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...

Winter Rain

We are in a deficit for rain this year, just a few weeks in... We were seriously hurting last year...

Seeing any kind of clouds in the sky is a hopeful event.

This looks very good...





It's coming!

Rain!



Lots of rain!





Raindrops hitting the rainwater that fell faster than the thirsty sand could absorb it...




Raindrops on the winter burned golden rod.



An inch and a quarter of rain in a single storm...
The rain Gods were very kind.

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...

Lichen

I was mentioned on a post yesterday.

After looking at her pictures of mosses and lichens, I went out and shot some of mine.

This feels like a Christmas post, and my apologies for not thinking of it sooner... Some people put out a bale of hay for Santa's reindeer, but I'm not sure that the reindeer would actually benefit from hay. Seems like they would get sick after spending the year eating lichens and moss.

This patch of Cladonia rangiferalichen looks like brains.

It felt like they were contemplating the nature of the universe, while I looked on.

Like the Douglas Adams computer Deep Thought, who gave us the answer "42".

I think these babies might come up with an answer that is more relevant to our day to day struggles...

I will admit that these guys figure prominently in my plans for the zombie apocalypse. If I led them past a group of brain lichens, they might get confused. If that doesn't work, I'll lead them through the saw briars and hawthorns.

Lichens are a diverse group of plants, in just a small area, I was able to capture some wildly different forms.

Looks like this Cladonia cristatella (british soldier lichen) is blooming... Be sure to click the pictures to see them better.

Coupla thready ones.

(foliose)

The Dragonriders of Pern are expected momentarily.

Flat ones, plate-like

Parmotrema perlatum

Small ones growing up through the moss.

Stream of lichen... Most gardeners produce the dry stream bed effect using rock...

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...

Mid-November

It's interesting that so many different ones were blossoming during October.
Comment from October's post.

Yeah... Middle Georgia is actually considered part of the sub-tropical south. We had our first frost last week, and there's still plenty of colour in the garden. I walked around with a camera today, in an attempt to record the mid-November garden...

To have butterflies, you need caterpillars.

Here's a coupla gulf frits.
(Be sure to click all the pics today!)

The butterflies they eventually become.

Close-up of the lantana that was so popular last month.

Sulfur yellow visits a turk's cap hibiscus

Zabulon Skipper

Buckeye Butterfly

Checkerspot butterfly

Catching grasshoppers.

Mustard greens.

Helianthus debilis

Spiderwort

Salvia coccinea

Monarda Punctata