Buckeyes in the Garden

Today I took a little break and went out into the garden.  We've finally begun to get some rain.  It's been a very dry summer after a very wet spring and the result has been a lot of stress on the garden. 

I usually have a lot of butterflies, hummingbirds and other wildlife in my garden.  Now, the majority of the butterflies are Buckeyes (Junonia coenia), monarchs and the little  drab butterfly you see on the upper left  edge of this sedum.  I often look at my garden and sigh.  I think of Sunita and her wonderful exotic flowers and plants in her garden in India and wonder....do our common butterflies instill her with the awe that hers instill in us?  You can see her blog  here.

In case you're wondering...the name "buckeye" has nothing to do with Ohio.  These butterfliesa are common in all parts of the US, except for the Northwest, and in southern Manitoba, Ontario, Nova Scotia and Quebec, as well as in Central America and Columbia.  The name comes instead from the dots on the wings which resemble deer eyes.  The "eye spots" are thought to confuse birds.  They are kind of hard to photograph as they are constantly fanning their wings.

SAQA'S This is a Quilt entry finished and sent

This is a photo of a Great Spangled Fritillary I took in June of 2010. I loved the rich colors of this butterfly, even though it is a common one in the Northeast and Midwest. I've been meaning to do something with it since I took the photo.

I have to say that I have a little Devil or Angel who periodically sits on my shoulder and gives me a shove. Her name is Vivien Zepf. Vivien has strongly urged me to do items to enter into SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) exhibitions. Hmm.

Currently, SAQA is collecting little quilts that they will mat and put into a trunk show. The title is "This is a Quilt" and the goal is to explain art quilts and yet connect them with the folk art tradition. Why do we choose to do this type of art? A question I often ask myself as art quilts are not often accepted as "fine art" but are often classified as "craft" (with a negative connotation).

I struggle with this because I love to paint and indeed many of my art quilts have painting in them if they aren't done completely in paint. If I painted the image, I would be finished much more quickly than if I quilted the same image. I wouldn't have to quilt and bind and hand sew in a hanging sleeve. I would just have to wait until it dries, maybe slap a coat of varnish on it, and frame it. Much easier than quilting and certainly a ton less time consuming. Paintings regularly get into shows easier and also command higher prices. Phyllis Cullen has written a blog post on this topic (Is it Art ) . Hopefully the pieces put together with their artist statements will help explain quilts as art. In fact, the matting will make the point even stronger.

First, I selected a piece of rust dyed fabric as it seemed very similar to the background of the quilt. Then I drew the butterfly freehand with Derwent Inktense pencils. I think I need to learn how to get the pencil darker as it just doesn't get the richness that I know these pencils are capable of.

Here's what I ended up with. It is more of a collage as when I drew it, all I could think of is the 19th century specimen collections. I used specialty papers that I layered and wrote the Latin name for the Great Spangled Fritillary (Speyeria cybele cybele) and burned the edges of the mulberry paper. This is partly because most people who think "quilts" wouldn't dream of having paper on their quilts, yet paper IS a fiber. the green ribbon is a wired organdy ribbon which came wrapped around a pile of fat quarters. I'm sorry I can't show you a close up as the only ones I took ended up being a bit blurry (it WAS early morning and I am decidedly NOT a morning person.) The other writing is in Pigma pen and is "Great Spangled Fritillary." The long whitish piece on the left is on a scrap of cotton grabbed from the waste basket at our quilting group and reads "Lepidoptera" the name of the order of Butterflies and moths.

I outline quilted the butterfly in a metallic/rust/dark brown thread and closely quilted the background to make it lay pretty flat. Why? Well, the reason I think I like quilting images is texture. Lots of texture. You can get texture in oilpaintings by impasto and a palette knife...but that's about it. With quilting the whole world is opened up with texture: the choice of fabrics, what you do with the fabrics (fraying, manipulating, etc.), the quilting itself, and then the myriad of embellishments such as beads, buttons, sticks, metal. You name it and you can do it. Art Quilting, unlike traditional quilting opens the world of materials. Things you wouldn't dream of incorporating into a traditional quilt all of a sudden becomes fodder for an art quilt.

I debated doing this piece for a while after I saw Terry Hartzell's Luna moth at the November SAQA show. I intended to do something with my photo, but Terry has done a couple of pieces with rust dyed fabric and a Luna moth as well as a Buckeye Butterfly. Was I using her idea? Did it influence me too much? I decided that that concept was ridiculous as many people do similar topics and even use similar materials, but each individuals vision creates a different piece. Take a look at Terry's work here and you can see how different they are....and hers are down right gorgeous!

It feels good to get something done and out on the road.

The Butterfly garden

I've been working hard in the garden trying to get it in shape for this weekend when my daughter will have her senior photos taken in the yard.

I've been struggling with some of my "weeds." You see, my garden is a haven for butterflies and moths of all sorts. Here, you can see a tussock moth caterpillar (at least I think that's what it is) chewing away on a swamp milkweed.

In fact, I have a lot of plants in my garden which drive me nuts, but I am loathe to remove them as they provide food and shelter for various sorts of butterflies. Swamp milkweed is one of them. I haven't had too much luck with getting butterflies on Asclepius tuberosa (butterfly weed), but the plain jane swamp milkweed hosts lots. I also like the smell and the flowers of the plant...what I don't like is the fact that it sends runners out to propagate my garden.

Here you can see the flowers with a monarch dangling off the bottom. The sweet scent cascades over me as I weed below it.

Here's a monarch caterpilar eating away at the milkweed leaf.




























Black swallowtails prefer the Salvia bonariensis (upright salvia) and the fennel. Both freely seed themselves EVERY in my garden. The Salvia isn't too much of a problem as I can pull it out easily. The fennel, on the other hand, has a long tap root. It doesn't form a bulb like the Italian fennel, but is a purple variety. If you don't rip it out when it is young, then it is a real problem.

Other butterfly incentives in my garden include buddlea (butterfly bush), various sorts of native grasses, cosmos, echinacea, liatris, several different varieties of rudebeckia, daylilies (hemerocalis), Missouri primrose, and coreopsis. I'm probably forgetting other ones.

I have fritillaries, sulphur, Red Admiral, Eastern Swallowtail, and several other types which I have a hard time identifying. I need to find a field guide to butterflies which include the caterpillars as I'd love to know who goes with what.

Visitors to my Garden: Black Swallowtail Butterfly

My garden is often visited by lots of different animals and insects. Butterflies of all sorts love my gardens for the variety of plants and flowers.

The bright caterpillar at left is the caterpillar for the Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes asterius). They love plants which belong to the fennel/dill/Queen Anne's lace type. Here, he is feeding on a red fennel which freely seeds itself in my garden...a little too freely, but I keep it around to feed these brilliant creatures.


Yesterday, one had the misfortune to take a swim in the pool. We fished him out and I carefully placed him on a daylily to let him dry out.

He sat for a little while and dried his wings. Notice the brilliant orange and blue on the side view which doesn't show up on the back of his wings.

And yes, he is a him. The females don't have the yellow like this, but have more blue. There seems to be a bit of variation in patterning.

No doubt he will show up in a future quilt.