Wildflower Sale!

Well, today we went to Civilization for some plant shoppin'--yay! It may have been 55 degrees with 25 mph winds, but nothing comes between me and the twice yearly Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center Sale! Himself very kindly chauffeured my scaredy-ass (Civilization traffic and roadways terrify me.) But first, howevah, we stopped at a nursery I like in a town on the way. I seem to recall calling Annabelle from there last summer to get her to Google a mystery plant. So here's what I got there:

• really cool glazed bluey-greeny pot from Vietnam to put an aloe in
• Oxalis rubra("Fire fern")-- mini burgundy leaves with yellow flowahs---LOVE! I am going to plant this in Vietnamese pot at base of aloe, pictures will follow. I have the larger variety with purple leaves and pink flowers planted both in the yard and in pots, and while they die back in winter, they come back from the tubers. Wow--I was used to treating them as house-plants Up North...
  
• Anise--for the herb garden
  
• Salvia Elegans (Pineapple Sage)--yup, smells like pineapple, and red tubular flowers attract hummingbirds
• a white Delphinium named "Galahad"--I did not need it, but with a name like that, how can I say no? I have a light blue and white one currently in the border rose garden that I bought at Wally World. These tend to die back/die in the hot summers, but they are so pretty in spring that I don't mind treating them as annuals.
  
• another Alternanthera dentata 'rubeginosa' "Purple Knight"--this was the mystery plant, but I fear it perished in the freak cold/snowy night we had last weekend--it's a tropical (and this after babying it inside all winter--or all three months of it anyway).
  

Next we moved on to the Wildflower Center, which is in the full flush (along with the general countryside) of wildflower season--right now that includes mostly bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, pink and yellow evening primroses. The center specializes, of course, in native and naturalized plants and has any number of sample gardens from woodland to formal featuring said plants---many of which were on sale in the usual lot next door. Here's what I got there:

• Flame Acanthus (or Hummingbird bush)--okay, I got this last year, but it died back this winter and was really poky coming back, so I'm putting this bigger one in the front of the house and moving the root/stem stock of the other one into the back yard to see what it does. You will notice a hummingbird and butterfly theme--we have both in abundance--little early for most butterflies still, but there are hummingbirds busy at my feeders.
• Passiflora foetida (Scarlet Fruit Passion Flower)--supposedly this one is hardy around here. I had two other nursery-bought varieties in pots, one I brought inside this winter, and one I left on the plastic-enclosed porch, but that was a bad idea because, quelle triste, elle est mort, so, I, er, ordered another one, well, two, on the internet ("Ruby Glow" and "Incense"). This one will go somewhere in the yard though and we'll see how it does. Passionflowers look like space aliens--very exotic and strange, and the leaves are host/food for the Gulf Frittilary butterfly larva.
• Salvia Greggii "Teresa" (Autumn Sage)--I have become quite the connoisseur of salvias because they grow incredibly well here; especially the woody perennial Salvia Greggii which comes in shades of reds, pinks, and white. The flowers of this variety are both white and light pink; don't know if it will attract as many hummingbirds as the bright red and hot pink ones, but very pretty.
• Salvia Texana (Texas Sage)--this is a blue sage that is native to this area, and it's really surprising that I do not already have it. From the looks of it, it is more herbaceous than Gregii and dies back, like my other varieties of blue sages (like bi-color, mealy blue, and the fancy-schmancy hybrid "Black and Blue")
• Tetraneuris scaposa (Four Nerve Daisy)--this bright yellow flower on ferny plant grows everywhere down here, so I figured, why not in my yard--it obviously does well in sun and heat and seems to bloom almost year-round.
• Erigeran acris (Bitter fleabane or Prairie fleabane)--this is in the aster family and grows everywhere. Cute as a button, little hairy white flowers with yellow middles. Supposedly they are an annual, so they must self-seed...
• Symphyotrichum oolentangiense (Skyblue or Azure Aster)--Okay, I got used to Asters in the fall Up North--purple, violet, magenta, blue, pink, so I was pretty pleased when I learned I could grow some down here. I put a nursery one (magenta in color) in one of the beds last year and it is coming up now and getting ready to bloom. I have seen some tall purple ones around and really wanted to get some. This one is a pretty light blue and seems pretty ubiquitous in most parts of the U.S. (The one native to Texas is called Drummond's Aster, but frankly, looks a lot like this one.)
• Forestiera pubescens ("Elbowbush," "Desert Olive")---okay--I do not need another tall shrub, and I do not know *where* I am going to put this one, but when I saw it and read the description, I had to have it. It's got nice smooth bark and branches that come out at right angles (hence "Elbow"), with small grey-green olive-like leaves, and gets blue fruits that birds love. Apparently it does well anywhere at all light-wise, and is, best of all, drought tolerant.
• Seeds for a native buffalo and blue grama grass lawn to replace the thirsty St. Augustine/weed mix on one side and front of the yard, that himself (added bonus) mostly killed recently by putting out Weed 'n Feed and not watering well after. Supposedly after this gets established it needs next to no water and stays naturally low. All sounds good to me. I told Himself that the lawn was his gig though... I got enough ta do!
  

