Curiosities

There are lots of interesting critters showing up these days . I first noticed some lady beetle larvae on a large dill plant that I was about to pull out, since it had gone to seed and had very little green left on it. A few days later I saw 10-15 of them on a bronze fennel. Those are now gone and apparently grown up, but several remain on the dill, so I will wait a couple more days to pull it up and plant a replacement.

Then as I was cleaning up the poppy bed, I saw four strange, horned caterpillars on the pink evening primrose. A little research revealed that they were larvae of the whitelined sphinx moth (one of 3 kinds of 'hummingbird moth'), which made sense since I had seen one the night before around my back porch light. The larvae typically have a lot of color variation, but if you see something similar to this on primrose or pentas, it's probably the Sphinx.

Here is a borrowed photo of the adult.

In the driveway there is a big tarp covering what's left of 2 yards of Geo Growers 'native mix,' and the last rain made little puddles in the folds. This Woodhouse's toad made the best of the shade and water. Buffo woodhousii is common throughout Texas and gets to be 4-5 inches long. According to enature.com, its habitat includes "sandy areas near marshes, irrigation ditches, backyards, and temporary rain pools," and its call sounds like a sheep with a bad cold. Click here to listen. This guy stayed in his cool hidey-hole all day, then disappeared just before sunset--off hunting, no doubt.


Below is the very first slug I've ever seen in my yard, known as the common garden slug and prevalent throughout Texas. It showed up on my back deck one night, and at first I thought it was a leaf under the weak porch light. I tipped it into a jar so I could take photos in daylight. It was quite large, about 4 inches, and heavy--about 4-5 ounces. Did you know that slugs are hermaphrodites? Their sex organs are under their mantle (part behind the head), so you can imagine the contortions they have to engage in to have sex with another slug. Actually, there are photos of fornicating slugs that you can google if you really want to have a look. My slug was solo. I put him by the back fence hoping that some toad or bird would find him tasty.

Not a critter, but curious nonetheless, is the manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chips' I got from YuccaDo nursery and planted in the new bed where all the St. Augustine grass used to be. There are several varieties of manfreda, a deciduous member of agavaceae, and this one was actually developed by YuccaDo from seeds of an unusually wavy form found in Mexico. It looks like an alien starfish that only Salivador Dali could imagine. It blooms in June, and if I'm lucky I'll soon have a 5 foot flower stalk. The plant itself has already doubled in size since planting.

I hope you are discovering some curious critters in your environment.

Enchanted April

...is the name of a beautiful film about four interesting women on a sort of retreat in an Italian coastal villa. It's also an apt description of what's been happening the last couple of weeks hereabouts. Before April ends I must catch up on Bloom Day and Earth Day.

Plants large and small have been showing off with little or no help from me:
This magenta Wave petunia has been blooming off and on for the last 14 months with no fertilizer since last summer.


This is a double petunia I bought at Lowe's--it's taken over a 3 foot space in the driveway bed.



One of my top 10 favorite plants of all time, Jerusalem sage (Phlomis fruticosa), is bigger than ever and can be seen from a block away. Its alien-looking flowers bloom all along the stem, and its velvet-like sea-green leaves are delicately edged in white. And it's evergreen.



Here's a view of it alongside Martha Gonzalez roses, mealy blue sage, and indigo spires, looking along the sidewalk from the front walkway.

The new bed where I took out 400 square feet of grass in the back yard is coming along. I have adorned it with my buy of the week--a copper dragonfly found at Wildseed Farms near Fredericksburg. It has green marbles for eyes.

A few of the stella de oro daylilies have burst out all at once after having been divided. I believe the name means 'stars of gold.'

On the other side of the front porch the Black 'n' Blue (salvia guaranitica) has already been cut back once and insists on crowding the roses. It's almost as tall as me. The name refers to the large cobalt-blue lipped blooms and true black sepals. It spreads by underground shoots which can easily be pulled up (and potted up for friends).

The tomatoes and peppers are gung-ho from the rain and a couple of molasses/fish emulsion cocktails. This "Black Cherry" is doing the best. I'm growing some others I've not tried before such as "German Johnson," "Azoychka" (yellow flesh), "Flamme," and BHN-444.

Pam of Digging gave me the vegetable mulch idea--on the way home from picking up a visiting friend at the airport, I zipped into Callahan's and got a bale of coastal Bermuda hay. It spreads easily and smells nice, doesn't cost much, and I have plenty left for next year.

Another watering vacation this week with .8" of rain since Monday.

Both birdbaths magically filled themselves, and the glossy abelia (background) responded with more blooms than I've ever seen.

