Tuesday, February 28, 2012

New growth everywhere

The Maximilian sunflower is SPREADING. Cool!

Stay tuned...I'm going to keep an eye on some plants, then ID them after they bloom.

Knotted hedge-parsley (Torilis nodosa), another nonnative (yikes!)

Darn, I wish I could ID plants before they bloom...But I'm working on that!

Prairie verbena? Still not sure (Close up of leaf below)


Common chickweed (According to Wildflowers of the Texas Hill Country, this species was introduced from Eurasia.)

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Mountain laurel and agarita

The agarita across the street is in bloom!
And our neighbor's mountain laurel is blooming (ours is too young to bloom, I guess).

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

More hints of spring

A feather flower!


This afternoon, I wandered around the Wildscape with my camera. How lovely, how wonderful this spring will be! Thank you, Lord! Thank you so much!




Coralberry

Dewberry...I give up. You win! You can stay!

This is a really pretty volunteer grass that I'm thinking of making "legit." (I need to figure out the common name and species.)
Thick and green green green, the oxalis is blooming!



Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Gotta love those squirrels!


Walk around our Wildscape, and you'll spot "volunteer" sunflower plants popping up here and there. Volunteer? Hardly! They've been planted by our industrious, neighborhood squirrels! The eastern fox squirrels, to be precise. Last year, we had corn coming up, too!

Squirrels have been at this for a long, long time. Year around, they stash seeds away for anticipated meals in the future. Trouble is, they forget sometimes where they've squirreled them away (pardon the cliche, please...couldn't resist). As a result, we have wonderful trees and forests across our lands, no doubt thanks to our squirrel farmers. 

Now scientists say they've grown plants from fruit stored away by squirrels eons ago! Today, the New York Times reported, "Researchers grow plants from 32,000-year-old cells."

Gotta love those squirrels!

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Variegated fritillary

Variegated fritillary out sunning today

Budding out everywhere

Mountain sage
Over the weekend, we had about 3 inches of rain, a HUGE blessing! Most plants had already started budding out, but now they're going gangbusters. It's so neat to watch how they bud, either from new growth at the ground or on old growth. Sometimes both! I love to see how some also multiply and spread. It's going to be a BEAUTIFUL spring!

Fall obedient plants (they're spreading!)

Baby spiderworts 'Purple'

Mealycup sage 'Augusta Duelberg'

Fragrant mistflower

Galeana red sage

Chile pequin

Blue mistflower

Flameleaf acanthus

Black-eyed susans

Salvia 'Otahal'

Blue curls

Mealycup sage 'Henry Duelberg'

Mexican salvia

Heartleaf scullcap (it's spreading!)

Lyreleaf salvia

The baby bluebonnets that I transplanted are surviving!

Copper Canyon daisy

February 2012 in our Wildscape

Three inches of rain just this weekend continue to green up our Wildscape!