A bit of food and a buncha flowers

My last posts have been mostly birds n bugs n hardly ne flowers or veggies... I'll try to make up for that with this post :)

Trail of tears beans

The monarda punctata has begun to bloom

Rebloom on the penstemon

Pears 

The rudbeckia laciniata has also begun.

The agalinis are full of buckeye cats... no flowers yet, though.

Sea shore mallow, or Salt marsh mallow 

(kosteletzkya virginica)

Bush morning glory (Ipomoea carnea)

This thing is 10 foot tall, and the blooms are above eye level!

The partridge peas (Chamaecrista fasciculata) are in bloom!

Of course, the coffee weeds (Senna obtusifolia) have been blooming...

(These early morning pictures are a funny blue colour... apologies.)

The sand hill ironweed (veronia angustafolia) is beautiful

I was going to wait until I had pics of the Vernonia altissima to compare with, but...

 I've a feeling that this variety will be finished by then.

Sweet Autumn clematis (Clematis terniflora) always puts on a show... not especially attractive to the butterflies, though...

The Japanese anemone don't put on a show worth shux, a few blooms now, which close before other ones open. All those buds... misleading.

I'm not especially a fan of hydrangea, but someone I know did a bit of cutting back (this Spring), and a few branches accidentally came home with me in the back of my truck... 

I plugged them into the ground, and blooms ever since.

Finally, How about another picture of the centrosema? 

I collected seed last year of the partridge peas, and they came up fine. I tried to collect some of the centrosema, but... they got lost or something... Will definitely make a greater effort, as this beauty deserves a place of pride in the native garden...

Moar Kritterz

Clear wing Hummingbird moth (Hemaris thysbe)

Black widow... 

I found this girl while pulling squash vines... bare-foot. Reckon she was dining on those nasty squash bugs?

I've seen this dude identified as a male velvet ant, or "cow-killer" (Dasymutilla occidentalis)

 Check out the size spider... this wasp drug under my house!

These woodpeckers are a bit camera-shy.

I caught him!
This mocking bird sez that the poke berries are ready.

If yer gonna attract birdz to the garden... you gotta grow their faves...
I was weeding the daylilies last weekend,  I left a coupla pokeweeds...
The poke is native, those daylilies... aren't... and they don't grow well here anyway.

Zebra swallowtail with gulf fritillary

gulf fritillary caterpillar

Passionflower... the gulf fritillary's host plant.

Low hanging fruit... (may pops)

Eastern tailed blue (Cupido comyntas)

 I'm totally a fan of the centrosema virginianum... I've been potting some up to share...

hibiscus grandiflorus... First time this has bloomed... and I've grown it since I got here...

So... like the tall Joe pye weed featured last week... not a good plant for the xeriscape... In spite of those fuzzy leaves.

Finally... How 'bout a peach?

First week of August

Good Kitty! Those rats are giving me a lot of trouble, eating the cantaloupe vines, sweet potato vines, and I like to have never got my sunflowers past the stage where the rats were eating the plants.

 The goldfinches are gonna be happy...

This clasping heliotrope is quite the ground cover... I'm thinking about making a lawn out of it.

Ditto for this prostrate lantana.

While we're at it... this variegated commelina seems like it would work.

The rose of sharon bushes are blooming like mad.

Interesting colour on the tiger swallowtail...

The snake cotton (Froelichia gracilis) is blooming... Interesting plant...

Flowers on the joe-pye (Eutrochium fistulosum) this year... First year I've gotten this wetland plant to bloom... in the dry sand.

In my previous garden, I'd get butterflies wingtip to wingtip on this stuff...  

Found a new joepye (Eutrochium purpureum )... doesn't get 10 foot tall. I'm hoping for some crosses with the tall variety....

The flowerheads aren't as full... but the butterflies and bees don't mind.

Another natural, Southern joint weed (Polygonella americana).
I'm still studying on how to propagate this one.

Speaking of propagation... remember tephrosia?

(Picture originally posted in May)
 

Dried seedpods... if I can find any unopened ones...

Found some

Got a few seed... were mostly empty and wormy.

Babies!

Finally, another local wildflower... Crotalaria spectabilis
I couldn't get showy crotalaria to naturalize in my previous frost pocket garden...
The Virginia tech weed site considers this beauty... a weed... no accounting for taste.