In honor of Earth Day I had the old and new rainbarrels linked and set up on higher foundations. My other contribution was to give up my Statesman paper delivery. Instead, I subscribed to the e-edition, which is 1/3 the cost and comes every morning by email, a page by page replica of what's in the paper edition. No more throwing mountains of timber in the recycle cart!

On the other hand, I used a lot of gas on the 600 mile trip to and from Marshall for my first state Master Gardeners' conference. Most of the sessions and speakers were very good, and I bought 2 purple passion vines (passiflora 'Incense') I had been looking for. Everyone was given an EarthKind rose in a pretty Marshall pot (the area is known for its pottery). All in all, it was probably worth the trip, but I wouldn't necessarily go every year. I think the central Texas one-day conference last fall was every bit as good if not as elaborate.

April is the cruelest month...

How easy it is to forget what spring is like elsewhere, when we've been basking in warm weather, reveling in emerging greens and bursts of color here at home. Now, I grew up in Michigan, so I should know better, but I went off to visit my mother the day after April Fools (how apt) optimistically taking my gardening shoes, gloves and pruners with me. I could help Mom out by getting a start on cleaning up the garden from the ravages of winter. The day I arrived was warm and sunny (Michigan definition of 'warm'- 65 degrees). The next day (this is where the cruel part comes in) it rained all day and stayed around 45, as it did on Saturday and Sunday without the rain but with high winds. Then Sunday night a dire forecast. This is what we woke up to Monday morning:

No, I didn't take these shots in black and white.

The next day we drove through the last flurries to the airport, and I arrived home feeling as though I had just clicked my ruby slippers together three times. The garden had continued on in my absence.

Iris and larkspur play off against the three new pots in the shade corner.

Bluebonnets and zexmenia are spilling onto the sidewalk.


This Texas yellowstar must have hitched a ride when I dug up my first two bluebonnet rosettes from my daughter's farm a couple of years ago.

By the way, Eliot didn't really mean that April is cruel because it can snow when you don't want it to; he was lamenting that spring awakens too many conflicting emotions about life and death and thus is disturbing.

"April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers."

Maybe this is a deliberate turning-upside-down of Chaucer's more joyful lines:

"When that April with his showers fragrant
The dryness of March has pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such liquid
By which power engendered is the flower,
When Zephyrus also with his sweet breath
Inspired has in every woodland and heath
The tender crops, and the young sun
Hath in the Ram has his half course run
And small fowls make melody,
That sleep all the night with open eye...."

I could add, "and Monarch caterpillars munch and dream of May."

When is a redbud not a redbud?

Answer: When it doesn't get any red buds! I watched it for weeks and nothing. Meanwhile my neighbor's redbud, a volunteer squeezed between her garage and my fence, is merrily blooming away. As shown below, mine just started pushing out a few measly leaves, mostly on the tips of the branches. This tree, which I call Quasimodo due to its shape, was here when I bought the house and has grown maybe 6 inches in 6 years. I think it's dying. Any thoughts?

When is a harlequin bug not a bad bug?

Answer: when it's a dead bug! Getting ready to pull the various lettuces and mesclun mix plants to get ready for tomatoes, I discovered brown stink bugs and harlequin bugs were on the tall, blooming arugula. When I saw an HB crawling on the edge of the bed, instead of catching it for my collection, my (gloved) hand shot out involuntarily and--- smash. Lesson: arugula is pretty when it blooms, but it attracts the wrong crowd. Sorry the picture is so gory.

When is a rose not a rose?

Answer: never. "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." And the Souvenir de la Malmaison "...by any other name would smell as sweet." Yesterday morning's gentle rain dressed up one opening bud and one full-blown bloom with what looks like pink pearls.

Finally, when does life imitate art?

Answer: When it reminds me strongly of one of Georgia O'Keefe's erotic flower paintings. The old-fashioned red-violet shade of this bearded iris also reminds me of my grandmother's garden in Kentucky, very long ago.

As good a time as any-- Bloom Day

I’ve been meaning to start this blog for almost two years. Several of my fellow gardener friends’ blogs have inspired me, and now I have a halfway decent if cheap camera, and it’s Bloom Day, so here is the beginning of the Garden of E.

The winter garden is coming to an end, of necessity, since there are only four raised beds and the spring garden will use the same space. But before we eat the last of the lettuce, carrots, cilantro, and collards, I enjoy watching some of the vegetables get tall and flower.

Cilantro is like the purest white, delicate lace...

and mizuna flowers are a delightful combination of eggyolk yellow and spring green.

My other favorite bloom this week is the Louisiana phlox that has stayed very small for the last 5 years. It's been moved now to a sunnier location in hopes it will expand. It looks like painted china instead of a living plant.

Well, it was bloom day, but now I see it's after 1 a.m.