Well, this Optimistic Gardener is a little jaded this evening, having gotten an annoying letter from our Homeowner’s Association. Apparently, in this year after the “Big Drought,” in the days following big rain storms, and in a period of exorbitantly high gas prices, managers from our neighborhood’s Homeowner’s Association are driving around to check out the state of weeds in suburbia. 

Forget that it’s fairly insulting to be the object of the allusion that all that is wrong with your entire neighborhood is your two-week overgrown garden … these “managers” that we’re paying are using the funds we paid to keep up the tennis courts and (I guess) keep our neighbors on the same short leash as us are burning through fossil fuels and the gas line item, and increasing the office supply and postage budgets. 

As a gardener, my family practices rainwater-only gardening, because we don’t want to add any treatment

I was going to write about the lovely Egyptian Verbena blooming in my front gardens, which I transplanted from my mother-in-law’s garden in Durham … but when I was looking at my photos, I realized I had a great shot of a butterfly. So I decided to investigate. 

I’m no expert—I can identify a yellow monarch with the best of you—but I think I may have found an anomaly and was hoping for a little input from my fellow gardeners. 

Can you identify the butterfly in the image?

I went to Butterflies and Moths of North America, a great site that has every butterfly and moth referenced and cross-referenced and Gantt charted easily enough that even I could understand how to search and discover. 

To my inexpert eye, it looks like I’ve got a

I was doing a little research on my canna lilies and ran across a great Planting Guide description for them: If wearing bright colors makes you uncomfortable, cannas may not be for you. If, however, you like mixing bright pink tops with teal bottoms, these plants are going to provide many seasons of fun. 

Yep, it's true. The cannas in my garden are dayglow colors, but I still love them ... the blooms, that is. The stalks and overgrown leaves I could take or leave, but the blooms are definitely lovely enough to lay claim to every year. 

Canna lilies have a bit of a diva in them. They like well-drained soil, sunny spots and plenty of water. Well, what plant doesn't, eh? 

According to Wikipedia, Most Canna cultivars have been developed in temperate climates and are easy to grow in most countries

Being a southerner through and through has some built in expectations. We prefer grits to cream of wheat; we say yes ma'am and yes sir; our menfolk open the doors for us; and we can spot a ripe peach in every bunch.

For the first time, over the weekend, I bought something called a "donut peach," and was the hit of our friends and family at our Summerfest picnic. They were so good, in fact, that I went back and bought a couple more on Sunday, and had to go again today over lunch. They're slightly more pricey than the plain ol' round varieties, but they're worth it. Good fruit goes fast at our house.

At Harris Teeter and at Whole Foods the signage reads the same: donut peach, yet when I looked them up online

There is nothing more disgusting than walking into an invisible spider web in the mornings while walking the dog. I goose-step down the sidewalk with hopes that my hand (more like the stick extending my reach) will catch them before the wispy, silken spun webs hit me in the face and throw me onto the ground in embarrassing convulsions and gagging sounds.

But as much as I can't stand spiders, they do offer the world a great service ... even to us bug-hating gardeners. The mosquitoes this year haven't been as abundant in my garden, but the ones swooping around are like small bats (and this bat-mosquito population hasn't even pretended to be thrown off by the lavender that grows abundantly in my garden). The aphids on my gardenias, yet again, are ignoring the threatening glares from the ladybugs and have rendered us incapable of cutting blooms to bring inside. And swarms of Japanese beetles have taken over my mother's roses.

So, I did a little research to find out how I could