Veterans Day

To all veterans who have served and still serve and to their families who also serve, may we never forget and always honor your service and sacrifices.

This week in the garden - #37

What a lovely week this has been. Bright yellow sunshine accompanied by cool, pleasant temperatures. What could be better?

Much of my week has been spent coming down from the mountain, so to speak, processing what I saw and experienced during our vacation - and processing photographs. Oh, my, we took soooo many pictures during the trip!

I still haven't finished with all of them but one thing that leaps out at me from the pictures is the desert foliage. Big Bend National Park is located in the Chihuahuan Desert and encompasses the Chisos Mountains and a few other lesser mountain ranges. The colors there are muted and the foliage is very different from what we see here in humid Southeast Texas. I found it very attractive and as I processed the photos, I thought about ways that I might translate some of that muted beauty to my own garden. Here are some of the pictures that are an inspiration to me.

I just like the look of this soft grayish cottony-looking foliage against the hard rock of the mountain.

More soft, muted colors.

Yellow was the dominant color of fall flowers in the desert. I love the look of these little flowers that have found a way to seed themselves among the gravel and small pebbles of the desert floor below the Chisos Mountains.

Grayed colors are a way of dealing with the intense sunlight of the desert.

Do you recognize this plant? That's right - it's Tecoma stans. This tough plant that flourishes in my garden also flourishes in the middle of the desert, although the plants there are much smaller than mine. But they were attracting bees and flies just like they do in my yard.

Here's another flower that looked and smelled very familiar to me. The scent is very similar to the almond verbena which I grow and I think the plant must be related, although the leaves of this plant are much smaller and the plant itself is smaller. Several of these small shrubs grew along the trails that we walked in the Chisos Mountains.

I don't know the name of this ground cover with the tiny purple flowers, but it was flourishing in the dry, dry desert.

 Most of the plants in the desert feature spines or thorns as an adaptation for preserving moisture. Iconic among these plants is the prickly pear.

Another tiny yellow flower blooming among the rocks.

You can certainly see why it is called prickly. Those spines are wicked!

A softer version of yellow. This plant was similar to the Texas sage that grows in my garden, although the flower color is different.

You can just see a ghostly moon setting at mid-day behind the limbs of the ocotillo, another iconic plant of this region. I do like the sculptural look.

This rather lush-looking flower looked almost out of place in this harsh environment.

In certain parts of the desert and the mountainsides, the sotol, a member of the lily family, is the dominant plant. The tough flower spikes of this plant, two of which you see here, are often used to make walking sticks or other sturdy implements. Again, the thing I love about this plant is its sculptural quality and the soft gray-green of its spiky foliage. Plus, that flower spike is really dramatic.

I love the look of rocks in the desert and I'll be trying to find more ways to incorporate rocks into my garden. I love the sculptural look of the rocks and the plants and I would like to be able to translate that in some way into my humidity-ridden domain. And the soft, restful colors are very pleasing to me. Maybe I can include more of that here.

I think we all have much to learn from the desert, a place which blooms and flourishes with a very minimal amount of water. Plants and animals there find ways of conserving water and we, in our changed world with decreasing rainfall, need to learn their lessons.

Wordless Wednesday: Desert butterflies - Sleepy Orange

I'm baa-ack!

Big Bend National Park was wonderful! If you have an opportunity to go there, by all means, take it. It is a place of mostly untamed, stark, and varied  beauty. Much of the 801,000 acres of the park are untouched by human activities and are havens for the wild things that live there. The parts of the park that are easily accessible for humans are the parts that we visited and there is plenty there to keep a visitor busy for weeks, or even a lifetime.

I have about a million pictures - well, four hundred, anyway - from the trip, and I'll be posting some of them here and on my other two blogs in coming days, but for now, I just wanted to let you know that I'm back and that my garden survived very well in my absence. My daughters took turns looking after things for us while we were gone and they did good!

When I walked out to the backyard this afternoon, one of the first things that I saw was a beautiful longwing Julia butterfly on the jatropha blossoms. Of course, I didn't have my camera in hand so I ran back inside to get it, but by the time I returned the butterfly had disappeared. I'm hoping it will stick around and give me another chance because Julias don't show up in my garden that often. It's an event when they do.  Its appearance today felt like a gift from Mother Nature to welcome me home. If only she could have warned me to have a camera handy.

Enjoying Big Bend National Park by Gary Clark: A review

(Cross-posted from The Nature of Things.)

Gary Clark is a well-known naturalist and writer on Nature in my neck of the woods. He's also an educator who has taught "leisure-living" courses on birding at the local college, one of which I took several years ago. He is a very knowledgeable guide to all the birding hot spots in Texas, of which there are many since this is one of the birdiest states in the union. 

