that took enough time at the blossoms to get pollen on their legs and elsewhere.

 

 

What pollinators are you finding on the flowers growing in your neighborhood?

Explore Outdoors ~ tricolored bumble bee

 Last week - on the first sunny day since the rain (and maybe since the eclipse...) I headed outside to see who was up and about. Yes, there were flies in the forsythia, and a woodpecker drumming on a tree somewhere nearby. Then I heard buzzing... the sort of buzzing a bumble bee makes. Sure enough, down in the tiny purple deadnettle blossoms.

There were actually two of them - probably queens out for lunch and possibly house-hunting - Bombus ternarius, commonly known as the tricolored bumblebee (aka orange-belted bumblebee). It was a good day to be flitting about; I also saw a mourning cloak butterfly and a smaller orange butterfly that wouldn't stay still long enough for me to get a good look at it. 

What's buzzing, flitting, and flying about in your neighborhood?

Celebrating Seeds and a book anniversary

 I missed this book by a fellow Sleeping Bear Press author when it released last year, so I’m celebrating its One Year Anniversary! Full disclosure: I am a gardener and seed-saver… so yeah, I may be a bit biased.

Every Little Seed  

by Cynthia Schumerth; illus. by Elisa Paganelli 

32 pages; ages 5-8

Sleeping Bear Press, 2023

theme: gardening, rhyme, family

 Grandpa told Mom, and Mom told me: The secret of a plant lives in every little seed.

When spring finally arrives, it’s time to plant seeds. This story follows a girl, her grandpa, and her mom as they plant and tend their garden over a season, We are introduced to a variety of garden tools – a wonderful illustration shows all the different things you might use, from claw-cultivator to trowel! The story brings us full circle, by collecting seeds for planting the next year.

What I like about this book: There are so many things to notice, from the differences in seeds to the small creatures that call the garden home. Some of them help pollinate the flowers; some of them are nibblers, chewing on plants we don’t want them to eat! So I appreciate that non-chemical solutions are shown for dealing with unwanted hungry garden guests.

There’s back matter, too (which you know I love!) with information about what’s inside seeds, invasive plants and animals, and some seed-related activities. And the illustrations are lovely. Here's a sample from Elisa Paganelli's gallery

Since I am a gardener, I knew I just had to ask Cynthia Schumerth a question or three…

Me: Hi Cynthia. I save seeds from the beans and pumpkins in my garden, and from flowers growing in my garden and around my yard. I’ve been known to collect seeds from flowers along roadsides and even from other people’s gardens! With their permission, of course. Do you save seeds? And what do you like to save?

Cynthia: I do save seeds.  Most of the seeds I save are from my annual flowering plants. My favorite are my Cosmos flowers.  When they dry on the stem, their seeds form a star.  You just have to slide your fingers over them and they release like magic. I always save my zinnia and marigold seeds too.  I even planted a lemon seed I saved and it grew into a lemon tree. I live where it’s cold in the winter, so I have to keep the tree inside from October to May. If you pinch the leaves they smell like lemon, it’s pretty neat.  But I’ve never gotten any actual fruit. I’ve also collected milkweed seeds and spread them out in open fields and along the roadside. It’s my way of helping the monarchs who need milkweed to lay their eggs on.

Me: Yes – dried cosmos seedheads are like asterisks in the garden! Did your own gardening experiences inspire your book? 

Cynthia: I grew up in a gardening family.  I had country grandparents who grew mostly vegetables and berries and of course fields of wheat and corn. I spent many hours in the garden with my Grandma picking peas and strawberries and red currants. And my sister and I helped Grandpa collect the corn seeds from the dried field corn. In the city my grandparents had a vegetable garden, and they grew beautiful flowers.  I learned a lot about flowers from them.  In parts of their garden they didn’t collect seeds, they’d just flatten the dried up plants down and let them reseed for next year. My parents had a large vegetable garden and several large flower beds.  They were always working out in the garden and of course we all helped.  I think we ate more than we picked! I guess you could say my grandparents and my parents helped me write this story by teaching me all about gardening and love as I grew up. 

Me:  Do you have favorite seeds and flowers?

Cynthia: While cosmos is my favorite seed to collect, my favorite flower is the violet. My second favorite is the forget-me-not. In our first house I grew forget-me-knots along our fence line and for some reason the birds would come along and cut the stem just under the flower head and all the pretty blue flower heads would fall to the ground. I often wonder why. I think Hollyhock seeds are interesting. It’s just really fun to take a closer look at dried up flowers in the fall and see all the different ways you can find their seeds hiding on the plant. It’s also interesting to see all the different shapes that seeds come in even if you don’t collect them.

