Tag: Desert Bluebells

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06/12/2022 yard

Maybe Phacelia?
I found at least four leaves full of my amazing tree hopper friends.
Each leaf had a different set of adults or immatures.
Adults get taken care of too.
Babies!!!
The leaf bends where the treehopper eggs were.
Lace bug
Frogfruit east of patio is doing well. Just moved a piece there this spring.
Nice true bug
Dog flower highly mobile.
Monarda future flower bud??
Baptisia and okra
Rudbeckia maxima from Abby has a new leaf.
A planthopper (Flatidae) on curly dock. First time for this family in the yard?? I used to see them regularly at home.
Rattlesnake master still lives.
Passionvine (seeds from Bartlesville) doing well in their second year.
Tiny bee on butterfly milkweed
Hedeoma in with Datura.
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05/13/2022 garden checkup

Sweet basil seedlings.
Butterfly milkweed is up in the backyard too but hasn’t flowered yet (same as front yard).
Yellow flax still blooming! It’s annual, so I hope the seeds like it enough here.
Whitlow-wort gone to seed. Another native annual from TX home.
False gaura that I planted from potted last night is doing well.
Texas verbena has bloomed! It’s a perennial.
The rattlebox had adorable seed pods as promised.
The Rocky mountain bee plant from the botany club plant sale is blooming! There were ants at the blooms.
The Phacelia is really fun.
The prairie bluet is flowering a bit. I’m worried since it’s early that this means it’s not happy. However, it’s a perennial, so hopefully it will do its thing now and be less worried next year.
The twice-moved yucca is making new little leaves!
This yucca is in the shade which I figure is probably okay at this age.  Many plants seem to like to have nurse plants.
The baby winecups are starting to get true leaves.
Second year for this mystery plant with no blooms.
It does have a square stem. Abby suggested Monarda, which I did seed here at one point, so fingers crossed!!
Slippery silk beans and several other varieties are up!!
The two leaf senna didn’t have a lot of roots when I planted it from a pot last night. So, I put two containers of water so it would gradually keep it damp for now so it can get established. It’s my only sprout from the seed and I love this plant! It’s a host for Cloudless Sulphur butterflies.
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05/04/2022

Home from doggie daycare.
I need to look this one up again but we have a lot. It’s native. It’s Solanaceae. Edit: Mom says Solanum ptycanthum.
Yellow flax (Linum rigidum) and showy evening primrose.
The sadly too common Canis bordum
A winecup seedling!!
More winecup seedlings!!
A few leaves have stayed green on the fragrant sumac. I’ve been using the terracotta pot to dribble out more water to it.
Desert blue curls!! (Phacelia campanularia). I was really baffled about the little purple spotted seedlings but this is it. Yay!!
Cactus planter prickly pears doing well.
Asian long bean from my aunt are growing well.
Knock on not-rotting wood, the Roman chamomile hasn’t been eaten by earwigs unlike the last batch.
Pink buckwheat blooming.
Mom, is this the Liatris from home? (Also some pretty Dicanthelium grass)
Widow sedum about to bloom!
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This week’s events… Busy busy

Got winecup (Callirhoe involucrata) seeds in the mail from prairiemoon.com. This species gets boiling water then 30 days cold in fridge. They also kindly sent a free seed packet of Dalea purpurea which we immediately planted.
The straggler roots of Maximilian sunflower are everywhere. Paula and I lifted up this stepping stone to find more. We’re potting them up to give away. The big colony that we transferred over to edge of shade is sprouting too.
Glass gem popcorn now in the raised beds!
Judy gave me these delightful frog stepping stones for my birthday! Thanks Judy!!
The Phacelia leaf in the rock garden is very similar to the invasive geranium leaf I am holding, but isn’t as round.
In the very middle, you can see a single Datura pushing up. The other seedlings look like what I hoped was honeysuckle, but is now coming up everywhere.
This seedling is in the Two-Leaf Senna pot. We’ll see.
Human, you must rest.
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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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Seeeeeedlings

A single Phacelia has come up after all the others died.
Three (one visible here) native blue flax babies have come up from direct seeding in the rainbow garden!!!!