An Easy Task

Posted on March 15, 2017 by Tina

It’s a simple chore, this business of observing the growing season’s debut, a chore that requires only looking out the window or strolling along the pathway. Each day brings new life in the form of opening blooms, wafting tree catkins, and emerging wildlife ready for their pollinating, nesting, and procreating work.

Golden groundsel, Packera obovata, brightens March with full-of-sunshine-beauty.

A variety of small pollinators are attracted to these sweet flowers. A tiny Miner(?) bee and her bee buddies are all over the shocking yellow blooms each day, this spring.

It looks like there might be a spider nearby–watch out little bees!

Crossvine, Bignonia capreolata, flush with terra cotta petals, beckon swiftly flying native metallic bees into alluring yellow throats.

The bees were too fast for me to photograph competently, but the blooms held their position. Crossvine is one of Central Texas’ earliest blossoming vines.

Thanks to spring breezes, the Crimson flowers of the Old Gay Hill rose are accompanied by the downed catkins of a neighboring Red Oak tree.

Pink is the true color of the Purple coneflower, Echinacea purpurea, just entering a long, glorious bloom cycle.

Another spring pink is the native to Central Texas, Hill Country penstemon, Penstemon triflorus.

The tubular flowers typically align along tall bloom spikes, though this spring, the whole apparatus of this particular specimen nestles close to the ground. The one currently in bloom waits for action from native bees, its stripes serving as a runway to a luscious nectar and pollen-filled destination.

Autumn sage, Salvia greggii, blooms in a variety of colors.

This coral beauty is a reliable spring and fall bloomer, taking a break during our toasty summers, though it maintains a tidy, evergreen form in the heat. Like so many other plants in my garden, the shrub is currently decorated with Red Oak. The troop of Horsefly-like Carpenter bees, Xylocopa tabaniformis, who reside in my garden have no trouble finding the sweet spot(s) of these lovely blooms.

Another blooming vine, the Coral honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens, is also a bee magnet.

Fortunately, this gorgeous bee (Sweat bee, Augochloropsis metallica ?) rested between forays into the flowers, allowing for its capture in photo form.

Blooms are boss and for a look at a spring-flowering festival, check out Carol’s May Dreams Gardens celebrating all things blooming this March.

May Flowers

Posted on May 14, 2016 by Tina

May flowers–it’s such a cliché–but one that I’m going to embrace on this balmy May bloom day. The pinks in my garden seem to be front and center at the moment. Dusty pink blooms of this Red yucca, Hesperaloe parviflora, pop against a backdrop of Soft-leaf yucca foliage.

While the blooms adorning a different Red yucca bloom stalk flash a bit of yellow–just enough to keep things interesting.

With abundant rain, the Rock rose, Pavonia lasiopetala, is flushed full of foliage growth, but the few first blooms are opening up,

…and many more will follow during the long growing season. In truth, this is a plant that is floriferous in moderate drought; lots of rain produces lots of leaves, but fewer blooms. No matter, our summers are reliably dry and the multitudes of Barbie-pink blooms will turn heads as they open early in the morning, close by mid-day, throughout the long summer.

The pollinators and the gardener will enjoy the on-n-off bloom cycles of this hardy, small shrub well into October.

Purple coneflower, Echinacea purpurea (which look pink to me) are in full spring show.

And the large shrub, Barbados Cherry, Malpighia glabra, is blasting the garden with its clustered version of the pink and yellow combo.

Additionally, the Barbados Cherry blooms fill the air with a lovely fragrance. You can’t smell the blooms while reading this post, but the fragrance is special–a May garden delight.

Barbados Cherry and Purple coneflower are pink pals in the garden.

Pink does not rule all of my garden though. The yellow (Aquilegia chrysantha) and yellow-red (Aquilegia canadensis) Columbines are on their way out, having bloomed since late February. However, they’re still producing for the pollinators, with some energy set aside for future seed production.

Columbines soldier on as spring wanes and the temperatures warm. A cool season plant here in zone 8b, I miss Columbines when they’re done, but always enjoy their fairy-like, shooting-star charm in the cool spring garden.

Heartleaf Skullcap, Scutellaria ovata, is filling the back garden with drifts of grey and blue.

While Majestic Sage, Salvia guaranitica, is truly grand in the royal blue it wears.

Finally, the creamy blooms of Twistleaf yucca, Yucca rupicola, have made their once-per-year appearance in the front garden. Poised atop the tall (5 foot) stalk, they beckon to native and honeybees to sip and gather from their floral bounty.

