Gardens-In-The-Sand

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.

more july wildlife

I find that the hummingbirds prefer the small-flowered canna....

It may not have as spectacular of a flower as the large flowered types... but... who cares when the pay-off on the small-flowers is in attracting these sweeties?

And visiting the salvia...

I totally avoid feeders... I feel like they harm the critters... makes getting pics a bit more of a challenge, but I'm not putting out GMO products or poisoned bird food... or helping spread bird diseases...