As it’s Texas Native Plants Week, I thought I’d contribute a photo which profiles a few of the lovely native plants in my garden, as well as a seasonal piece of garden art which has highlighted the front garden this fall.
Clockwise, starting from the bottom left of the photo: the winter rosettes of Big red sage, Salvia pentstemonoides and moving upwards, the pink blooming shrubs, Rock rose, Pavonia lasiopetala. Behind those, peeks out white blooming Tropical sage, Salvia coccinea paired with some spikey foliage of a Red yucca, Hesperaloe parviflora, plus three, second year Big muhly grasses, Muhlenbergia lindheimeri. The two yellow spots of sunshine in the background come in the form of Plateau goldeneye, Viguiera dentata and their frothy, cloud-like companions are Frostweed, Verbesina virginica. Lastly, the diminutive daisies dancing at the bottom right are Blackfoot daisy, Melampodium leucanthum.
For more information on growing native plants in Texas, check out these informative sites, Native Plant Society of Texas and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
Native plants are beautiful, easy to grow, and reflect the place where you live–in Texas, or elsewhere. Native plants evolved alongside their companion critters and so attract and nurture pollinators, birds, and wildlife of all kinds and sorts.
Native plants bring a garden to life.
I’m linking with Anna, in Oregon, for Wednesday Vignette. Additionally, I’d like to give a nod and a link to OregonFlora, a gorgeous website profiling the native plants of Oregon. This site gives information about where native plants of Oregon are found, how to use them in home gardens, and lots of other valuable information for anyone interested in native plants. This site and the work related, is headed by my friend, Dr. Linda Hardison with her Oregon State University team.
Native plants rock!
My Gardener Says... 
Love your garden art.
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Brightens the whole place up, doesn’t it? 🙂
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Beautiful art! And the plants are looking quite nice, too :-).
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Thanks! It’s a good pairing!
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I love your garden art! And, I’m so happy you stuck a flag in there, too. So often, the flag seems to have gotten coopted only by the GOP, so it’s nice to see it billowing above your sign. 12 days to go… Thanks for the link to OregonFlora. I will definitely check that out!
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Thanks, Anna! You’re right, as if the other side are the only ones who are patriotic. Not!
I haven’t been able to comment on your posts the last couple of weeks. Any idea why?
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No, but weird things like that happen to me too, now and then. I have no idea why…
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Why do you need to insert politics in your wonderful gardening posts? Not that you would miss me, but I will unsubscribe if there is a repeat.
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Hey Bonnie, thanks for reading! Since this is my blog, I’ll write and photograph whatever I choose to write and photograph. If it offends your sensibilities, you’re more than welcome to unsubscribe because I won’t respond to threats of losing readership. There are plenty of other publications that you might enjoy more and I certainly won’t promise that there will never be a repeat.
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I wish you luck in the election. Many many people in Australia are hoping for the result you want.
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Thanks, Jane. I suspect that’s true all over the world and it’s looking promising. Huge turnouts!!
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Have you been to Oregon? We’d likely have gone there this year but for the pandemic. If we ever do make it there, the OregonFlora website will prove helpful.
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Yes, many times and I really miss visiting there. My son graduated from University of Oregon (Eugene). In fact, we seriously considered a move there and I still have a realtor with whom I occasionally correspond. My friend, Linda Hardison (been friends since college) directs the Oregon Flora Project. She live in Corvallis (an hour north of Eugene, both in the Willamette Valley) and is at Oregon State. Oregon is like Texas in that it enjoys a wide variety of landforms, so much to see. Eastern Oregon is very different (in many ways) than Western. I purchased a phone app that Oregon Flora used when we’d hike and it proved quite useful.
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I had no idea that your son graduated from the University of Oregon (or that you have a son, for that matter!). Now you’re bringing back memories for me. In 1978 I flew from Austin to Portland and stayed in Corvallis for a few days. On a bulletin board at a college there I noticed that someone was selling a mid-1960s Plymouth Valiant. On a whim I called the phone number and ended up buying the high-mileage car for just a few hundred dollars. I cashed in my return plane ticket and drove the Valiant north to Vancouver and Victoria, then turned around and drove back down the Pacific coast through California and east across the desert back to Texas.
I’m aware of how different eastern Oregon and Washington are from the Pacific parts of those states, and we’d tentatively planned a trip there this year and I was doing research on good places to visit. Then the pandemic intervened.
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That’s a great story and what a trip that must have been!! Vancouver and Victoria are also lovely places and I would enjoy going back there, too. I’ve always wanted to drive US1 from Washington all the way down!
My son, Aaron, graduated in ’17 with a degree in Journalism, minor in Arabic. He moved to Amman, Jordan and still lives there. He’s done a variety of work, some paid, some…not so much. 🙂 He’s worked with refugee organizations and for the past year, produced B-roll videography/interviews for Associated Press. He’s a “stringer” so work is there, or not. Since the pandemic, things have slowed down, but he’s keeping somewhat busy. I wish he wasn’t so far away, though. 😦
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So you have a great incentive, once the pandemic passes, to visit Amman.
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We were planning to go in November. That’s obviously not going to happen. Sniff.
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