one quarter inch of rain

My heart goes out to everybody that lost everything due to the weather thursday morning. It hurts to be deprived of everything....



But this blog post is about how dry it is in the sandhill garden....


How much difference does a quarter inch of rain make?


Well, as it turns out, it helps quite a bit...




common milkweed Asclepias syriaca
The one on the right is before the rain, on the left is after...

I still need a rain-dancer...

The viper's bugloss that I posted about in february is blooming.




This Oak-leaf hydranga is blooming... It's managed to live for a year out here, in spite of last summer being dry enough to lose seedling butterfly weed...



Amarylis bloom...

today's perennial blooms

Rehmannia elata ... Chinese foxgloves

These pretty woodland flowers have underground stolons, and with most plants, that would be a huge warning sign to avoid... Chinese foxglove doesn't overwhelm the garden though... Seeming instead to move around, always looking for a different venue, and dieing out in the location where it was so pretty last year. I'm not sure what this roamer is searching for, but it's certainly pretty, and doesn't require any special attention... except to be allowed to move around a bit.

The first of the louisiana iris... They do very poorly in the dry sand hill garden. Louisiana iris are normally a wetland plant, growing naturally in the Louisiana swamplands... But it grows very well in any good garden soil... and... I have managed to keep it alive in the dry sand without extra water!

The mckana's giant columbine... Aquelegia caerula
I grow an assortment of columbines, they do fine in the dry sand, and in any semi shaded garden... I've found that they didn't like being in a wetland garden, but pretty much anywhere else, they make a carefree plant for a few years... fortunately, they make up for their short life-spans by coming up easily from seed.

And finally, another wild flower native to the sand hills... Hoary puccoon, Lithospermum canescens ... This guy has a short bloom time, but it certainly adds pizazz to the meadow...

Spring flowers

I apologize for yesterday's weed post...

I'll post some of the ornamentals deliberately planted in the garden today...

It's always a joy to see the butterflies, these black swallowtails are all over the place, but won't hardly hold still long enough for a picture...

The columbines are as pretty as a picture...

And the bearded iris do very well in the sand... Wish I could say the same for the other iris...

This bladder campion showed up on it's own, and is supposed to be weedy from everything I've read, but I have to dig the plant up and tear pieces off like heuchera, to get additional plants... gotta 'preciate the campions with their grey fuzzy leaves...

This scullcap was growing in clay locally, but is doing well in the sand. There are several scutellarias, and in spite of visiting page after page of google images, I haven't quite narrowed this one down... I have a couple of other scullcaps growing, they'll be blooming within the month...

Edit: I did finally discover the name of this plant... It's a native blue salvia..... Salvia urticifolia ... nettle leaf sage.

These buckeyes are pretty cool, grown from buckeyes collected locally...

Buckeyes bloom in about 3 years from seed... The buckeye bush in GA is a shrub ...

Ok, one more weed picture... Chenopodium gigantica, magenta spreen...
When the other greens bolt and get bitter this "weed" keeps providing leafy goodness for the salad bowl and the cooking pot... I cooked up some evening primrose a couple of weeks ago as a change... those were interesting... the roots were like taters, and the leaves like fuzzy spinach... on the whole, I prefer the lambsquarter weed... And this one looks so pretty that it's not totally out of place in a flower bed...

Spring means flowers

This is a nice flower... notice the spines on the stalks, and the leaves... everything but the blooms... Everybody that sees these guys, says "what pretty flowers!" Yeah... right up till you touch the plant... This is Cnidoscolus stimulosus Aka finger rot, 7 minute itch... A very close relative to texas bull nettle and a really scary plant out in AZ called mala mujer ... Is totally a fun plant to have growing up among the tomato bushes... if you know what I mean...

Hmmm.... The turnips are through... I leave them for the butterflies...

And the wasps... Gotta keep those pollinators happy!

While we're looking at the weeds... Here's one of our native blue salvias... Sorry people, this is not the salvia that you smoke... unless you absolutely want to...
This salvia with the pretty blue flowers is lyre leaf sage, a perennial best left in the ditch... not a good choice for the flower garden... it is very seedy.

March Bloom

Carolina Jessemine

The Carolina jessemine is a native vine, blooming early here... I used to see the blooms on the ground at my previous garden, but never actually see the vine... they'd climbed well out of sight...

The daffodils are winding down

With the early Spring here, some patches of daffodils didn't bloom.
I was reading an article about "blind daffodils" recently... it explained why otherwise happy drifts of daffodils had failed this year.

Pear Flowers

I planted these pear trees 2 Autumns ago, they might produce this year... I had a frost which killed back the taters that were up a couple of days ago... but am hopeful re the pears....

Edit:

The pears produced!
the poor trees had their tops dragging the ground.

See pic

Early Emergence

A study of contrasts, the wild delphinium first emerged from sleep.

It's impossible to grow the nursery delphiniums here, but this brave little guy stands up to the heat.

I discovered the viper's bugloss growing near the fire department as I drove past (a couple of years age)... I pulled over and took a closer look at those showy blue flowers...

Picked a couple of seed pods, and sowed them in my garden... Good thing I got them, because they soon had that area covered in sod... YUCK!

Last Spring they came up and bloomed, but my camera died... I'll try to get pictures this year.

I grew this camellia from an acorn...

Neat story, a neighbor came by a garden where I was helping the homeowner, with a pocket full of camellia seed... Asked if we thought they would grow...

I thought they prolly would... The neighbor gifted me with the seed... I took them home and planted them... had a nice crop of camellias come up... I shared them with people and took a dozen (or so) of them up to TN for a visit to the mountains... for a couple of years, before bringing them back to middle GA...

Another hellebore picture... These guys are so pretty... It's still going to be another month before we get the peak bloom...

Fixing to move a tree...

Had a walnut tree come up in someone's garden, they couldn't figure out where they had room for it... but it couldn't stay there...

Also picked up a plum tree... I hope to have tree fruit some day...

Is it Spring yet?

First Daffy-dill! Is it Spring yet?

The hellebore are prettier and prettier!

The atamasco lilies are coming up too!