Tag: rock garden

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05/03/2022 morning primroses

By the front door and garage.
Close up!
In the rock garden!
A baby Missouri fluttermill primrose.
The other two babies. Only three came up this year, last year the germination rate was higher.
While I was at the plant window, I saw the Ashy Sunflower seedlings are still alive in their humidity chamber!!
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04/26 and 04/28 assorted

The Tupperware experiment Ashy Sunflowers have a few more sprouts as of 04/26. I need to move them more carefully as the last two I tried to plant promptly shriveled up and died.
Texas mallow coming up!
The other individual of Texas mallow coming up!
Now on 04/28, an Ashy Sunflower actually sprouting from seed! I believe this was one that got stratified.
04/28 rock garden is looking good.
Penstemon grandiflorus from prairiemoon.com as bare root seems to be growing!
The Astragalus (ground plum) not looking as good again.
Finishing up the 04/28 pics, the culinary sage is blooming in the rainbow garden!
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Bare roots arrived yesterday

This is Penstemon grandiflorus which allegedly likes sand so hopefully the very dry loose dirt rock garden will keep it happy.
Ta da!
I checked my other mystery legumes and these have three leaves instead of two. So I don’t know who they are.
A second one. There are also 2-3 like this in the backyard prairie. I’ll have to see if I have any candidates on the spreadsheet. Edit: no legumes there, so it must be a volunteer. Maybe the tiny wild bean vine of some sort I saw in backyard prairie last year?
When I finished planting the obedient plant roots in the backyard (and there were two in my package!!!) along with the plant sale native flowers, I watered everything. It was getting dark, so instead of plants here is cat friend Shackleton on his leash investigating the Missouri fluttermill primrose bud smells.
He loves his leash adventures.
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This week’s events… Busy busy

Got winecup (Callirhoe involucrata) seeds in the mail from prairiemoon.com. This species gets boiling water then 30 days cold in fridge. They also kindly sent a free seed packet of Dalea purpurea which we immediately planted.
The straggler roots of Maximilian sunflower are everywhere. Paula and I lifted up this stepping stone to find more. We’re potting them up to give away. The big colony that we transferred over to edge of shade is sprouting too.
Glass gem popcorn now in the raised beds!
Judy gave me these delightful frog stepping stones for my birthday! Thanks Judy!!
The Phacelia leaf in the rock garden is very similar to the invasive geranium leaf I am holding, but isn’t as round.
In the very middle, you can see a single Datura pushing up. The other seedlings look like what I hoped was honeysuckle, but is now coming up everywhere.
This seedling is in the Two-Leaf Senna pot. We’ll see.
Human, you must rest.
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Beautiful day but some people just keep having ideas

Wes said he wanted to go to Lowe’s today and somehow one of us (all three of us?) Decided we should finally get our compost pile in shape. It was hard to access for turning over, surrounded by chicken wire that kept collapsing in.
Wes helpfully volunteered his plastic recycling bricks to be a small scale model.
I’m not sure loading the car with 40.5 cinder blocks was a great idea.
Beetle larva found during clearing the edges of the pile for the concrete cinder blocks. Decomposition is happening!
The first two layers mostly laid out. I’ll take a picture of the completed structure tomorrow.
On one side, we encountered a mysterious wire on the ground surface. We thought it might be for cable TV as it wasn’t marked by the call before you dig flags. It was above ground maybe for four feet, then both ends went deep again. To be safe, we put it underground a bit, with Wes’ plastic bricks as markers to prevent cutting it later.
We moved these giant concrete corner stones (that came with the house) from compost pile corners to become the new stand for the heated bird bath.
The salvaged iron plant basket was previously being the pedestal for the heated bird bath, and now is marking and protecting the baby Mexican plum.
While resting after the compost pile was done, I checked the rock garden. The seedling next to the pebble might maybe perhaps be the desert bluebells (Phacelia) that I seeded directly in fall????
More of the mystery plants are up. I’m suspecting blue stars.
Dropped a chip in the garden accidentally and later found it covered with Tapinoma sessile (the odorous house ant, a native species). Thanks Diane for the identification.