05/26/2023 Friday assortment

Briar enjoys laying in the prairie among the primroses and englemann daisies.
Some of the grass in the new prairie (we’re calling it Leon’s prairie since it’s by Leon’s blackberry bushes) has turned out to be the native wild rye we seeded! Yay!
Yellow Coreopsis looking bright with the tiny purple Verbena halei and the starry pink widow’s cross sedum!
Shackleton had some thoughts.
Briar says “walkies please??” (We did go walkies.)
The showy evening primroses are looking lovely with their pale pink between the purple winecups in the back and the magenta Salvia greggii in the front. We didn’t even plant them on purpose, they were just in the soil Paula brought from the backyard berm.
Coreopsis provides a nice yellow contrast at the end of the Salvia greggii row.
More seedling winecups are coming up in the newer soil where we put seeds.
Gram says it’s hard to use a dichotomous key for plant identification when the only numbers you know are “hello?” And “Doggie”.
Shackleton somehow turned the pages and now says “I leave the identification as a trivial exercise for the reader.”
We planted one Winecup in a tall skinny planter. It has bloomed now.

05/02/2023 leash walk and blooming

Hidden dog among englemann daisies and showy evening primroses.
Englemann daisy close up.
The Solomon’s seals by the dining room window are doing well, as are their colleagues around the yard.

07/03/2022 daisies

Briar had minor surgery last Monday and is recovering well, but still needs her safety donut to not lick her stitches. She continues to enjoy lounging on her patch of buffalograss and squishing the Englemann daisies.

05/17/2022 I meant to plant more beans but I got distracted looking around

A new kind of plant in the plant window.
Widow sedum in full bloom with a background of Englemann daisies.
A second baby two leaf senna is coming up in a container!! This one is in yard soil instead of potting soil. Very excited.
Briar lounges on the buffalo grass with the widow sedums to her left and Englemann daisies behind her.
Going through the house to go see front yard, I glimpse the new plant. Hi Shacks!
Rainbow garden orange is considering blooming (butterfly milkweed).
Fluttermill Missouri primrose is living up to its name with new seedpods produced!
A Venus looking glass volunteered in the strawberry bed! I love these. Apparently they’re annuals.
This tiny native cucurbit vine appears every year and I adore it.

04/30/2022 assorted

Yarrow from home about to bloom.
Linum rigidum (yellow flax) from home is blooming! It’s an annual, but I’m hoping it will go to seed.
The mailbox irises are varied this year!
Closeup of purple.
Closeup of pink.
This englemann daisy has lost a few petals!
The two leaf senna is growing a second pair of leaves!!
Two baby flax are just starting their adult leaves.
The false gaura is doing fine but there was also this very nice fly on its label.
Gulf coast penstemon from the NPSOT plant sale is blooming!

Checking up on fall garden intervention

Faithful blog readers may recall a Garden Intervention last fall. Today we delivered a few more plants (coral honeysuckle and Mexican plum) and checked up on the previous plantings. Here’s one of the showy evening primrose!
Doesn’t have the red spots but I think this is the other showy evening primrose. It’s in the right spot.
Several patches of Maximilian sunflower are doing great.
An interesting mystery plant I haven’t seen in my yard. Please comment if you know what it might be!
Possibly a baby Rudbeckia from the seed mixes that the resident humans have tried?
We made a second visit later in the winter to plant more sunflowers, plus goldenrod and Englemann daisies from Abby. Here’s the goldenrod!
All the Englemann daisies we planted had leaves.
Thank goodness the Doggie is home again!!

Dixon Water Foundation morning

Bladderpod with small native bee
For someone who is probably growing this fellow’s relative, I sure have a hard time identifying cacti. I believe it’s Coryphantha sulcata based on having one central spine per areole. Here’s my baby.
Mom looks at photos she is taking.
Mom takes more photos.
It’s a magnificent creek!
Bubbles on moss.
Neat rocks the creek goes through.
A mournful thyris moth. We saw more in redbud flowers. I think it may have been getting water here, because if you zoom in you can see its proboscis out.
A cricket frog!
Another big view. You can see a redbud in the woods.
Englemann daisies growing above the creek! They’re much smaller than the ones in my garden. Presumably less water.
A white bush honeysuckle (a native one, Lonicera albiflora) branches over the creek.
This is probably a hawthorn shrub. Thanks to Abby for the suggestion that helped me look it up! There seem to be a lot of very similar species.
Here’s the probably-hawthorn trunk.
This seems familiar.
Ah ha!  A Missouri fluttermill primrose!  Note the red speckled and sort of square long flower bud.
An old seed pod at the base of the primrose plant. The leaves are much less red than the ones in my garden.
Ceanothus herbaceus, redroot or New Jersey tea.
Here are the leaves. I am growing its relative C. americanus (also called New Jersey tea) in my garden, from seeds bought from prairiemoon.com.
Blue flax!  It’s probably Linum pratense, which is an annual.  Apparently it does intergrade with the perennial Linum lewisii which is what I planted in my yard.
This flax hasn’t bloomed but you can see the leaves are very like the L. lewsii ones in my yard.
Another Englemann daisy demonstrates how adaptable this species is, growing up on the barrens away from the creek.
Just to the left, just below the middle of this picture is another fluttermill.
Cymopterus, a very early blooming wildflower, starts to go to seed.
I think this must be a much younger fluttermill Missouri primrose that has already bloomed.
This is prairie burnet.  I’d never noticed it before.  Thanks to Abby for the identification!
Yellow star grass (not actually a grass).
Another fluttermill primrose, this time in a big beautiful mound.
The face of abandonment.
Another dog who didn’t get to go.

Holiday Sunday

An outdoor dinner. Garden basil and oregano.
Moved the chives and garlic chives that Judy gave me last year. Maybe they’ll like this spot better.
Uzbek golden, little, and New Kuroda carrots.
Gram helps me get seeds out.
Fall seeds planted of cabbage, mizuna, greens, and cauliflower. Tomatoes and peppers for overwintering. And a few pots of Roman chamomile for the front yard ground cover.
This is where I shall attempt peppers and tomatoes over the winter.
This goldenrod was already here and is doing very nicely.
A giant 1″+ horsefly on a backyard window sill.
Never going outside again.
I lied. Outside again. Chiltepin peppers.
Frostweed doing alright after it died back earlier in summer.
A little spider got this Eastern Tailed-Blue on the englemann daisy.
Texas mallow blooming!
The non native clematis. I’ll clean it out over the winter.
Okra flower
A bumblebee on the okra!