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I've been watching this spider for a while. He's on my office window, right above my shaded flower bed. For the most part, he just hangs there and he doesn't bother me and I don't bother him. I am not one of those women who are afraid of spiders, as long as they don't bother me, I don't bother them. But then again, I'm new to living in Texas and I don't really know all about the spiders here - so I've been keeping my distance - there's a pane of glass between us. The other day, he devoured a grasshopper that was bigger than he was. And then I think he tried to capture one of the hummingbirds just a couple of days ago. All in all, it's been interesting. And I sure do think he's pretty - I suppose that means he's very poisinous.
that kinky sort of ribbon is what he hangs down on to catch his prey.
He didn't have any luck catching the hummer. They are in full combat mode - the hummers that is. I have six hummingbird feeders, you'd think they could share, but no, they each stake out their own and stand watch and the minute another hummer comes near, they chase them away. It's scary to be near those feeders sometimes - they are like dive-bombers. This male ruby-throated sits on the pole of my bird-feeding station and keeps watch over "his" three feeders on my office window. I like the juxtapostion of him next to the cut-out bird on the top of the pole.
As I took my life in my hands strolling among the spiders and dive-bombing hummers this morning, I also took a picture of this Thunbergia which I started way last March or April from seed and which has never quite died, but has never quite produced either. It had one tiny little flower and that's all. Now that it has cooled off a bit here, it seems to be growing better - but still no blooms. I'm thinking maybe this spot is too shady - it's under the eaves by the carport.
I know it's a tacky hanger, but it has sentimental value! I've never tried to grow one of these before, if anyone has any ideas I'm always open to suggestions. (there's always next year!).
Pecans are starting to fall from the trees already and I can hardly walk through the garden without stepping on a pecan - but they are still very, very green. I'm not sure why they are dropping so early - I'm not a pecan farmer, so I just don't know.
My landlords stopped by the other day, Barbara told me that when her in-laws lived in this house, their gardens stretched all the way from the house to the fence at the front of the yard. I am going to have to do some kind of gardening to match that! There are 4 rows of pecan trees between me and that fence! LOL! I can see it in my mind, but I don't know if my body is up to it!
The other night there were EIGHT raccoons in the yard at around midnight or so. They were all over my bird feeders, climbing on my pots and plants and generally making a nuisance of themselves. I chased them off several times, but the little critters would just go into the shadows and wait til I went into the house and then they'd come right back.
So now I'm not feeding the birds for a while. And I guess that might work because my daytime visiting raccoon just showed up, he checked out the entire yard and then left cause there's nothing there for him. Yippee! But my poor birdies are confused. They will be fine though - it won't hurt them in the least for my feeders to be empty for a little while. Especially at this time of year - there's plenty of natural food sources for them.
Last night my sweet hubby filled all my hummingbird feeders for me - he is so sweet. Then when I went to put the extra nectar away in the refrigerator, I spilled it and it went all over the entire insie of the refrigerator. So then we had to clean the entire 'fridge at 10:00 o'clock at night. And he helped me even though it was entirely my fault. I truly love that man,he is so good to me.
I'm trying not to notice that the garden is winding down. But yesterday at Walmart they had all the fall mums on display. They were pretty, but I'm just not ready for fall yet.
Last weekend, my friend, Sharon, who lives in Oklahoma City, came down for a visit with her husband. She brought me a gift: all the planters I gave her when we both lived in Washington State. So those planters traveled from me to her in Washington, then she took them with her when she moved to OKC and then she brought them back to me in Texas - those things have moved around. But I was really glad o get them. I want to plant some crape myrtles and I want really big pots for them as I don't want to plant them in the ground since this isn't my house.
Then my other friend, Ann, gave me some really nice gardening gloves. I told her I don't wear gloves when I garden, so I guess she thought I needed some. They are really pretty, but I just can't wear gloves to garden. I may start out wearing them, but pretty soon they come off and I'm digging in the dirt bare handed. There's just something about it. She told me I need to wear them to protect my nails and cuticles - it's a little late for that - I'm 59 years old and have never been able to wear gloves, so it's a little late to try to change now! I think the damage is already done!
Today is just a picture story about my never ending encounters with raccoons. This one happened in borad daylight - they are getting braver or more hungry . . .
Now how to get over to those birdfeeders?
Guess I'll just climb this little ole fence!
Up, UP and OVER!
and down the other side
ahhh, the sweet smell of success - led me to those sunflower seeds!
For the most part, my gardening is done in containers right now. That's because we live in a rental house and our future has been somewhat uncertain. But now we have decided that we are going to just stay here in this rental house for a couple of years and so now the real planning can begin. That is, I can begin to plan some flower beds and start this fall to get them ready for planting next spring.
I have to plan ahead! I already have plans in my head of where I would like flower beds. I've been watching over the past year where are the shady and sunny parts of the yard. And with 14 pecan trees, there is lots and lots of shade. But there is one area right along the front walkway that is nice and sunny almost all day long and then gets shady later in the afternoon. That is where I have all my container plants right now and they love it there. All the plants that were doing poorly perked up tremendously once I moved them to this "container" garden. It's now my favorite little spot in my garden and I enjoy walking through and touching each of my pretty plants and talking to them and encouraging them to grow.
