Mississippi wildflowers

Home again from our trip through Mississippi, visiting with family and friends there. We make this trip at this time every year and it is always a pleasure to see these folks again.

One of the pleasures of driving through the countryside in north Mississippi at this time of year is that so many of the roadside wildflowers are at their peak.

This meadow is typical - native grasses interspersed with Queen Anne's lace, coreopsis, tickseed, and black-eyed Susans.

Queen Anne's lace is the dominant wildflower in the mix at this time. The smaller white flowers you see in the background here are one of the fleabanes.

Here's a close-up of the fleabane - pretty and dainty little flowers.

Stands of black-eyed Susan are common.

Uncommon but always striking is the native butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa. It likes the soil in this part of the world and grows readily here, but you never see large stands of it as you do of other wildflowers. It's always just one or two or three plants standing out as bright accents among the other wildflowers and grasses. Driving along, one sees these accents every mile or so. Their gaudy color makes them hard to miss.

Not actually a wildflower but a plant that you see everywhere in the wild here is the old tawny day lily. It escaped captivity many, many years ago and has made itself quite at home in Nature.

And, of course, there is that ubiquitous wildflower, the dandelion, growing here in a cemetery.

The countryside there was especially beautiful this year. They have had plenty of rain this spring and Nature has responded with a burst of blooms. I couldn't help but notice that vegetable gardens, too, looked especially healthy and productive. Mississippi plants have had a good year so far and it was a pleasure to view them.

Hot days, hot blossoms

The weather is hot and humid and hot colors predominate in the garden.

Hamelia patens is in its glory in the hottest days of summer.

The hot pink of  phlox is a mainstay of the summer garden.

The 'Tropicannas' are blooming and enjoying a brief shower that we got today.

Nearby, the Justicia 'Orange Flame' has got its second wind and is blooming again.

Out by the pond, the red 'Texas Star,' aka swamp hibiscus, is blooming.

In the pond, the water lily blooms offer a cooling note.

For the next several days, with some trepidation, I'm leaving my hot blossoms and the rest of my garden in the care of my non-gardening daughter while my husband and I take to the road. While we are out of town, opportunities to post here may not come up, but I will be returning before the Summer Solstice. In the meantime, happy gardening to you.

This week in the garden - #67

Okay. I give up. My spring vegetable garden is almost a complete failure.

The corn that started out so promisingly tasseled but never developed ears. The zucchini produced a few fruits and then collapsed. Usually that means squash vine borers have been at work, but this time it seemed to be a fungal disease.

The tomato vines look rather sickly. They are producing but not in the quantity that I would expect. The green beans, eggplants, and peppers are coming along but just don't seem to be growing the way they would in a normal year. They are not producing yet but I have my fingers crossed.

The only thing that has really been successful so far is the tomatillos which have produced a ton of fruits and are still blooming and producing, but, on the whole, it has been a very disappointing season.

I'm going to blame the weather again here. We had an unusually cool spring and I got a tardy start in the garden and so the plants were all several weeks later than they normally are. Even as they were growing, it was still quite cool sometimes at night - just not the kind of weather that spring vegetable plants expect and love. Perhaps I should have provided more added organic matter to the beds as well. For whatever reason, I'm pretty much writing it off at this point. Maybe I'll try again later.

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The white cat's whiskers are blooming. Behind them is celosia.

The old heirloom buddleia is full of these blooms. They are not as showy as the modern buddleias but butterflies and bees love them.

The red yucca is blooming among the Mexican feather grass in the bottle tree bed.

 Here's a close-up of the red yucca blooms.

More sunflowers bloom every day.

The crocosmia is beginning its long bloom cycle.

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It's very hot and very humid now even though, according to the calendar, summer is still a couple of weeks away. I've spent a lot of time watering plants this week, although we did get half an inch of rain on Thursday. In the next few days, we are expecting to see 100 degree temperatures for the first time in almost a year.