Thanks for dropping by to talk about seeds and gardening, Cynthia. And now for one of my favorite parts of writing reviews – doing things that go…

Beyond the Books:

Plant some seeds and watch them grow. Beans, sunflowers, and other flowers are fun to grow – and you can even grow them in pots on your balcony, porch, or roof if you don’t have a garden.

Watch flowers you plant – or that you find growing in your neighborhood – throughout the season. Can you tell when they are producing seeds? Collect seeds from different flowers to examine. Cosmos, calendula, bee balm, and yucca are interesting to look at. What do you notice about these seeds? Plant some to see how they grow.

How do seeds get from a parent plant to a new place to grow? Look for milkweed or dandelion seeds, burdock seeds, and seeds in berries. What do you notice about these seeds? How do you think they end up in a new place?

Today we’re joining Perfect Picture Book Friday. It’s a wonderful gathering where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Explore Outdoors ~ Disc Flowers on a Coneflower

 I've been watching pollinators on my coneflowers week after week - butterflies, flies, bees of all types. But I never really thought about the flowers producing the pollen that the bees were collecting.

So a couple of weeks ago I followed a leafcutter bee around. And I noticed that the conehead of my purple coneflowers had tiny pollen-laden stars on the disc flowers.

Okay, a digression: composites have disc flowers and ray flowers. In the coneflower, the ray flowers are the purple petals and the disc flowers are the ones that make up the center cone that looks a bit like a porcupine.

At first, I thought that the pollen was on top of the orange spike of the disc flower.

Then I looked closer...

Turns out each "porcupine quill" is a bracht, and the flowers are next to it. When you look closely (a handlens is helpful) you can see the two-lobed stigma and the star-like anthers.

 According to the Outdoor Learning Lab (Greenfield Community College), the disc flowers mature sequentially, beginning with those on the perimeter and moving toward the center. Only one whorl of flowers matures each morning, and there is only a small amount of nectar - so pollinators have to visit many flowers on one plant and then visit more on another plant. What a great way to ensure cross-pollination! You can read more about coneflowers at the OLL page here.

 This week take a close look at composite flowers you find in your neighborhood. They might be coneflowers or sunflowers, black-eyed Susans or ox-eye daisies, asters or fleabane, or even dandelions and their relatives. If you have a magnifying lens, take it with you.

Explore Outdoors ~ Contrasting colors

One of the things that attracts me to gardens is color. Bees are attracted by color, too! They appreciate yellow and orange and blue and purple flowers. So whenever I walk by a garden, I take a peek at who's visiting the blossoms. This time I was rewarded with a contrast in colors: the bright green of the bee against the brilliant purple of the coneflower.

 

 

This week as you walk by gardens, look for contrasting colors. It might be a brilliant pink flower against bright green leaves. It might be tiny black bees on white daisy blossoms. Or it might be colorful bees - or butterflies - and their blooms.

Waiting for Pie

Way back in May I transplanted my pumpkin seedlings. In the intervening weeks, those tiny seedlings have been growing. 

I keep looking for pumpkins, but it takes an entire summer to grow a pie! Here’s where they are right now. Most of the yellow flowers are male flowers – they are the ones that produce pollen. But there are a few female flowers here and there. 

As the pumpkins grow, so do the leaves – shading them from the sun. New England Pie pumpkins take about 100 days to grow from a seed. That’s more than three months, so with luck I might see ripe pumpkins about the time The Pie that Molly Grew hits bookstore shelves. 

Here's the cool thing about pumpkins: you can eat the entire plant. Yep, those  shoots, tendrils, leaves, flowers – even immature fruits – are edible. And tasty, too. Last summer I learned that young leaves and shoots can be stir-fried. Just remember to peel the outer prickly skin off first. And some folks use leaves to make soup. I’ve had squash-blossom fritters before, but you can also toss the flowers into salads or quesadillas (remove the stamen and any sepals or stem).

The Pie that Molly Grew releases August 15th with a blog tour! So you may find me chatting with other bloggers about pumpkins, gardening, pollinators … and pie. You can pre-order autographed copies from Riverow Bookstore, located in historic downtown Owego, NY.

See you next month with some funny stories from the pumpkin patch.