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.

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!

Marigold for Mom and Dad

A few marigolds are sprouting in Mom and Dad’s container garden.
Went for after-dinner walk and Gracie was feeling alright!
A bumblebee on Salvia greggii.
Blue stars are blooming!
These bluestars haven’t opened yet. This garden patch was transplanted from a patch up our hill a long time ago, to Mom and Dad’s garden. This is where mine in Norman are from.

Raising the raised beds

The metal edging around the raised veggie beds is a bit of a tripping hazard, so we are going to gradually fill it in with dirt. I am also going to plant ground covers to slowly crowd out anything that needs weeding or mowing. Thank you Dad for the excellent supply of big cardboard pieces.
One corner of dirt. The dirt came from the Chef and Paula’s gate construction over behind the garage. It needed levelling. I have a bunch of baby Roman chamomile to plant here as ground cover.

Thinking of summer yesterday

Tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos, and chard and roman chamomile in all the rest. We need a lot of chamomile starts as I want to use it as a ground cover around the vegetable raised beds.
Sitting on the saffron leaves.
Gram’s not sure about outside leash time but he’s getting more confident.
He always perks up and feels safer when big sister comes by to check on him.
“Hello big sister”
Maybe he could do without getting groomed. She nibbles him.

Moving the Max

Big empty hole in the prairie patch where we dug up the Maximilian sunflowers.
We brought a single stalk here from our old house and now it’s a massive 2×3′ ish patch.
Broader view. Put more cardboard down to kill Bermuda.
Briar just sat here while plant stalks went everywhere.
Such dignity.
Found a lost loofah in the front yard afterwards.

Garden clean up

Another Peruvian ground cherry finally ripened!! They seem to be a late year fruit. I hope it’s just the plants are big enough and not a day length sensitivity.
A standard ground cherry. Paula pointed out the lovely net effect on the husk. We found several like it.
True bugs!!!! There were dozens, grumpy we disturbed them. We put the leaves back after we got the ground cherries we were there for. Left some for them and next year’s seeding too.
The Chef was busy too.

Last bits of vacation last week

Common persimmon tree. A native with edible fruit! Yum! I will try to sprout some.
Yum. Gracie likes to eat fallen ripe persimmons.
Mom served blackberry cobbler with homemade no churn ice cream too.
A different day: leftover juice and berries from the cobbler with shortbread and whipping cream.
Judy gave me this Mexican sage which Paula helped me plant as soon as I got home last Saturday.
Good vacation but time to hit the road!
Reunited!!!! I am informed the cat was profoundly lonesome, clingy, and annoying in the absence of his big sister.