Pretty little wildflowers

A small 8' x 4' raised bed in my veggie garden is designated as my wildflower bed. The seeds to start the bed came from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and so I think of it as my Lady Bird bed.

The first flowers to bloom in the bed each spring are the bluebonnets, which I've shown you before, but hard on the heels of the bluebonnets come several other less well-known wildflowers, some of them not always easy to identify.

This week, this pretty little thing has been capturing my attention. I had no idea what it was and, even after checking through my field guides, I wasn't able to find anything that looked exactly like it. Finally, in my Wildflowers of Texas guide, I found something called 'Blue Gilia' (Gilia rigidula) which looked like my flower in form and in the leaves, but the color was different.

I went online looking for other pictures of gilias and the closest thing I could find to my plant was something called 'Bird's-eye Gilia.' However, that plant is a native of California and I couldn't understand why it would be in a packet of Texas wildflower seed. There may be another native Texan that looks similar but I haven't found it yet. The one thing that I am pretty sure of is that it is a gilia, which is a member of the Phlox Family  (Polemoniaceae). According to the information in the guide book, these plants bloom sporadically from March to October, so I look forward to seeing its lovely face throughout the season.

This is another wildflower that is presently in bloom in the bed and I've been even less successful in identifying it. Do you recognize it? Whatever its name, it is another pretty little wildflower that is brightening up my garden and my outlook these days.