A Southern Garden in January

Why I garden in the South

sulfur yellow butterfly

A vegetable garden full of henbit is kind of embarrassing, but the butterflies like it fine... They say that God doesn't make junk....

Painted lady butterfly

The butterflies seem to be happy with the weeds...

gulf fritillary butterfly

Not just butterflies in the garden on this fine January day, I found a blue-tailed skink and a frog too!

The pictures click...

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - January 2012

I discovered gardener blogger's bloom day last month, too late to post. Seems like a pretty neat concept, the garden changes from month to month, if there isn't different flowers, the flowers we have look different.

First off, howsa bout some weeds?



Chickweed and henbit, pretty if shot with a macro, but not something desirable...

I'm pulling weeds as fast as I can...

Some early bloom on the bridal wreath spirea and forsythia.

The highlight of the garden is the hellebore.

They've produced additional open blooms since last month, and peak bloom is still a month or two away...

The colours when the blooms initially open is always exciting.

Sadly, most people only know hellebores by those green displays at lenten service.

I'm unable to post camellia blooms from this garden yet. The freezing temps last week did those for me. While I'm seeing plenty of camellias in other gardens, I think it would violate the spirit of the post to post the plants that I'm not growing in this garden.

I still have mahonia in bloom, but it seems past it's peak...

Daffy-dills blooming through the lantana stalks, and summer's farewell seed heads. Be sure to click the pictures on this post... Those Dalea pinnata seed heads look surreal when enlarged.

We could all learn a lot about concentration and patience from a cat... She can stare at a brush pile for hours...

Merry Christmas

I have hellebore blooming... Last year, nobody had any blooms until the middle of January.
It's been a beautiful Autumn, the rains finally came, and with moderate temps, everything has been growing like mad. We're still deeply in a deficit rain-wise, last summer was as bad as I can remember and we've had a series of droughty years, each one seeming worse than the previous.

I've been adding a coupla truckloads of horse poop a week to the garden since August, and that helps a lot also.




What's not to love about hellebore?

These guys didn't get a drop of extra water in the bottomless sand over the summer, and they are the best looking lenten rose in the area.

The drought was so bad last summer that I didn't get anything from the vegetable garden!




The vegetable garden is doing much better, thanks.

The mahonia is in bloom...

Homminy is hunting voles or something... Good kitty!

While hardy cyclamen blooms, a smaller version of the florists cyclamen...

I grow it for those leaves...