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05/19/2023 pretty flowers, mystery solved, and babies

The first of our Ohio Spiderworts from prairie moon to bloom! (That’s a dayflower leaf under it in case that’s confusing.)
Turns out the mystery plant in with the Venus looking glass is a second kind of Venus looking glass! It just has narrower leaves. Both have milky sap.
Last year’s plant (it might have lived two years? I’m not sure)
Bigger baby
Tiny babies
More babies
Even more babies
The juniper leaf in the driveway. I have gotten it to sprout in small pots but it never stays alive. Cuttings ok too but I think it needs to be able to put down a long root. However, they sure love this one crack in the driveway.
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01/16/2023 creating a special caliche/barrens habitat in containers

Visited home last weekend and Mom and Dad kindly let us take home some calcareous soil from an already disturbed area – the “lake”.
I had planned to shovel the soil but they kindly offered the much easier method of front-end loader. 🙂 We did scrape in a few small little bluestems and other plants that I have kept!
Since the soil was heavy, I carefully moved it into a bucket I could lift, and also searched for those little plants I mentioned got scraped in.
Paula and I put careful layers of soil and water to get it compact in the planters by the front door.
Paula smoothed them nicely and added water.
You can see the plants I found in the background, sitting on the porch. This is the final picture with a dusting of cactus/succulent/citrus potting soil on top.
Shackleton helped me sort the calcareous soil/barrens specialist seeds that Mom gave me.
Here are all the seeds in place with little markers! I also put one each little bluestem in the pot, a possible Oldplainsman in each, and a mystery round-leafed green plant. We’ll see what they become!
I did the two planters symmetrical but mirror images since they are on either side of the porch. Fingers crossed we get some sprouts in the spring!
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10-29-2022 fall things continue

We got another package of bare roots from Prairie Moon. One rattlesnake master (since we have one already, maybe they will make seeds), one Camassia angusta- they only had one left), and several Ohio spiderworts.
Up front, the pineapple sage is blooming.
Two slightly different looking seedlings in the Penstemon cobea pot. I’ll keep an eye on them.
Winter greens looking good.
The purple Salvia greggii are really blooming right now.
The showy milkweed seems to be shutting down for the fall with some yellow colors.
I had to use one of the Chef’s big food grade buckets to hold all the fruit from the 17 lb watermelon from a few weeks ago when I cut it open today.
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10/16/2022 after 3/4” rain

Heath asters from TX have started blooming.
I think these may be sand lovegrass seedlings. I put them in a lot of pots with native flower seeds as a potential nurse plant.
This is the Muhlenbergia schreberi grass from Abby. It has a fun common name. I wanted to ensure I don’t lose it or mistake it for something like a skinny bermudagrass in the shade.
This is the planter of soil from Jeanne that had a big patch of annual Sedum nuttallii. There are a bunch of sedum-looking seedlings but also plenty of other interesting looking babies too!!
I seeded these cowpen daisies pretty late and didn’t know if they’d come up until next year. Instead, they seem to have noticed the declining day length and have made the world’s tiniest cowpen daisy blooms. This is normally a medium size plant!
At least one Carolina snailseed root from Abby has produced new leaves.

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09/22/2022 afternoon after work

The backyard sunflowers are quite magnificent at this point.
I don’t see any in this picture, but I saw several bumblebees up on the flowers.
The Salvia azurea are really doing well.
I have a new bunch of Indiangrass sprouting and blooming!
The little bluestem is blooming too. This clump has gotten quite happy in its second or third year now.
Jeanne, Abby, and Mom have been kindly helping me over text to confirm my accidental imports of non native and invasive King Ranch bluestem or “KR grass”. As they bloom and get identified, I have been pulling them.
I’m also continuing to work on pulling the annual, invasive Commelina communis. Unlike the native perennial dayflower, its roots are very shallow.
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09/05/2022 new dayflower!

Abby has found the perennial and native dayflower in her yard and kindly shared some. It has very different roots than the non native annual one!
Earlier in the day, Shackleton supervised while Paula watered baby cacti.
Careful pouring to wet the soil around the babies.
“What is this fuss? Who opened my curtain??”