We might as well get used to the idea. It's going to be another scorcher of a summer.

Butterfly-less

This morning I saw a Red Admiral and a Giant Swallowtail in my backyard. Yesterday I saw a Monarch and a Gray Hairstreak and the day before, I saw a Gulf Fritillary, but, all in all, I'm seeing surprisingly few butterflies these days.

It's surprising because earlier in the year, in late winter and early spring, my yard was absolutely teeming with the colorful fliers. Swallowtails of all kinds, but especially Tigers, were daily visitors and not just solitary ones. It was not at all unusual to see several Tiger Swallowtails or Pipevine Swallowtails or Gulf Fritillaries or even Monarchs during a day's time. No more.

This is a bit unusual because most years around this time is when the butterfly population really begins to explode. It is consistently warm - no, make that hot! - every day now and these critters normally thrive in warm and hot weather. Generally speaking, from now through the end of autumn, we have a constantly changing kaleidoscope of butterfly visitors. So far, that just hasn't been the case this year.

This spring has been different for us because it has been exceptionally cool. I just heard that it has been the 30th coolest spring on record for the area. Moreover, up until recently, we had been getting regular rains. It has, in short, been a very pleasant spring for humans and plants, but maybe that wasn't so good for the butterflies. Perhaps it inhibited their ability to successfully reproduce and that's why we are not seeing as many as usual just now. That's my theory anyway.

I expect this dearth of butterflies will not last much longer. There are plenty of flowers and plenty of host plants in the garden to entice them and the weather now is mostly hot and dry. Time will remedy my butterfly-lessness.

  Black Swallowtail on lantana earlier this spring.

Wordless Wednesday: First water lily bloom

This week in the garden - #66

Here we are at the last day of May, five months into 2013 already. Where has the year gone?

Summer may not have arrived on the calendar just yet, but, by any other measure, it is here. Temperatures in the 90s every day. Oppressive humidity. No rain in sight. Yep, it is definitely summer in Southeast Texas, and tomorrow is the first day of hurricane season. Oh, joy.

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May means daylilies. There are several different kinds in my garden and nearly all of them have been in bloom this week.

The variety names are lost in the mists of history and my memory, but I love them no less for being nameless.

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Long-time readers of this blog, from 2009 or earlier, may remember my posts about Sam Box, the box turtle who lived in our backyard for over twenty years. As soon as the temperatures got warm each year, she (we didn't know her sex when we named her) would show up in the backyard. Over the years, she developed a cat food habit and she would come to the back porch where I fed my two garden cats to filch some of their kibble. I would see her most days during the summer.

2009 was the last year that I saw Sam. We had an unusually harsh winter in 2008-09 and I think she may have succumbed during it. But she had a good, long life.

The following year, 2010, a baby box turtle took her place. Box turtles are territorial and we assumed since he was evidently hatched in Sam's territory that he must have been Sam's son. So, he became Samson or Sammy, for short.

He turned up again in 2011, having grown a bit but still small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.

Sammy in the summer of 2011. Just like mom, he would show up on the back porch every day looking for his cat food fix.

I didn't see him at all last year. It's possible he was around, but I never happened to encounter him. Then, yesterday, once again, a small box turtle, slightly bigger than the last time I had seen Sammy, came to the back porch to enjoy a cat food snack. But, if it is Sammy, he is much changed since I last saw him.

Apparently, he's had an encounter with a predator. His shell was damaged around the head where it looked like something had gnawed at it. Still, in spite of the damage, he seemed none the worse for wear. He appeared to be moving about just fine and enjoying his meal of cat food, just like Sam Box in the old days. I hope he lasts as long as she did.

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Elsewhere in the garden, in another sign that summer is here, the Hamelia patens is in bloom.

And the green anoles are busily displaying their flashy red throat patches as an inducement for the female anoles to come on over and play house.

Yep, summer is most definitely here.

Wordless Wednesday: Summertime!