Today Melanie Folk is sharing photos from her garden in southern Georgia.
Melanie has a yard full of dragonflies and loves to capture them up close to see the beauty of their wings. Dragonflies have a voracious appetite for mosquitoes, so they are always a welcome visitor to any garden.
Another welcome visitor, a green tree frog, is actually Georgia’s state amphibian. Green tree frogs, too, have a great appetite for insect pests. The best way to encourage garden visitors like these is to avoid using insecticides and to provide a variety of habitats—including water—in your garden.
Sunflowers are a great source of pollen and nectar for many pollinating insects. If you really want to maximize their benefit to bees, avoid varieties that are described as “pollenless.” The pollenless sunflowers are popular as cut flowers, as they don’t spill messy pollen on the table, but the old-fashioned varieties with abundant pollen provide more food for your local wildlife, such as the bumblebees pictured here.
The green anole is a small lizard that is native to the southeastern corner of North America. This one is in the process of molting, shedding an old layer of skin as it grows.
A spectacular camellia bloom (Camellia japonica, Zones 7–10). Camellias are the winter and early spring queens of Southern gardens, and their flowers come in a wide range of forms and shapes. This flower, with layer upon layer of precisely arranged petals, is called a formal double.
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Comments
I don't know if this makes me a weirdo but my favorite picture of this group is that of the molting lizard. I did not know that such a phenomenon takes place and your photo really captured it perfectly...thanks for adding to my education!
Just like snakes, lizards have to shed their skin periodically as they grow. Anoles often eat their shed skins to recapture the nutrients. Waste not, want not!
I love dragonflies! Wonderful pic.
Tree frogs rock! I've not see one such a bright green color - he almost looks like he's a piece of garden art!- but we have many of the camouflaged greyish color that looks like tree bark. Beautiful closeups of your garden!
Wonderful photos. I love the teal around the anole's eye. Built in eye-liner. The dragonfly sitting on the iris petal is a great shot. I like how you can see the pale pink mint flowers through the wing.
Your southern garden creatures are so different from Pittsburgh zone 6b! It was fun seeing the creatures from another part of the USA. I also thought the molting lizard so camouflaged with the matching green was a great photo. Nice to learn about the Sun Flowers and choosing those with pollen. Love the great close up photos, but I'd like to see more photos of your garden sometime soon, hope you submit again!
Wonderful photographs and that peony is spectacular! Here in NC, we have the grey tree frogs and I have one who lives behind a decorative metal sun on my back porch. He often sings and will even respond when I trill to him. Also have lots of dragonflies, bees, butterflies, moths, anoles and blue tailed skinks. Can't understand people who don't share our enthusiasm for these wonderful creatures! To be honest, my love for little critters doesn't extend to mosquitoes and Japanese beetles though! : )
Aahhhh ! A fellow Georgian ! I have those cute green frogs too. Have seen them with a racing stripe. Are the anoles what I ‘ve been calling geckos ? Glad to finally know their real name. Gorgeous pictures- you must have a fabulous camera. Glad you shared !
amazing
Wonderful photos! I especially love the color coordination of the yellow bumblebees nestled into the sunflower and the green frog complementing the green in the pink daylily.
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