Everybody's Hungry - Shelton Community Garden

After a very late start due to neighborhood opposition, the Shelton Community Garden is really growing. Gardeners have a nice deer fence that excludes most predators.

But watch out for the Tomato Hornworm, for which I hold a grudge. I had a bunch of these caterpillars eat my entire garden one year in a single afternoon.

But wait, looks like this caterpillar is going to make a meal for a host of hungry Braconid Wasp larvae. These tiny wasps lay their eggs on various insects, and the larvae hatch out and eat the host. (One of our very youngest gardeners spotted this caterpillar and identified the parasite).

The garden isn't very big (just 30 plots), but if you get disoriented and need directions, just ask this lady. Seems like she's always there.


The deer fence is barely visible in the foreground of this picture and is working great so far. No deer, rabbits, or woodchucks yet. Bugs, crows, and fungus seem to be the biggest pests. All in all, it's been a great success.

Trout Brook Valley, Easton

Trout Brook Valley in Easton has miles of trails and a little something for everyone. My favorite spot was this open hilltop orchard. It's just not something you usually run into on a hiking trail.

According to the brochure, if you go through the gate there are blueberries in there that people are free to pick in season. It was too hot in the sun, so I didn't explore the orchard area. I assume the fence is to keep deer out.

That's an image of old New England right there. The trail runs right alongside the deer fence. Although I think the farmers used to just shoot the deer and eat them rather than put up fences to keep them out.

Dog owners are allowed to take their dogs off-leash. Hurray! It was so nice not to keep getting tangled up in the leash.

Biscuit was overjoyed, and did a good job staying nearby. She does have a thing for high places, though. Part goat, I suspect.

And then I found a broken arrowhead in the middle of the trail. The third one in a week.


The park is depressingly overgrazed by deer, although the average person probably won't realize it. Most patches of green are alien plants that deer won't eat. But here was a big patch of Naked-Flowered Tick Trefoil, a native plant in the pea family. The leaves look a little like Poison Ivy.

The flowers are tiny. I suspect deer don't care for this plant, otherwise, why would there be so much of it growing here?


A completely different kind of Tick Trefoil was in bloom in a moister area - Showy Tick Trefoil.

They do a nice job of balancing many different uses in the park. Most of the trails are open to mountain bikes, but a few sensitive trails are not. Part of the park is open for hunting, and part is not.

The park does suffer from "sign pollution." Partly that is unavoidable due to so many different types of park users, but it's also partly because big bold arrow signs are used instead of traditional trail blazes, and there are just too many waymarkers, trail maps, and various other things tacked onto trees and put on posts. This sign says, "No Fishing." I think there used to be a stream there.

Milkweed at Osbornedale

Osbornedale State Park in Derby maintains a large field filled with mostly native plants, including lots of Common Milkweed. I had my eye out for Monarch Caterpillars, but found none (and no evidence of caterpillars eating leaves, either). I'm not sure why that is, perhaps the timing.

I did recognize this small bug, the same species that I had recently seen all over the tops of my potatoes. I had identified it at the time as the Small Eastern Milkweed Bug, and here it was, where it was supposed to be, in Milkweed. Why they were in my potatoes is beyond me. All the literature absolutely asured me that these beetles will not harm a garden and only go in Milkweed.


Let's see if we can spot a color pattern here on the Milkweed. Throw Monarch Butterflies in...they're red and black. This one is the Red Milkweed Beetle. I love it when the names coincide nicely with what I found them on.

Here's the Tussock Sedge Moth caterpillar, also known to eat Milkweed.

And the Large Milkweed Bug. Orange/Red and Black seem to be the universal colors for all these bugs, and those colors are a warning to predators. The milkweed contains a toxic substance that these insects are able to eat and store in their bodies, rendering them poisonous. So don't eat them.

Asiatic Garden Beetles

Here are some of the Asiatic Garden Beetles I found buried in the soil and roots when I dug up my half-eaten basil. They're about the same size as the Japanese Beetle. Everyone at Shelton's Community Garden seemed to be losing their basil to some mysterious insect, but the bug was nowhere to be seen. Until recently at dusk, that is, when I discovered the brown beetles emerging onto my basil. That's because the Asian Garden Beetle is nocturnal. They are attracted to light, so you may have cleaned these out of your light fixtures in the house or heard them whacking into your screens at night.

The beetles not only eat the leaves and flowers in gardens, but lay eggs in the soil which hatch into larvae that eat the roots of your favorite plants.

As always, we know much more about how this invasive species effects lawns and garden than our natural areas. Are there any native plant species in the forest this beetle is favoring?

Swamp blooms Along the Rec Path

Take a walk with me along the Rec Path in Shelton, starting at Lane Street. Before long there is a hayfield on one side and a swamp on the other, where the Swamp Rose grows (above). This is one of our native roses, unlike the much more common pink rose we see along the shoreline (Rugosa Rose). All the species below that I found along the swamp edge are native to Connecticut.

Bonus! Under the rose growing in the mud are Creeping Bluets. This was my favorite find of the evening. Update -- not paying attention there, they have 5 petals, not four. That's actually one of the Forget-me-nots. May or may not be native.

The leaves you see are Jewel Weed.

The meadow was just hayed. As always, we are being quietly watched. Do you see it? Let's zoom in on this photo...

She's as quiet as a statue, only slinking away after I started walking towards her. Lots of people were walking up and down the Rec Path, and a couple was sitting on a nearby bench. I'll bet none of them were aware of this deer watching their every move.