In Enjoying Big Bend National Park, Clark has not focused on the birds of the park but has given a general guide to the interesting geology and history, as well as the wildlife and flora of that wild and beautiful area. Big Bend, named for its placement at a big bend in the river that separates Mexico from the United States, is one of the wildest and largest of America's national parks. It covers more than 800,000 acres, making it slightly larger than Yosemite National Park. Moreover, it encompasses a vast variety of ecological systems that include the Chihuahuan Desert, the rocky Chisos Mountains that reach up to 8,000 feet, steamy riparian floodplains, and cool mountain forests. 

Sounds a bit daunting, doesn't it? But Clark has broken all of that down into bite-sized pieces that should lead the visitor to just the type of experience he or she is looking for. He has suggested adventures within the park that range from two-hour to half-day to full-day time frames and that can be had on foot or on a drive. He rates each trek on its degree of difficulty from easy to strenuous and includes sections for families and small children and for people with limited physical mobility. The message here is that anyone can find a way to experience and enjoy Big Bend.

Clark does not neglect the safety cautions in regard to being in the wild. He repeatedly warns about the dry air of this environment and the importance of keeping hydrated. His most urgent advice is to carry water at all times, even if you are only going on a short hike and even if you don't think you'll need it. Also, the sun is intense here and it is important to protect yourself from it with sunscreen, hats, and sunglasses. Long-sleeved shirts and long pants are not a bad idea either. And if you are going to get out of that car and go hiking, it is vitally important to have sturdy walking shoes or boots and to wear socks that will protect your feet. But if you forget every other warning, Clark begs you to remember this: "DRINK WATER! DRINK WATER! DRINK WATER!"

Big Bend has over four hundred species of birds that either live there or pass through at some time of the year and that's why I'll be heading that way in a few hours. The park also has a plethora of mammals from ground squirrels to striped skunks to gray foxes to the occasional black bear and mountain lion. One must always be on the alert when hiking or camping in this wilderness and respect these animals. 

Big Bend is also a Mecca for butterflies. Clark writes that there are "a mind-boggling variety of butterflies, many of which are still being cataloged." Yet another reason this butterfly-fancier wants to go there. 

Whether you are interested in butterflies or rocks, the Colima Warbler or the earless lizard, human culture of the past or preserving the environment for the future, Big Bend has something to offer and this guide will help you to find it.

*~*~*~*

So, I will be on the road for the next ten days, most of it spent at Big Bend, and I do not expect to have Internet access for much of the trip. If you should happen to notice my absence from this space, that will be the reason. I hope you miss me!

Wordless Wednesday: Cotton blossom

This week in the garden - #36

Fall - and the muscadines are turning purple on their vines.

October is a month full of blooms in my garden. There was no way I could include all of them in my Bloom Day post earlier this week, so I thought I'd show you a few more today.

My fall asters were trampled into the ground by workmen repairing our fence in the late summer. I never expected them to recover enough to have any blooms this fall, but, surprisingly, they have managed to produce a few, proving once again that you can't keep a good plant down.

And speaking of plants that you can't keep down, orange bulbine may be the most indomitable plant in my garden. Here, it blooms in front of the shrimp plant.

My favorite clematis, 'Rouge Cardinal,' is blooming again by the back porch.

  Nearby, the tiny blossoms of Tradescantia 'Purple Heart' are ubiquitous.

The goldenrod by the back fence is finally in full bloom.

Antique rose 'Old Blush' enjoys autumn.

I'm still getting migrating Monarch butterflies in the garden. This one rests on a leaf in the afternoon sun.

I do love my gerberas. Happy little flowers!

Evolulus glomeratus 'Blue Daze' blooms in a front yard bed.

The purple trailing lantana is a magnet to butterflies like this White-striped Long-tailed Skipper.

Nearby, a Julia's Skipper also enjoys the lantana.

While two other varieties of skippers jostle over the blue plumbago.

Rosa 'Ducher' is in bloom again.

As is 'Belinda's Dream.'

And the canna 'Lucifer' brings light to a dark spot in the garden.

This is my first year to have 'Molineux' in my garden and I do love these luscious blossoms.

A Common Buckeye feeds on the mystery plant I showed you yesterday. I believe the plant is something in the "broom" family but I haven't entirely nailed it down yet.

Cape honeysuckle has bloomed gloriously this fall.

Over it all, a female Rufous Hummingbird keeps watch, ready to evict any trespassers.

Today, I bought a collection of plants for the veggie garden, things like red cabbage, cauliflower, Chinese cabbage, and collards. With any luck, I hope to get them all in the ground tomorrow. Time to finish getting that fall garden planted!

I hope your gardening is going well this week. Happy weekend!