Posted on April 16, 2023April 16, 202304/14/2023 who grew? The prairie parsley dug from TX home is about to bloom!!! It is a biennial, so I hope it likes it enough to reseed here. Bluestars make it to another year! I think they must need a second individual to seed as they haven’t spread. The little grayish friends are rabbits tobacco! I think I may have finally hit critical mass with them as a few are in the tiered cactus planter too. Speaking of needing two individuals, I bought a Salvia azurea to supplement my otherwise happy one from TX. I hope they start spreading now! One of the two potted Baptisia bracteata have emerged! So excited. I haven’t had luck with them from seed.
Posted on April 17, 2022April 17, 2022Sunday garden check up Blue flax seedlings are getting tiny new leaves. Possibly a false gaura! It looks different from the common volunteers! Two Datura wrightii seedlings! A senna hopeful. It is actually a bit rough, so maybe this is the rough leaf sunflower?? A redbud I potted up last year. The Euphorbia from Mom and Dad’s house is perking back up. Roman chamomile did well while I was gone! Lettuce and bok choy doing good. Two more fluttermill Missouri primrose seedlings up! The horse crippler cactus transplanted from Mom’s garden. I’ve put a drip on the ground plum (actually a legume) since yesterday, as it seems to be having a rough transplant. This is also into the rock garden. In the rainbow garden, a mystery seedling. Maybe two leaf senna??? Butterfly milkweed is coming up in rainbow garden. Maybe another butterfly milkweed? It’s in the right place. A single cilantro seedling. The only one in the yard. In that crack. A winecup from two years ago. Purple prairie clover from two years ago. Maybe Liatris leaves? It’s in the right spot. Another mystery seedling. Tall vervain is perking up a bit. Ten petal anemone are perking up too! Greeneyes getting bigger! My blue stars are blooming! Salvia azurea leaves.
Posted on April 11, 2022Marigold 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.
Posted on April 3, 2022April 3, 2022Growth ideas I think this is Carolina Snailseed, one of the volunteers that was here already. This legume is under the yaupon Holly by the dining room window. I think it could be either a partridge pea or an Illinois bundleflower. The red speckled seedlings are taking shape. I browsed through seedsource.com’s catalog and the leaf shape suggests it might be my prairie verbena!! I really hope so. Their pictures don’t show the red speckles, but we’ll see as they grow. A smaller one. You can see the anise hyssop (Agastache sp) to the left and below; they have spade shaped cotyledons. Near the Liatris I transplanted from home, there are two mystery plants. I’m thinking potentially fleabane or puccoon?? The second one of same thing. The mystery sprouts do appear to be my bluestars. Abby mentioned they have milky sap.
Posted on March 26, 2022March 26, 2022Beautiful 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.
Posted on March 25, 2022April 3, 2022Home to excitement The tiny bluets in front yard are blooming wildly! I found this rock in the driveway. A tiny seedling of Penstemon cobea!!!! Two blue flax seedlings!! This is a mystery sprout from yesterday in backyard prairie. Looks exciting. Edit 2022/04/03: this is bluestars.
Posted on April 12, 2021April 12, 2021Today’s developments Bluestars have been blooming for several days now in the backyard. A yellow iris blooming! This is one from Mom. Maybe a baby Baptisia? Or just a clover… We’ll find out soon enough!