Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - November 2012

Whoa! Bloom Day snuck up on me this month. I had forgotten all about it until the Bloom Day posts started showing up in my Google reader. So I rushed outside to record what is blooming in the garden so that I could show you.

I went to take a picture of the Turk's Cap which I knew was in full bloom, but my attention was distracted by this green anole on the bricks above the plant. It's a cool day here - temperatures still in the 50s when the picture was taken - and the anole was soaking in the warmth of the bright sun on this south-facing wall.

And, sure enough, the Turk's Cap was in full bloom.

'Tangerine Dream' crossvine is a spring bloomer but continues to send out a few blooms throughout most of the year.

I have a good crop of butternut squash and the vines are still blooming.

The milkweed blooms have all turned to seeds now - seeds that await a wind to send them to their destination.

The milkweed has another crop, too - Monarch caterpillars.

'Caldwell Pink' polyantha rose blooms almost every month in my garden - November is no exception.

 Cape honeysuckle still sports some of its fiery blooms, as well.

A half-opened bloom of the sunny yellow hibiscus greeted me on my early-morning rounds with the camera.

Red firespike is almost done but it's had a good long cycle of bloom.

The purple trailing lantana is still blooming and still drawing butterflies like this skipper. (A Dorantes, I think.)

 And this beautiful Red Admiral.

And, of course, the ever-present Gulf Fritillary.

Blue plumbago has just bloomed and bloomed and bloomed since early spring.

 The shrimp plant is sending out some jumbo-sized "shrimp."

'Radazz' Knockout roses have been putting on a good show recently.

In the herb garden, Mexican mint marigold is beginning to bloom.

Jatropha will continue to send out blooms until first frost.

Tecoma stans is still full of its flowers as well as its bean-like seeds.

Hamelia patens will go to sleep with the first killing frost. After three seasons of heavy bloom, it deserves a rest.

These are the glory days for Copper Canyon daisies.

Bleeding heart clerodendron - these blossoms haven't opened up to show the "blood" yet.

Yellow cestrum just keeps going and going like that pink bunny on the long-ago battery commercials on television.

This half-open bloom of a succulent is criss-crossed by delicate silk strands from a spider.

I know I've gone on too long, but I have to show you my favorite bloom in the garden this month - the lovely 'Litchfield Angel' rose. I love the delicate colors of this blossom.

By the time December Bloom Day rolls around, we probably will have had our first frost here in Southeast Texas and my garden will look quite different. It's been a long year and the garden has bloomed its heart out for me. I'm ready to tuck it in for a few weeks' winter nap.

Thank you for visiting today and thank you as always to our hostess Carol of May Dreams Gardens. Happy Bloom Day!

Wordless Wednesday: Tattered lady

Getting reacquainted

After having been away from my garden for a couple of weeks, I've been doing my walk-throughs and reacquainting myself with what's going on here.

The Duranta erecta is weighed down with a heavy crop of these golden berries which give it one of its common names, "Golden Dewdrop."  Some of the limbs are almost touching the ground because of the weight of the berries.

But the plant also continues to draw butterflies like this Giant Swallowtail to its few remaining blossoms. Butterflies really, really love Duranta. I'm thinking of adding another plant if I can figure out where to put it.

In the veggie garden, the butternut squash also has a heavy crop. I'm crossing my fingers that the fruits will have time to mature before our first frost, but if the frost comes early, I stand ready to deploy my frost cloth. I'm determined not to lose this delicious harvest.

The wonderful rose, 'Belinda's Dream,' just keeps on producing these luscious blooms.

The matured passion vine flowers are turning into these fruits.

The black-eyed peas will soon be ready. Maybe in time for Thanksgiving!

The Copper Canyon daisies will soon be in full bloom, presenting a solid mass of cheerful yellow to the passerby.

The milkweed bears a nice population of fat, healthy Monarch caterpillars.

 With more to come! A female Monarch deposits her egg on the milkweed.

In another part of the garden, the fruits of the Satsuma are beginning to change color.

And by the gate to the vegetable garden, the 'Litchfield Angel's' blooms look angelic, indeed.

My garden actually looks pretty good. Maybe I should go away more often!

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.