Summer colour

We Finally did get some rain. Too late for the corn, but the flowers and the critters they attract are all doing well.

hummingbird visiting Uruguayan firecracker plant. (dicliptera suberecta)


Coupla spice bush swallowtails performing mating rituals

Talinum patens berries

wild lettuce seed

Coral Red honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens) berries

Apostle lily (crinum sp.)

Gourd flower

I see you...

What's for dinner?

Plate of fresh veggies...

Heating them up on an open fire.

While a pot of fresh veggies was probably healthier eating, the casserole made made with cheese and bacon & these veggies in the oven tasted really good too.

It may not look like much now... But it disappeared in a hurry.

With a bit of rain, (a half-inch or so) everything perked up...

Rudbeckia hirta and vitex...





The daylilies are still looking nice

Here's a new section of the vegetable garden...

I don't post many wide angle pics, because... I can't get much of the garden to show up.

Drought continued...

Click map for drought details.

I had hopes that we'd get a bit more rain than last year. But...
If it's more, it isn't much more, and droughts year after year aren't good for the plants, water table, or much of anything else.

The sweet corn is doing poorly in spite of efforts to water.

I've been looking at a coupla sites offering seed from the desert...
High country gardens and Native seed search
They talk about their seeds growing in arid alkaline soil... I have the arid soil...

It seems like landrace seeds from the desert should do better in the sand hills than the seeds that I've been planting...


The squash has done well.



Vitex bloom and sand wasp


Popcorn tree and sand wasp.

Neither of these are getting a drop of extra water...
As pretty as the popcorn tree is, it's considered an invasive exotic.
It's also supposed to be a potential source of petrol.

I have house wrens...
in the house...


Mother house wren is pretty funny, hopping around on the floor back and forth, when I'm in the same room as the nest.

The zebra and spicebush swallowtails have been spending a lot of time in the garden.





I have a lot of sassafras trees, and so have plenty of the black swallowtails (as a result), but I'm not sure where the zebras are coming from...

Blooms

blue...
Stokesia & viper's bugloss.

Chinese foxglove

Swallowtail on butterfly-weed.

Wild sweet-potato.


Cactus blooms...
coreopsis...

Peony poppy.


The goldfinches are here for the poppy seeds.

They made poppy seed collection difficult


But they're still kewt...

Daylilies

It hasn't rained much... A quarter inch 3 or 4 weeks ago, a half inch this week... it's been enough for these seedlings to bloom.









I collected daylily seeds (a number of years ago), from a friends daylilies, seeds seem to have a better chance of doing well out here...

Mourning

I'm in mourning.
I spent hours calling the cat, while making coffee in the morning, while reading a book, and when I found her on the road where someone ran her down, I just wished I'd tried harder to find her.

The other day, I listened to a sumbitch brag on his murdering pit-bull, bragging on the cats it was killing... I didn't bother to point out the problem with that... People know. And they do it anyway.

Blues

Here are some visitors to the garden this week
This "jewel wasp" is a beauty...

AKA "Cuckoo wasp" so-named for it's habit of parasitizing other bugs...

This black swallowtail was very interested in my outdoor kitchen...

The clasping heliotrope is blue, right?

While the visitors to the heliotrope tend to be generally on the small side, I like them...

Speaking of blue...
Got a bit of frost...



With a final frost date of April 11, this light frost on April 24 was a bit of the unpredictable side of gardening...

How about a bit of red?

No cat pics today, cat went on walkabout... She was acting squirrelly, met me at the gate when I came home, being vocal... Her voice was a bit hoarse... Apparently she'd been calling all day... at dark, she took off after calling a number of times...

Cats have lives of their own, but Siamese don't generally stay gone for several days... I've done a bit of looking for her... either she'll show back up on her own, or not... there are big dogs in the area, and all the neighbors have guns... it's a big ole dangerous world out there...