Once the blooms are done, I’ll trim the stalk–maybe drying it for further use as a stake for some wayward plant later in the year. The foliage is handsome, year-round, lending structure and evergreen sturdiness to the garden.

Somehow, I managed to choose photos of all these blooms with not a single pollinator in sight. Pollinators are in the garden and in abundance–nectaring and pollinating, even if I didn’t capture that particular beauty in this round of photos!

Fortunate to live where May blooms are plentiful, I thank Carol at May Dreams Garden for hosting this monthly bloom frenzy known as Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. Join in, share your garden pretties, then click over to her lovely blog to see and learn about blooms from many places.

A Parade of Pretties: Bloom Day for March

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Tina

I’m not going to pretend that this post is anything more than a runway fashion show of the botanical kind. What follows is a shameless and giddy celebration of the the bounty of blooming beauty that is early spring in my Austin, Texas, zone 8b, garden.

Golden Groundsel, Packera obovata, hit its flowering stride since last profiled for its beautiful foliage a few weeks ago.

Slender bloom stalks hold aloft the blasts of brilliant yellow,

…and the gardener smiles. Tiny critters of all sorts visit–to rest,

…and pollinate.

I’m not thrilled when a fly makes its way into my kitchen, but am happy to see it sipping the sweet stuff from the Golden Groundsel.

Spiderwort, Tradescantia, plants are strutting their flower-power and keeping the honeybees busy.

This Giant Spiderwort keeps company with garden furniture.

The many Spiderwort clumps my garden enjoy some variability in size and coloration and I suspect that there’s more than one species growing and cross-mingling through the seasons.

Coral Honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens, a vine hosting dripping clusters of tubular beauty,

…are surrounded by tiny native metallic bees, which I can only manage a vague photograph of.

Actually, that’s not really true, but you’ll have to wait until my own Wildlife Wednesday on April 6th to see some slightly better photos of one of the stunningly gorgeous and fast-flying metallic wild bees.

This Coral Honeysuckle bloom cluster and the not-quite-open Spiderwort look like they’re trying to reach one another for a smooch.

Well, it is spring, you know–the season of love!

Yellow Columbine, Aquilegia chrysantha var. hinckleyana,

Yellow Columbine with blooming Iris.

…and the hybrid between A. chrysantha and A. canadensis, pose beautifully and are available for nectaring, too–if you possess the right proboscis, that is.

Hybrid Columbine with backdrop of orange blooming Mexican Honeysuckle and unopened Iris.

Hybrid Columbine with not yet in bloom day lilies and Yarrow.

The A. canadensis is a smaller, mostly brick-red columbine. But when cross-pollination occurs, the flower of the hybrid is typically larger, with more yellow and a blush of red. Over the years, the columbines in my gardens have hybridized and I’m delighted with nature’s improvisations.

Globe Mallow, Sphaeralcea ambigua, is also open for business, awaiting interviews from native bees. So far, it’s been teeny, tiny bees, too fast for this photographer to capture with any competence.

The first blooms of many-to-come Purple Coneflower, Echinacea purpurea, have unfurled their pinky-purple glory, welcoming spring and their lengthy growing season.

Another first is with this Brazos Blackberry bloom, which heralds more of the same.

Once those flowers are spent, berries will not be far behind. Yum! I can taste the blackberries now–as well as the blackberry cobbler. Bring’em, blooms!

Dancing at the ends of slender bloom stalks all winter and continuing their performance in the spring breezes, the cheery, bouncy Four-nerve Daisy (Hymenoxys), Tetraneuris scaposa, flowers are nearly non-stop bloomers.

Tired of these tidy, singleton blooms? How about this cascade of Blackfoot Daisy, Melampodium leucanthum.

A tough Texas native that is best when growing out of poor soil or rock, this one is content and flowering in my Green Tower, which is where I grow veggies and most of my herbs. The Blackfoot Daisy buddies-up to a thyme plant which also flourishes in the Tower.

Due to the non-winter this year, Mexican Honeysuckle, Justicia spicigera, wasn’t freeze-knocked to the the ground and thus is blooming with orange abandon this early spring.

Mexican Honeysuckle boasts constant pollinator activity, especially from a variety of bees.

Horsefly-like Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa tabaniformis) works the Mexican Honeysuckle flowers.

There’s more where that came from!

There are too many blooms and not enough time to showcase them all–they’ll just have to participate in another parade!

Thanking Carol at May Dreams Garden for hosting this monthly bloom frenzy known as Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. Share your garden pretties, then click over to her lovely blog to see and learn about blooms from many places.