Wordless Wednesday: Tiger, tiger, burning bright...

This week in the garden - #27

This week in the garden has been all about the hummingbirds. The hummingbird action has been frantic as both Ruby-throated Hummingbirds and Rufous Hummingbirds pass through on migration.

The garden has plenty of the blossoms that hummingbirds love (like Hamelia)  to keep them well fed, but, of course, I enjoy putting out the sugar water feeders for them as well and this week they've been hitting those feeders hard.

The male Ruby-throated Hummingbirds have been passing through for several weeks now and there were still a few around this week.

I had a female Ruby-throated Hummingbird who was in residence for the summer. I'm not sure if this is her or perhaps another migrant passing through.

Last winter, I had a couple of female Rufous Hummingbirds that spent the season with me. I'm hoping that will happen again this year. Was this little girl one of my winter visitors and will she stay or move on?

This male Rufous really, really likes that sugar water! He defends this feeder from all other hummers.

In addition to watching and photographing hummingbirds, I did actually get a little weeding and pruning and general clean-up done in the garden this week. But mostly, I just enjoyed the hummingbird Olympics.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - August 2012

August. Easily the most miserable month of the year in Southeast Texas and not only because it's the month when I officially become a year older. No, it's mostly because of the weather that we endure this month. At least that's what I tell myself.

Last year during August we had 30 out of 31 days that were over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and no rain. This year, the temperatures have actually been much more moderate than that, though still hot, but again, we've had no rain this month. The garden and its blooms are suffering.

Still, here it is Bloom Day once again so out into the garden I go in search of whatever blooms I can find. I'm embarrassed to say that most of them you will have seen here many times before. Maybe I need to make a run to the nursery and get some new plants with some different blooms.

This ruellia, 'Chi Chi,' is actually a thug in the garden, but I have it contained in a bed along my back fence where it is not so easy for it to spread. And I do enjoy these pretty pink blossoms.

This is evergreen wisteria and it actually is not a thug unlike the purple variety. This is my third year to have it in my garden and it has not spread at all. Moreover, it has been full of these blooms all summer.

Some of the daylilies, like this one, continue their bloom period into this last official month of summer. (Of course, here, summer actually lasts into October.)

 Much of the milkweed is resting now and preparing to put on another flush of bloom, but a few of the plants still sport their colorful orange and yellow blooms.

The old Clerodendrum bungei, also called Cashmere Bouquet or Mexican hydrangea, is full of these lilac-pink blossoms.

And nearby, a relative, the Clerodendrun 'Bleeding Heart' vine sports many flowers, not all of them yet "bleeding."

Esperanza, "Yellow Bells," blooms all summer long regardless of the weather and is a smorgasbord for bees and butterflies.

The unique flowers of the strawberry bush are long gone and now it is full of these "strawberries" that give it its name.

The pequin pepper blooms continuously over several months and produces a plethora of these tiny hot peppers which the birds, especially the mockingbirds, love. I grow it mostly for the birds. In fact, one common name for the plant is "bird pepper."

'Pride of Barbados' has outdone itself in producing blooms this summer.

This seems a bit late for 'Queen Anne's Lace' to be blooming, but there it is!

The yellow cestrum considers any month of the year appropriate for its blooms.

The swamp hibiscus, known here in Texas as the "Texas Star," continues its summer-long bloom in both the white variety and...

The more common red variety. Those drops of water on the petals are not rain, unfortunately, but drops from the sprinkler.

The Jatropha curcas has been a real trooper through this miserable season, gracing its spot by the little fish pond with wave after wave of these blooms.

And, speaking of troopers, I can't do a Bloom Day post in summer without mentioning Hamelia patens which just blooms its heart out all summer long. One of the plant's common names is "Hummingbird Bush," and at this time of year, it becomes evident how it got its name. My garden is alive with hummingbird activity  now. The Ruby-throated Hummingbirds have been passing through on migration and sipping from the Hamelia for weeks now, and just within the last few days, Rufous Hummingbirds started showing up in the yard.