Below the boardwalk is the American Burr Reed and its delightfully distinctive flowers.

This seven-foot Tall Meadow Rue also grows along the boardwalk. The leaves are what make this plant distinctive...

...growing in delicate clusters of three. There is a spring anemone with the exact same leaves named after this plant: Rue Anemone.

Leaving the boardwalk, we soon find another tall one: Water Hemlock. Not to be confused with
the similar-looking but unrelated Poison Hemlock.

The leaves of the Water Hemlock are also distinctive and look to me like the garden plant Astilbe.

Here's one of our native thistles: Swamp Thistle. It doesn't really look like a thistle, but take a closer look at the leaves...

Several caterpillar species rely on plants in the thistle family.

On somewhat higher ground now is a Fringed Loosestrife. The literature notes the plant "tolerates seasonal flooding," which is a good thing because that spot does flood occasionally.

Taking a detour onto a side trail where Means Brook and the Far Mill River meet, is the delicate Enchanter's Nightshade, growing perilously close to the Stinging Nettles (*%^&$!!). This spot also floods from time to time, but is usually dry.

New Camera

OK, folks, I finally got an amazing replacement camera for the high-end Canon point-and-shoot I lost in the parking lot at Sleeping Giant last fall (after dropping it repeatedly while hiking, I confess).  I've been using an old, malfunctioning point-and-shoot, and just had enough of it. Soooo,  here's the Panasonic G-2, one of the new-fangled Micro Four Thirds camera that is basically a very small, light SLR without the interior mirrors.  Wow, so I can take pictures in the shady forest now without a flash.  But I don't have to lug around an SLR. It's about time! This camera is amazing. I had an SLR as far back as High School, before cameras were digital, but held off on getting a DSLR because they were too expensive and snobby (no video, for starters, because "real" photographers wouldn't want to take video). 



The camera has interchangeable lenses, but they're expensive.  The only disappointment has been adapting to the stock lense that can only go from "normal" power to a 3x zoom.  The point-and-shoot camera I had last fall went from super macro to 10x at the touch of a button.  But I am finding I'm getting just as good pictures by using the computer to zoom in and crop. 


The camera is way fun.  It has a touch screen -- touch the part of the view you want to be in focus, or scroll through your pictures like an iTouch. The intelligent mode is good for lazy photographers like me, identifying faces and locking them into focus even as they move around.  Here's a video that shows how that work.

Mouse Nest

My son found a mouse nest wedged in the canoe he was cleaning, with three babies and a mother mouse running back and forth. He set the nest aside and the mother hauled off two of the babies into the woods, leaving this on unattended. Hopefully she'll come back.

What kinds of mouse? I couldn't begin to say. In this area we have the White-Footed Mouse (which can go up in the trees and use bird nests), the Meadow Jumping Mouse, and the Woodland Jumping Mouse (which can jump 6 to 8 feet). Then there are the voles and several species of shrews, which the average person would also call a mouse.

Tea Party on the Powerlines

New Jersey Tea is in full bloom along the powerlines in Shelton now. It's a low native shrub that forms thickets only a few feet high. The leaves were used to make tea during the Revolutionary War era when colonists were boycotting the real stuff from British ships. They say if you dry the leaves for a few weeks and then steep them in hot water you'll have a drink that tastes very much like Oriental tea.

During the winter, New Jersey Tea is marked by these distinctive little cups where the flowers once were.

Whorled Loosestrife is an easily overlooked native perennial. Although the flowers are small, the leaves join together in symmetrical clusters of four (that's the "whorl").

Deptford Pink is small but vividly magenta. This is one of the many "wildflowers" along the powerlines that are not native to the U.S.


Crown Vetch is very common along the powerlines, where it was planted for erosion control. This is yet another plant that has gone invasive in the U.S., although at least this one stays in sunny areas. It is native to Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa.

Surprise, surprise, Red Clover is also not native. The bees like it, though.

Where's Waldo, the Wood Frog?

So, can you see him? Look closely. Here's a tip, he looks just like a dead leaf ;-). Try clicking the photo to enlarge...


OK, then, here's a close up (he's exactly where he was in the photo above). We have lots of Wood Frogs at Eklund Garden because of the nearby Vernal Pool where they breed. They really are hard to see, though, even when you know exactly where one jumped.

Strawberries!!

These wonderful strawberries were about to be picked (by me) at Jones Family Farm yesterday. Delicious! The cultivated strawberries we get at stores or at the farm are an accidental cross that occurred in France many years ago between the small but flavorful native Virginia Strawberry (below) and the much larger Chilean Strawberry. The result is called Fragaria x ananassa.


Here's the native Virginia Strawberry (Fragaria virginiana), ancestor to our cultivated berries, purchased from Earth Tones nursery for Eklund Garden. It can be found growing on the slope at Eklund just above and to the right of the cacti. I admit to tasting one of the little berries and WOW, it was amazing.

Here are some strawberries I found in the Shelton open space today along the powerlines. These were also quite tasty. Not sure, but I think these are Woodland Strawberries (Fragaria vesca), native to the western U.S. Or they might be Virgina Strawberries. Either way, they sure were tasty. (I only ate one or two, leaving the rest for the wild critters). They were growing under a mat of cinquefoil.

And here's Indian Strawberry (Duchesnea indica), a fake strawberry originally from India. The berry is dry and feels like styrofoam. This berry was found in Fairfield on May 31 (see earlier post).