Foliage Follow-up, August 2014

Posted on August 16, 2014 by Tina

Thanks to Pam at Digging for hosting Foliage Follow-up, the monthly fanfare of foliage in the garden. As much as I love flowers, a plant’s foliage is often a deal-breaker when choosing for my gardens. Especially in August when Austin blooms are a little scarce, the plant parts that are not flowers can lend beauty and definition to a garden space.

While not exactly foliage, seed heads certainly aren’t blooms either. Ex-flowers, I guess, but I’m including them because in mid-to-late summer, seed pods produced by former blooms impart interest to perennial gardens. This group of seed heads of the Gulf Penstemon, Penstemon tenuis, are just about to POP open and spread their glory!

The Gulf Penstemon is a lovely lavender spring-blooming perennial. I keep the seed heads as long as possible to give the seeds time to develop for propagation of new specimens for this short-lived perennial and also because I find them attractive.

Little, tawny turban-hats, the hard shell will burst open, spreading the seeds to nearby areas. Or, the gardener (that’s me, folks) can prune the stems, crack open those turbans, shake out the seeds and in doing so, appear to evoke some pagan ritual while waving the stalks over the gardens. I wonder what the neighbors think?

The Hill Country Penstemon, Penstemon triflorus, sports a larger, darker turban-capped seed head.

This year marks the latest I’ve ever left these seed pods on their bloom spikes. Usually, this plant topples over by early summer, I lose patience with the mess and cut it to the ground.

This seed pod of the Retama, Parkinsonia aculeata, hangs from the tree’s slender branch like a pea ready for pickin’.

Retama is a member of the pea family (Fabaceae), so the pea analogy works.

This combination of varying foliage pleases me: Mexican Feathergrass, Nassella tenuissima, Globe Mallow, Sphaeralcea ambigua, and Goldeneye, Viguiera dentata.

This trio includes some of the premier hardy perennials easily available for the Austin gardener.

If you have, have had or have ever seen a teenage boy of that certain age when the hair is long and a bit shaggy, close your eyes and visualize that in this Damianita, Chrysactinia mexicana.

I love the swoosh of the “bangs” framed over the decorative stone. Just imagine the teenage boy-head, constantly swooping his hair back to keep those bangs out of the eyes, in that annoyingly cute, but insolent way.

The wide, heart-shaped and deeply veined foliage of Coral Vine, Antigonon leptopus,

suggests a tropical lushness that is welcome this time of year.

I’m enamored with strappy, striped foliage, like that of this Dianella or Variegated Flax Lily, Dianella tasmanica ‘Variegata’,

…and this Color Guard Yucca, Yucca filamentosa, ‘Color Guard’.

Those banded beauties work nicely in concert with each other and with another pairing I like, the native Columbine, Aquilegia chrysantha var. hinckleyana, mixed with the cultivar Katie’s Dwarf Ruellia, Ruellia brittoniana, ‘Katie’s Dwarf’.

The evergreen Columbine, with its soft form and graceful foliage, blooms yellow in spring. Conversely, the deciduous Katie’s Dwarf Ruellia has dark, lance-like leaves and sports sprays of deep purple from July through October. Opposites attract and work well together–at least that’s true of these two plants.

Head over to Digging to check out other accolades to the leafy among us.

Bloom Day, August 2014

Posted on August 15, 2014 by Tina

Celebrating August blooms, I’m thanking Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting this fun flower meme. With sporadic rains and relatively mild temperatures this summer, there are fewer burnt-toast blossoms in Austin’s August.

My Mexican Orchid Tree, Bauhinia mexicana, has bloomed on and off all summer.

Elegant, snowy blossoms cool a shady spot on hot Texas afternoons. These flowers are a favorite of Black Swallowtail Butterflies.

In stark contrast with the white Mexican Orchid, but also favored by butterflies, is the Pride of Barbados, Caesalpinia pulcherrima. Tropical-hot orange and yellow,

… these drama queens thrive in the heat.

Royal Sage, Salvia guaranitica, blooms stunningly in early and mid-spring, but not as commonly though summer.

