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05/25/2023 Thursday shenanigans and winecup looking

On the left is this year’s soil to bring the level up. To the right is last year’s winecups!
A baby two leaf senna in one of the caliche planters!
The guard flamingo is keeping a careful eye on Briar. Gotta keep her from squishing the Oklahoma penstemon.
Every night Gram wants to go past Briar in the hall. Every night she waits for her chance to slobber him. This only happens at night. It is now a ritual. She smiles. As soon as he attempts it and she slobbers him, then they saunter into the room together. Photos by Paula.

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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.
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05/27/2023 front yard

The rainbow garden is almost there.
The winecups have gotten MASSIVE. I have never seen such mammoth winecup leaves in the wild.
A typical winecup with regular sized leaves. We saw this one today on our afternoon walk, at Saxon Park.
A view panning over to see the Salvia greggii and coreopsis too. All the white flowers in the raised beds are cilantro. If you’ve been looking at our iNaturalist feed, the cilantro flowers are hopping with insect activity.
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05/16/2023 promising candidates

This seedling is not something I recognize so I’m hoping it could be Bluehearts from Mom. I left other volunteer plants in as that species is hemiparasitic and does better with a host.
Possibly a silverleaf nightshade seedling!
Another possible silverleaf! Looks a lot like its congeneric cousin tomatoes’ babies.
Another baby Arkansas yucca!!! This one is in a bigger pot so hopefully we can keep it watered enough.
Two fern acacia seedlings from last fall came up!!
The winecups are really taking off!! Super pleased.
This adorable sweat bee is the first visitor I’ve seen so far to our Penstemon grandiflorus.
New mystery in the prairie!
Briar being innocent
Guard flamingo
One of our two plastic flamingos has been retired due to its new hobby of breeding mosquitoes. The remaining one has been reassigned to guard two Oklahoma penstemon that the dog keeps laying on.
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05/04/2023 big long soaking rain

We got 2.75” in less than 24 hours!
Missouri Fluttermill primrose baby survived pouring rain even under the rain barrel!
Left seedling is Winecup and upper right seedling is Astragalus crassicarpus!
Two possible yuccas in the green section.
Not a milkweed
Not a milkweed?
Maybe a milkweed
Known milkweed (probably viridiflora)
The skinny adult leaves of known milkweed. New book The Gardener’s Guide to Prairie Plants by Diboll and Cox mentions many milkweeds first adult leaves are skinny even if the eventual adult leaves are broad. Either that or I got the species wrong.
One of two Blackfoot daisy survived earwigs and is now growing flower buds and a few new leaves!
Perennial coreopsis begins!
Briar was pretty miffed it rained HARD most of the day. So before our walk she curled up in disgust right on my big Liatris mucronata from home. Thanks.

The Mexican Sage from Judy is up!
A sedge?
Partridge pea
Oldplainsman
Mystery
Caliche planter babies
The tomatoes have gotten a bit sunburnt from past rain with sunlight after, so this time I flicked water off and put them in a less intensely sunny spot. Trying to get them hardened off for planting.
Like Briar, Shacks was disappointed by rain and not being out. Paula brought him some favorite juicy grass and he loved it.
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11/16/2022 a previous frost

Away from the shelter of the oak tree, lots of plants are getting frost, including the wine cups we grew from seed and planted last spring.
The rosettes will stay green all winter, I believe. They show off the frost beautifully as it avoids the veins, creating a pattern of frost with greener veins.
The frost hasn’t killed the apple leaves yet either.
Another apple tree with light frost.
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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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06/10/2022 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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06/08/2022 rainy day

A few last baby winecups sprouting long after their big relatives.
Nightshade can flower even in a tiny pot!
So much rain.
Stubby variety okra is up!