Category: FRIENDS

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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.
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Afternoon walkies

Here at Camp Arthritis we’re taking lots of slow short walks. Perfect to admire the resident plants! This is a blackberry in the old, less productive patch. These plants keep their leaves over the winter. They turn a dark purple.
The new blackberry patch is expanding rapidly. These plants lose all their leaves in the winter. This patch is where our yard ones were dug.
A trailing winecup leaf (Callirhoe involucrata). I have seeds for this in cold stratification in the fridge right now.
A true armyworm moth is having a very bad day. Its mate appears to have died and is stuck to it. I guess really both of them are having a bad day.
Tiny tiny tiny ants. Diane says probably Monomorium sp. Thanks Diane!!
Cute little new leaves on a post oak!
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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.
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Oops, somehow I got more plants??

Mom told me that the Native Plant Society was having their spring sale on Saturday… So of course we had to go. I got lots of understory trees and shade ground covers, plus a few other things. More on this once I get home and plant them next weekend.
On Saturday evening, we went ahead and put Mom’s tomatoes in the ground. I think our yogurt containers may be part of why the seedlings have been struggling. The knife “slices” in the bottom don’t leak well enough I think; each one was still very wet in the soil at the bottom. In the future I think we’d better drill holes.
Doggies always alert. (From today, Sunday.)
This chickadee in a nest box refuses to move. The eggs, visible in a previous check, are on Mom’s blog.
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Vacation! Days 1 and 2

Day 1: arrival

Wow!!! Gracie!!!!!
A male Black-chinned Hummingbird. Mom says they arrived recently.
Greeneyes! A nice big rosette to compare to my baby greeneyes in the garden. Mom says the crenate leaf edge is pretty distinctive.
It was over 90°F. Warm for fluffy.

Day 2: Wednesday.

This cluster of tulips is probably nearly 30 years old. Not bad for an “replant this every year” bulb.
Lots of frogs singing at night!
A fringed puccoon blooming. After looking at the veins and the curled under edge, I think my mystery plants in yard are not puccoon.
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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.
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Two steps forward, two steps back??

Saturday night (yesterday) planting more tomato and pepper seeds of varieties that haven’t sprouted well or I accidentally killed of sunscald (see end of post).
Yesterday, Mom and Dad sent me this cute little indoor fern friend and Paula added the little frog clip on top!
His Doggie outside yesterday, Gram had to curl tragically on her rope toy.
Couscous, venison roast, and shakshuka with the first indoor garden tomato (dwarf Audrey’s Love).
The cover radishes (Sparkler variety bought in bulk from Ellison’s feed store) have begun sprouting and the transplanted Viola bicolor aren’t dead yet. I just have to hope they will bloom and seed.
More of the radishes. The goal here is growing enough stuff to keep plants I don’t want out until I can get a ground cover started. (Friday)
The Mexican plum from home is alive! (Friday)
Thursday night, Wes wanted to look at things in yard with our new blacklight.
These (already hatched) eggs on the rock outside glow!
The porch loofahs are very welcoming.
Found more googly eyes just randomly in the raised beds.
While we were outside I examined the angry tomato seedlings.
I have determined that going from inside the house to the front porch every day is giving them sun scald, as the leaves are turning white but newer growth is a nice healthy green. So for now I’m putting them in the less intense backyard and that seems to be helping the survivors.
Same thing happening here, green new leaves with white, dying burnt leaves.
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No vampires

Paula noticed more spider mites on the indoor peppers so we did garlic spray on them. I’ve also recently added a sprinkle more fertilizer to the pots since the leaves are yellowing. Hopefully this helps.
Then we decided to garlic spray the remaining tomato plant. Its fruit still seems to be growing but all the leaves on top are just drying up, even with more consistent watering. However, it’s growing new stems from the base. Not sure what the deal is.
In the backyard, Viola bicolor have flower buds.
A ground bee or wasp has a nice burrow near the potential greeneyes seedlings.
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Tiny greenhouse

A little centipede in the garden dirt. Hopefully it’s an earwig predator.
Hoops in!
Seeds planted, cover on! We put lots of extra and smelly plants like cilantro and parsley among the carrots and bok choy and beets in hopes of earwig distraction.
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Low 19 F forecast tonight

Leaves to insulate the baby bok choy
Leaves to insulate the baby lettuce
The screen (made to keep rabbits out) holds the leaves in, in case there is wind.
Apparently one should blanch small round fruit before attempting to make raisins. Regular ground cherries.
A chironomid fly adult chilling near garage door.
Some sort of cutworm, on collard greens, the previous night. I threw it out in yard where hopefully the mockingbird will find it.
I touched another dog!
The Chef successfully made honey mead! We tried it. Was good. He says it needs to age now.
Crabapple jelly central.
Hanging out in his haunted mansion.