Gardens-In-The-Sand

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...

What is this?

Lol...

I planted these, and promptly forgot doing so. They're in a row, I definitely planted them...

I'll discover what I have in due time, it's not often that I get seedlings that I don't recognize.

The echinacea are coming up...

As are the tropical milkweed, and the stokesia... But I didn't take pictures...

The agalinis have been coming up.

It's very important to recognize the plants early. Many people pull everything they don't recognize... It makes having unusual plants in the garden a bit difficult...

Agalinis shouldn't be an unusual plant in the southern garden... it comes up everywhere that I put in a garden in the middle Georgia area... All it requires is that you don't pull it for a weed!

Agalinis is a host plant for the buckeye butterfly.

These critters are acting like they are fixing to ensure the next generation... Spending time with the host plants... They sure are pretty!

The salvia is amazing... pictures simply don't do it justice!

Every time I walk past these poppies, I reach for my camera.

I don't think the camera has the ability to record these the way that my eyes see them...

If nebody is wonderin, I akshully do have some beans n squash n sweet-corn n irish taters seedlings up, it's not all eye-candy...

I useta have a GF who tole everyone that I had a coupla rows of veggies growing in an acre of flowers... Wasn't quite true... It was more like 2 acres of flowers, and a row or two of vegetables...

:)

Here's another picture of the cat...

She's having a bit of breakfast...

The other night, I heard her slapping at the wood pile... She'd cornered a snake. It was too dark to tell, but it had the markings of a copperhead... Ask Steve Earle...
I picked her up, said leave that alone... stick to stuff with fur...

April 11 2012

The rats are chewing the insulation off the wiring...

One more reason to love the cat...
She caught this monster right in front of me....
It was dusk, there was a big commotion in the lumber, I shined the flashlight toward one end, the rat zigged when he shoulda zagged... right into the cat's teeth.... The cat didn't waste time torturing the big mean nasty rat...
Rats must be tasty, cats sure eat them up in a hurry.