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 innocentGuard 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.
I’m not sure if the Fluttermill Primrose is just almost done blooming or the rain has just been so heavy in the last week when it happens, but they are looking a little worse for the wear right now.
We put one of Paula’s native Oklahoma cacti outside earlier this spring and wow has it grown! I cannot remember which genus it is. We had it identified at some point and keep forgetting to label it.
The Penstemon grandiflorus is blooming in its second year!They are such big flowers. After rain during the day, the leaves collected water!Another side view of the big water blob on the leaves!
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 milkweedNot 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 peaOldplainsmanMysteryCaliche planter babiesThe 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.
I put out two of our three pots of Inland Sea Oats! I also moved the all-red prairie coneflower (Ratibida columnifera) out front to the rain garden and a bunch of Strophostyles (fuzzybeans) everywhere. Culinary sage is at peak bloom in the rainbow garden!Missouri Fluttermill Primrose is very happy after that rain a few days ago!This mystery plant is in the rock garden. I’m hoping it might be a Scutellaria. Penstemon grandiflorus, planted last year from Prairie moon nursery, looks like it wants to bloom this year!
The Agastache survived with its defensive ring of petroleum jelly. Gonna have to go buy another tube. The Blackfoot daisy made it overnight!The second daisy made it too! There are fewer earwigs in the rock garden. Paula pointed out last night that our other agastaches that got completely chomped by earwigs are putting up new shoots. Here’s the second one also having a tiny sprout.
Past me ordered plants in the winter!Pets very much liked the box. It had good smells. Here Gram steps right in before I’ve unpacked the crinkle paper. Good thing there was cardboard protecting the plants too.
Gram moved to sit on the crinkle paper and smells one of two Blackfoot daisies. Briar observes. We put the daisies in the rock garden. I had one in the backyard once when we first moved here but I think it was too wet. The rock garden is the driest hottest spot in the yard.
The other plant we got was an orange Agastache. The damn invasive human-introduced earwig horde has already started eating it, so we are trying petroleum jelly around the base. It has worked for tomatoes before but didn’t work on a different Agastache recently, so we’ll go back out before bed and check again.