New resident finds her friends

As promised to the neighbor who's giving the party out there next week, I cleared the last of the dead foliage outside my section of the fence to leave a nice green vista of groundcover, and brought in the Japanese maple from next door to live on my patio. It was dug for me and set in earth in a pot, very handy.  So I only had to dig once.

This also entailed digging up groundcover, with a network of tough roots, a bunch of  which I planted where the tree had been, so it's now all green out there, no gaping hole to be seen.

And settled the new visitor in to get acquainted with her friends, after a long, nearly seven foot, journey from her roots. Very pleased about this, and hopeful that she will do fine over the winter, since this is a good time to transplant.  She's a sturdy customer, having been amateurishly lopped more than once and still survived. And she will give me red leaves for natural dyes, as well as an interesting color to look at.

In the course of these events, a branch was broken off, so it's now in an arrangement with a broken off sedum and the cicada lying on a bottom sedum leaf, forming a kind of rescue still life.  

As I wrote that, a dusky swallowtail butterfly zigged past my window, reminding me to tell you that the bigger caterpillars on the parsley have now departed, and there are new babies out there with bits of egg clinging.  So with any luck we'll have a good population of duskies around here next year.

 You really have to plan ahead to garden here in this weather and at this age.  I have a limited time during which my back and arms say I can dig and lug and carry, and the hot weather together with mosquitoes renders that even more pointed, so you have to know what to do before you get out there. No time to lean on your spade and think.  And since the dead foliage I was cleaning out seems to be the summer resort of the mosquito, I picked up about a dozen bites before I knew it.  All summer I've been free of bites, and now they're coming in with a final surge.

But the gardening is done for now, until the Rose of Sharon arrives quite soon and I have to start thinking and digging again..very smug here, looking out.  I can see the little maple tree from the sofa in the living room, and through the passthrough from the kitchen, too. I always think of views from the house when I plant because I look out a lot while I'm thinking, working, cooking, doing anything really.  I think I'm part cat, so nosy.