An adult male Rufous sits on a favorite perch just above one of the Hamelia shrubs so that he can head off any other hummingbird that tries to feed there.

Nearby, an adult female heads toward the one of the sugar water feeders I have set up for them. These little flying jewels may not qualify as "blooms" but they are certainly adding a lot of color and movement to my garden these days!

Thanks to Carol of May Dreams Gardens for hosting Bloom Day once again, and thank YOU for visiting my garden this month. Happy Bloom Day!

This week in the garden - #26

The plant of this hot and humid but very dry week in my garden is the Stapelia gigantea, also called the Carrion Flower. It is a plant in the Asclepiadaceae family and is native to South Africa. It looks a bit like a cactus but its four-sided fleshy stems do not feature spines.

A start of the plant was given to me by my friend Ursula a couple of years ago. I was a bit leery of it, to tell the truth, but I stuck it in a pot and basically just forgot about it for several months. That was in October. The next spring, there it was, hale and hearty. Obviously, the plant doesn't require much care.

In fact, in researching the plant's care later, I found that it thrives on having a cool, dry rest period in winter, so I had inadvertently given it exactly what it needed to flourish. In the growing season, it enjoys having full sun and moderate water, preferably in a well-drained soil (2 parts loam to 1 part sharp sand) with small pebbles mixed in for drainage. They thrive in pots and can withstand extreme heat. Sounds ideal for my garden!

This is a picture of my plant from a year ago, just as it was about to bloom for the first time. As you can see, it is still in a fairly small pot.

And this is its first actual bloom from last year.

Soon its blooms were drawing flies like...um, flies. You see, the plant's common name of Carrion Flower refers to the odor of the blossoms, which is something like rotting meat, and that, of course, brings the flies in droves. Last year, though, I really couldn't detect much of an odor coming from my little plant's flowers. Obviously, the flies could.

This is a picture of the same plant from a few weeks ago. As you can see, it has grown quite a bit in the past year and has had to be moved to a ten-inch pot, which it is also quickly outgrowing.

And now, it is blooming once again, and not just one or two blossoms. It is covered in blooms and buds of all sizes. And no longer is there any doubt as to why the plant is called Carrion Flower. The odor is quite apparent and you don't even have to stick your nose close to the flower.

Needless to say, the flies are ecstatic!

Wordless Wednesday: Early August dreams of snow

This week in the garden - #25

This week in the garden saw the first of August's two full moons shining down at the first of the month. This was the Green Corn Moon, also sometimes called the Sturgeon Moon by those Native American tribes that relied on the big fish as a major part of their diet. The really interesting thing about this month, though, is that we will have another full moon on the 31st. This will be what is called a "Blue Moon" so you can look for those things that only happen "once in a Blue Moon" to happen this month!

All the berry shrubs are beginning to be weighted down with fruit as midsummer begins to wane into late summer. That includes the white beautyberry shrub which is as full of berries as I've ever seen.

This continues to be a summer of butterflies, which is the very best kind of summer, in my opinion.

Pipevine Swallowtails have again been plentiful in the garden this summer.

As have their lookalike Spicebush Swallowtail cousins. You can tell the two apart because the Pipevine has a single row of seven large orange dots on the hindwing, whereas the Spicebush has a double row of orange dots.

Of course, there is no mistaking the ubiquitous Gulf Fritillary as anything but a Gulf Fritillary.

It's not only butterflies that are visiting the garden in numbers this week.

Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are on the move already, heading south for the winter. This male stopped to visit my Hamelia patens.

My garden continues to suffer from my neglect. For most of the summer, I really have been concentrating on my house and getting some much-needed jobs done there to the detriment of the garden. It seems I don't have the energy for both. Even so, the garden rocks along, looking a bit overgrown and frowsy, not to mention weedy, but it's in a holding pattern until I can manage to get out there and take a hand in its development once again. Maybe next week...

Wordless Wednesday: Competition