Ice Bloom

Echinacea blooms covered in ice during last week's freezing drizzle.  We are very laid back gardeners (lazy?).  Dead-heading we never do, and seldom get around to cleaning up a bed after the season is over.  Dried seeds feed the birds.  They also usually reseed and/or spread the flowering plants.

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Ice Bloom

Silver-spotted Skipper (Epargyreus clarus)

Silver-Spotted Skipper on Purple Coneflower

Both butterfly and the coneflower are past their prime, but still worthy of a few pixels, I think.


According to BugGuide,  Silver-Spotted Skippers range throughout southern Canada and most of the continental United States except the Great Basin and west Texas; northern Mexico.


Caterpillar Hosts: Many woody legumes including black locust (Robinia pseudacacia), honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) and false indigo (Amorpha species).


More information and photos are also available from Butterflies and Moths of North America.

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Silver-spotted Skipper (Epargyreus clarus)

Echinacea and Ice

 

                                                                                 Photo by Jo

Everything -- including the purple cone flowers that hadn't been deadheaded -- picked up a thin coating of ice and/or freezing fog over the past couple of days. Most of the wintry mix fell as sleet, so the trees and power lines did not get badly weighted down with ice. We would not have been able to navigate our road out, though.

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Echinacea and Ice

Tuesday Ice

We received just a little taste of freezing rain Tuesday morning. A new cold front moved through with rain ahead of it. Rain and below freezing temperatures overlapped for only an hour or so -- and , fortunately, the ground was still warm enough that no ice formed there. Only objects up off the ground received a thin coating of ice.

If the forecast is correct, we may not be so lucky later in the week. Another blast of Arctic air is headed our way. NOAA says freezing rain is supposed to start falling Thursday night and continue through early Saturday. I hope they're wrong. It's hard to imagine keeping electrical power with that much freezing rain. We'll see.

Tuesday Ice