This year though, a smattering of midnight blue gorgeousness has graced the two royal specimens in my gardens.

With multiple flowers opening everyday, the Lemon Rose Mallow, Hibiscus calyphyllus dances through August.

Flouncing her petals open in the mornings, sashaying during afternoon breezes and bowing to heat at the end of the day, this mallow is a consummate performer.

The blooms of Coral Vine, Antigonon leptopus, form on lacy loops along climbing tendrils.

I’ll replace its trellis next winter when this tropical, but hardy-for-the-Austin area herbaceous perennial freezes to the ground.

The trellis is a bit wonky, even for me. The honeybees and I eagerly await the apex of Coral Vine’s blossoming period–soon, very soon!!

A close-up of a coral Autumn Sage, Salvia greggii, flower,

…it belongs to a woody shrub native to Texas which produces a variety of colors. I like this soft coral pink–it’s the best blooming salvia in my gardens this year.

The bright red Martha Gonzales Rose, Rosa ‘Martha Gonzales’, flowers throughout summer.

I wish mine received a little more sun–it would bloom even more. This is a terrifically tough antique rose for Central Texas.

The Mexican Honeysuckle, Justicia spicigera, returned full-force after our hard winter.

It’s orange clusters await early fall visits by butterflies and the occasional hummingbird.

The shrub is covered in tubular goodness now and that’s likely to continue into the fall months.

This pairing of pink and blue is too sweet!

The creeping groundcover, Leadwort Plumbago, Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, produces sky blue florets,

…which beautifully complement the small periscope blooms atop the stems of Pink Skullcap, Scutellaria suffrutescens.

And still screaming: Summer! Summer! Summer!–is the sunflower de jour.

Or rather, sunflower de l’ete.

While new flowers open daily,

…those spent blossoms that have gone to seed are providing yummy munchies for the local finches.

Happy finch!

Visit May Dreams Gardens for more blooming beauties this Bloggers’ Bloom Day.

Skin Flick

Posted on August 13, 2014 by Tina

Skin photo, more like. Old and new skin together, highlighted in early morning sun as he/she emerged into the adult form during the last molt of life. I found this cicada and its former skin hanging on an expanse of Cast Iron foliage as I finished some necessary pruning of summer wayward perennials.

Opalescence of blue and green, I was astounded at the beauty of this common, often disparaged insect. Growing up in Texas, the buzz of the cicadae are a fixed, noisy part of the fabric of my life. Ubiquitous and incessant in late summer, I don’t always notice the cicadae’s mating songs, but the songs are there. Always. Loud and desperate for love, or sex, anyway. They never SHUT UP about it!

In a post last month by Deb at austin agrodolce, she wrote about finding a cicada in much the same way I did–going about her gardening business and happening along to witness the drama a cicada’s molting for a mate. Like Deb, I knew it was a cicada, but it turns out these insects are particularly hard to identify to exact species. I’ve been using an excellent site to identify the various insects found in my gardens and I turned to this site for my cicada’s confirmation: Austin Bug Collection. I’m reasonably sure that the cicada is a Tibicen species and I’ll posit that the wearer of The Blue and The Green is a Tibicen resh.

But I could be wrong.

Earlier that same morning, I was freshening my dog’s outdoor water bowl and spied an odd thing floating in the water. I fished it out and it was the exoskeleton of the front section with connected eyes of a cicada. Yuck. And cool. I guess someone found a vulnerable cicada, mid-molt, munched it and then washed down the delightful snack with a slurp of water, leaving the morsel of head adrift.

My morning for cicada discoveries.

I checked later and Mr./ Ms. Cicada in the Cast Iron was gone.

Gone to participate in the cacophony of summer’s din. Gone to find the one true love. Gone to make more cicadae.

Gone to continue the racket for appreciative and unappreciative listeners.

My Gardener Says…

Yeah, it's work, but it's less work than grass and far more interesting.

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Foliage Follow-up, August 2014

Bloom Day, August 2014

Skin Flick