Michelle Long
@dignthegarden
I love UT Sports - Go VOLS! Plus, Nature, hiking, paddling, gardening.
Bumbles on Tithonia, Mexican Sunflower. Not a native plant. Bees and butterflies love it and it is fairly well behaved. Doesn’t reseed too freely in my garden.
This guy - my velcro buddy. Never more than a foot away from me. #floofer
Busiest spot in the yarden. Pycnanthemum muticum, or Clustered Mountain Mint Bees, beetles, wasps, and flies. No bumbles during this filming, but they love it too. #bees #nativeplants
Welp. The critters have struck again. I reckon it’s the groundhogs. 2 Butternuts - gone 3 Honeynuts - gone Pumpkin - chewed up. This puppy was a 20 lb pumpkin.
Native bumbles 🐝 love the Giant Hyssop, Agastache urticifolia. Birdsong and an airplane in the background. #nativeplants #bees #birdsong #bloomscrolling
Check out the Fairy Tale Pumpkins. Next year, this is the only pumpkin I’m planting. No mildew (yet), no Squash Vine Borer issues. This is a great pumpkin for all types of cooking. Especially for pies. #pumpkins #veggiegardening
So many 🍅 tomatoes…… Time for Tomato Pie, Bruschetta, BLTs, and giving away to friends and neighbors. My plants got so huge and laden with tomatoes that that they fell over - even with stakes and cages. Next year- heavier stakes and plant further apart. #maters #veggiegardening
Sweat bees 🐝 on False Sunflower, Heliopsis helianthoides As always, bonus birdsong. #nativeplants #nativebees #bloomscrolling #pollinatorgarden
Common Eastern Bumblebee, Bombus Impatiens 🐝 on Giant Hyssop, Agastche urticifolia. They love this plant. The birdsong is an added bonus. #nativeplants #nativebees #bumbles #pollinatorgarden #bloomscrolling
I’ll be camped here with the Floofer for the 4th. He’s been medicated and I’ll stay with him through the barrage of BOOMS! we’re about to experience. Be better, America.
The heat has warped the top water tray. It was identical to the one below.
It is hotter than seven hells outside today, as it has been all week. We’ve got 3 more days of this high heat and humidity. Geez. The water bowl was full this morning. Time to get out the hose.
It was noisy in the yard this morning with all the June Bugs, Cotinis nitida, flying around. They can be quite startling when they buzz ya. #nativecritters #easttennessee #garden
Tree Frog (don’t know what kind) on Giant Hyssop - Agastache urticifolia. I’ve never seen one down in the garden before. Though, I do hear them in the trees on the regular. Cute, little tiny bugger, little bigger than an inch. #nativeplants #nativecritters #amphibians
Feather-legged fly in the garden. Trichopoda pennipes. #gardening #critters
Good morning from the garden- where I’d rather be than work. Bees, birdsong…..and chickens. #gardens #nativeplants #pollinatorgarden
Really don’t want to work today. Just wanna stay home and watch the bees 🐝 and the birds 🐦⬛ in the garden.
Caught some cool hummer pics over the weekend. #hummingbirds #nativeplants #pollinatorgarden
It is a fabulous squash to grow. I grew it on cattle panel arches the past two summers. Here’s one from last year and growing on the trellis the year before. It’s also called Rampicante. It’s an Italian squash, I think.
Bumbles love Partridge Pea, Chamaecrista fasciculata. Early mornings, it’s noisy with buzzing wherever there is a Partridge Pea. There are lots of them. These babies are prolific self-seeders in my yarden. #pollinators #pollinatorgarden #nativeplants #bloomscrolling
A case of mislabeled seeds. Supposed to be lemon squash. It’s Tromboncino. 🤷♀️ #veggiegarden
The hummingbirds were out visiting the Coral Honeysuckle last night. #nativeplants #hummingbirds #pollinatorgarden
Photos from June 2022, May 2023, June 2026 It sure has been a trip transforming this into a more welcoming space for native plants, pollinators, birds,and critters #nativeplants #pollinatorgarden
The Narrow (slender) Leafed Mountain Mint is also a pollinator magnet. I get Spider Wasps on these too.
Went on a little paddle today. This is the Holston River where it meets the French Broad and turns into the Tennessee River. There’s an Osprey nest on the train trestle.