Waaaaahhhh! I Want This!

Damn these people! They keep putting out these wonderful new heucheras--for way too much money, and I want them anyway!!!! I posted below about my heuchera yen (I did actually buy "Brownies" and "Caramel"), but now they have "Ginger Ale"---and it's soooooo cooooool! Obzer-uv:

I'm running out of pot bottoms to plant them in anyway, as I don't want the fancy ones in our heavy soil, so I, ugh, gotta be strong!

UPDATE: Well, Wayside had a sale and I snapped up "Ginger Ale"--also got the purple climbing rose I posted about earlier (it will go by the back door--when we have a back door). I got a "Peach Melba" heuchera and a "Mocha Mint" heuchera at Lowes and I'm going to put those together with this on and a bronze-y orange coleus ("Sedona") in a big huge round pot I have.

April Snow Brings....

...I don't know...but it was, er, interesting.... Broke all records in first weekend of April for snow in this part of Tejas. And I thought I'd left that all behind Up North. Oh, well, it was melted 24 hours later and all plants, whether I brought them in, covered them outside, or left them uncovered seem to have come through unscathed (minus a few bent stems and twigs from the heavy wet snow and the blankets and towels over them. Here's pics:

Remember this Gerbera Daisy?


One of the front beds under 2 inches of snow---amazing...

Some local wildflowers under snow
(bluebonnets, and I think a yellow evening primrose)

Global Warming Gardening

Here's a kinda depressing, but sadly necessary article about gardening in the age of global warming. I'm doing pretty good so far, having amended the heavy soil in the beds, covered them with landscape fabric and thick layers of mulch (the bottom layer of which could be compost at this point). I do have a compost pile, but I haven't warmed it or turned it or any of those things you are supposed to do, but I'm figuring it's getting good stuff at the bottom... Oh, and I have discovered it's a great place to overwinter semi-tender plants! It is located between a fence and a shed and thus sheltered, so when I tossed a Gerbera Daisy and that lovely purple-flowered plant I blogged about last summer/fall back there because I thought they were too tender for this zone and didn't have room in the house, I figured they'd become compost. But dang if I didn't go out there and find little Gerbera blooming away on top of the pile last week, and purple flower leafing out halfway down the side! I planted plucky little Gerbera in one of the flower beds in the backyard:
Oh! and also the ones I had planted in the front beds as annuals last year are coming up from the ground! AMAZING! So either they are hardier than I thought or we just had a warmer winter---ahhhh, global warming..... So back to Hot Gardening (I must look up that linked site in the article advertizing an "Inferno Strip Garden") ---I'm trying to plant mostly natives or native-adapted perennials and trees, although I am tempting fate with a fairly extensive collection of roses, both in beds and minis in pots, but then again--most of my mother-in-law's rose bushes survived some five years of neglect when she got sick, then went into care, and then died, so they must be pretty tough. Of course they looked pretty rough when I got here, but they perked right up when I watered them.....oh, yeah, global warming and drought....water-rationing....H2O wars---great! The downside of global warming is also that with longer growing seasons, come longer allergy seasons--just think, we can all be wheezing and sneezing, hacking, and rubbing our itchy, watery eyes ALL YEAR ROUND!

But I digress into gloom and doom.... I actually just bought one of the plants they mentioned in the article: 'Agastache' or 'Giant Hyssop' (fam. Lamiaciae), except the nursery had it labeled with one of its popular names: "Hummingbird Mint," which is appropriate since it both attracts hummingbirds to its flowers and has foliage that smells of a cross between peppermint and citronella. My cultivar is "Apricot Sunrise"--I think it's two-toned purple and orange, hopefully I can get a picture up here in the future. I planted a related plant--Mexican Bee Balm in one of my backyard beds I think--I'll have to see if it came back up. In any case one can get it at nurseries around here. I have to say--I have plenty of hummingbirds and bees...and every time I dig in one of my beds, I find earthworms, so...so far so good...

I hafta say--what the article said about getting more rain in winter and in great volumes was certainly true here this year---it has rained buckets and buckets--3-4 inches in one storm any a number of times this late winter/early spring. They were even lifting the long-standing burn-bans and some of the water-restrictions most of Tejas has had during a year-long drought. I hope this doesn't mean that once it hits May it won't rain again until next February....but then again, like I have said, all we need to do to initiate another drought is for the gutter guys to come and install my gutters (which they were supposed to do Thursday or Friday, but did not show up, so I guess we have a temporary reprieve...)

But I have to say----I will greatly miss the lovely Maple should it go away from our Northern climes, unable to adapt and thus unable to survive the inexorable inching upwards of temperature zones. All the leaf-peeping and maple-syrup making will retreat into Canada and these United States will be much lonelier and more drab, not to mention less sweet, without them. NOW GO DO SOMETHING TO REDUCE YOUR CARBON IMPRINT!