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11/09/2022 also before hard frosts

The copper canyon daisy I planted this spring bloomed!
It looks nice near the marigolds and Mexican sage. Only the copper canyon daisy has survived the two hard (26F for Norman overall) frosts since this was taken. The flowers wilted but its leaves are fine.
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11/12/2022 frosty

Marigolds are done. Photo by Paula.
Winecup rosettes are fine for the winter! Photo also by Paula.
We went to look at Saxon park.
It was fun.
Then we went home. Having dog thoughts in the backyard.
Catctus
Tom kha (Thai coconut chicken soup). Has garden lemongrass in it. Lemongrass is not frost hardy so Paula divided the stems to keep a few indoors over the winter, and froze a bunch of stems to use.
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06/21/2022

Gram guards the rooting juniperleaf.
There’s a new pollinator garden on campus!!
Very pleased at least one of the partridge pea seeds I sprinkled last year made it up.
Paper wasps made a nest on the debris of the invasive clematis.
A small lynx spider eats a fly
Just noticed that the long true bugs have little flat pom poms on their antennae.
A second individual. I think you have to see them from the right angle to get a good view of the antennae spots.
Dog
A helpful cat saw this wasp (maybe a spider wasp?) In the aloe and knocked the pot over.
I took it outside and shooed the friend off. No dinner in the house for it. Only cat.
I spotted a plume moth hiding on rain barrel stand.
Potatoes in straw bale getting big. Hope roots are too.
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06/10/2022 exciting friends

I wasn’t sure at first if this was a bit of debris on a bird seed sunflower stem.
But I saw it walk!! It’s a plant hopper!
I think it’s Entylia sp, possibly carinata if I understand bugguide saying there’s only one species and it’s quite variable. That’s the species shown in the new Abbott and Abbott Texas insects book.
Spittlebug adult!
The most special flower.
A beautiful white lined sphinx visiting the non native verbena.
I love the different wing angles the camera catches.
Side view.
Slime mold very happy after 3.46″ rain in the past seven days.
Blurry but you can see two seedlings: the winecup above with three leaves and the lyre leaf sage with two seed leaves. Working on my ground covers out front around the raised beds.
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06/07/2022 catching up

A Fiery Skipper on lantana on campus.
A native fleabane in the front yard.
Another Fiery Skipper on the verbena at home. I need to replace this non native moss verbena with prairie verbena but I can’t get it to germinate. 😡
A paper wasp on mealy blue sage. It looks weirdly purple here.
Using my new copy of the social wasps book, I narrowed this down to Polistes fuscatus or Polistes bellicosus, based on not much black on legs, black tipped antennae, and the yellow ring around the abdomen.
The Hedeoma is flowering!