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11/18/2023 green section

The heavy duty plastic garden cart with three full planters in it. Long afternoon shadows on driveway.
We used our trusty garden cart to bring the green section plants from the backyard as well as the verbenas.
The lovegrass had long roots where they hit the side of the pot and went down. The exposed roots aren’t buried again yet.
The sand lovegrass had a beautiful root system!
Two young milkweeds with a lot of soil gone from the rest of pot being planted. My gloved hand is adjacent to the roots to highlight the swollen taproot part.
The green milkweeds had very long root systems. These just sprouted this spring. I think I got 3-6 from this pot into the ground. Not all put up leaves again with the fall rain so it’s hard to be sure.
Big pale rocks frame the newly planted corner in green section of rainbow garden.
Everyone tucked in snugly. I moved the spikemoss from here to the rock garden as the spotted euphorbia keeps almost covering it here.
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11/18/2023 prairie verbena yay!

The deeply incised leaves of prairie verbena (plus some hitchhiking oxalis) against dark soil. I’m pointing at it with a gray and textured glove.
I think the seed from home being fresh helped, as one came up very quickly this summer. All of these happened after we bought two plants at the native plant festival haha.
I’m pointed my gloved finger at a little verbena seedling nested among bigger green leaves with many veins.
This verbena seed took almost a year I think to come up, and now two little seedlings are up too. So the many of them just want to take their own time. Its leaves are different. More like I expected for Verbena halei but I had it labeled where I thought it was prairie. We shall find out!
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11/05/2023 saffron harvest

I’m holding a small clear quilted jam jar filled with 24 bright red threads of saffron
Today we found there were eight flowers in the backyard saffron, which at three threads each gave us 24 saffron threads! Now they sit in a jar in the plant window, with a loose lid to protect from cat ideas. This lets them dry out a bit before they join the spice cabinet. Very few bulbs are blooming so far, which I suspect is because I divided them extensively this spring. Probably next year we’ll have a lot!
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11/05/2023 late but clearing for garlic

A series of seven raised beds edged by corrugated stainless steel and connected by three beige plastic trellises. A pile of holly branches in front, and some beds still having tomato cages covered in frost killed cowpea vines. One bed has hoops and plastic over it.
I got probably a total of three beds cleared (two halves and two wholes) for putting our garlic back in. I also moved some yaupon branches into the city compost bins (saving some to try making tea). I put a lot of cowpea seeds behind the yaupon holly in hopes that they’ll take over there next year. The rest of vine waste I set over south of the fourth bed to try to smother the invasive sedges and bermudagrass that keeps creeping in since we haven’t put ground covers there yet. We haven’t got the garlic in yet. But closer. Next year not letting cowpeas bury the raised beds.
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10/15/2023 thistle rosettes in the wild

A fingertip sized baby thistle!
Bigger thistle baby!
Another thistle rosette
They apparently overwinter this way
This rosette I’m not sure if it’s texanum or undulatum. I haven’t seen any undulatum seeds up yet in my pots.
This is the same individual as to the left, showing the white closely hairy underside of the thistle leaves.
These five thistle rosettes are probably mostly or all texanum, based on that only my texanum seeds have germinated into similar size rosettes. These are all at my parents’ house, where I got the seeds. Yay!
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10/30/2023 last peppers

The last peppers of the season piled on the gray ceramic kitchen table. There are long curly skinny yellow corbaci, big red bell, green bells, and brown-purple bells, and two little triangular apple peppers.
Before the hard freeze I cut down all the pepper plants (plus a few stray and unfortunately sized okra) and put them in the garage. The next day when I had time, I sorted and weighed them. we got a good last bunch of all our pepper varieties for this year! Paula notes of the sweet peppers, the apple peppers were sweetest when both red and green. The California wonder bell and chocolate bell were both more bitter when young/green. The Chef likes the thin and easy to cut corbaci peppers.
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11/04/2023 saffron season

A big fuzzy bumblebee visits the purple streaked petals and yellow and red center of a saffron flower.
The original saffron patch after being divided this spring has three plants big enough to flower! A bumblebee was visiting one!
A cluster of several saffron plants with two buds and one open flower
I didn’t divide this patch very well oops.
I hold a single saffron plant with two green leaves coming out of the ground with a slight pale sheath around the base near the soil
In the front yard, I had planted three patches the last two seasons. So far only one is up and no visible flowers. someone else here near Norman had several at this stage. I think the smaller bulbs don’t flower the first season and need to grow more.
Half a dozen saffron plants with long thin green leaves in a clay pot, from above. The middle plant has a fully open flower.
Judy reports one flower from her bulbs planted in the spring after the division! Hers are in a pot.