So this is going to become one of my flower beds. Another area that I want to turn into a flower bed is along the west side of our carport. It gets late afternoon sun and kind of dappled sun/shade the rest of the day. I can see it in my mind's eye what I want to do here, but hubby and I have some differences to work out first. He always worries about things like traffic patterns and will he be able to get the lawnmower in there and will he be able to drive #1 son's truck out of the back yard if I build a flower bed there. All good questions, but not ones I concern myself with (know what I mean?).
And then at the very east end of the house is just crying out for a flower bed and it gets direct sun all day long - so a sun-lover's flower bed. I grew sunflowers there this year, but they are all done already and so there is nothing there now and that is not good - I don't like that at all.
And then there is the back yard - That is a south facing area with no trees, no vegetation of any kind. It has one of those little cement patios that you find all over Texas, a clothesline and a pump house. It's just awful and seems way, way too overwhelming to try and tackle in the few years that I may live here. I don't know - I might give it a try - but for right now - my mind is teeming with what I want to do with all these other flower beds I am planning.
We gardeners are a funny bunch, never satisfied with what we have this year, always planning for what we want next year!
I saw this plant stand in a little town in South Texas - I want it.
I saw this plant stand in the yard of an old and apparently abanded house in Southeast Arkansas. I want it.
I have looked everywhere I can think of to find a plant stand/plant hanger like the ones above. But no luck - and I have looked everywhere: on the Internet, in all my gardening supply catalogs, all my seed catalogs, all my "Carol Wright" type catalogs, Collections, etc. type magazines. Garden shops, just about anywhere I could think of. But no luck. I tried every search term I could think of, still no luck. Then my God-daughter does one search onthe Internet for umbrella plant hanger and finds this right off the bat - first try:
Now it's a very tiny picture and the details on the site are very limited - but it looks pretty close to what I am looking for. Yet I am hesitant to order it - it just doesn't seem to have the same appeal to me that the ones I saw in person did - maybe it's just me.
I took a walk through the cow pasture to my neighbors garden to take a look-see. It's pretty overgrown with weeds, but I could see she had watermelon, cantaloupe, tomatoes, peas (I think purple hull), bell pppers, jalapeno peppers, and a whole row of okra. At first I didn't know what the okra was cause it had these beautiful flowers that looked sort of like a hibiscus. I didn't have my camera with me to take a picture, but then on closer inspection, I realized it was okra and it was growing very nicely, but I never knew t had such a pretty, pretty flower. It could almost be grown just for the flowers!
Just sent hubby off to work and we have a nice little thunder and lightning storm going on. Pouring down rain, too. I don't mind, it's been hot and humid for the past week, so we can stand a little rain, but I'm glad we got the grass all mowed yesterday. I haven't been posting much lately - but that doesn't mean there hasn't been a lot going on - just too busy to write.
Over the weekend we went to the Hope, Arkansas Watermelon Festival, home of the world's largest watermelon. It was extremely hot and very crowded, but we had a great time and I got a lovely little hummingbird wind thingee for my garden. I love little things for my garden, especially if it's a hummingbird!
I also got some new plant stands - not at the watermelon festival, but one at Lowes and one at Big Lots. All the stores are putting their lawn and garden things on sale and so this is when I shop for bargains. The plant stand at Lowes was 50% off - what a deal and the cute little tricycle planter at Big Lots, I've been watching all season for that to go on sale - it wasn't 50% off, but it was marked way down and I snapped it up. And hubby put it together for me - he's so good to me. And I just love it - I already put plants in it and set it up - it's adorable.
We have also been very busy rearranging birdfeeders and raccoon-proofing them. That is a lot of work and a lot of juggling and changing things around to see how everything works together. I think we've got it just about right now. All the birds are getting used to the new set-up - it takes a while for them to get used to the new locations and some new feeders. I had to replace some old worn out feeders - might as well do that while we're making all these changes. It's hard for me to give up a feeder though, so I have hubby smash them and throw them in the trash, otherwise they would end up in storage and I'd save them cause you never know when you might need another feeder, right?
Been busy with family issues, too. Had a new baby boy born on my side of the family and now today a new one due on hubby's side of the family. They are going to induce labor at 9:00 a.m. this morning. My sister-in-law's granddaughter having her first - she's only 18 - a baby having a baby, but everyone is very excited and oh my gosh there are going to be so many people there for the birth - this baby is going to be very well loved.
Well that's the report from NE Texas for today - things are going well, the garden's doing well, hubby's off to work and great-grandbaby's due today. All is well!
One day last week, when it wasn't raining, I strolled through Lowes garden section an looked at each and every plant there and read the tags to see what the plants were, what kind of lght (sun, sun/shade, or shade), whether annual/perennial, and water requirements. There are so many plants that I am unfamiliar with. I really got a good education and after my stint last week with gardening books and the internet, I feel as if I am really getting a feel for what and how to plant here.
Then yesterday I went to visit my friend Ann - she is the one who loves flowers and calls flowers her hobby. She and her husband own a small subdivision of what they call "patio homes" here. I had never heard that term before, but to me they are just duplexes or townhomes. But Ann does all the landscaping and gardening herself. Each Unit has one flower bed in front and then there's a gazebo where they hold weddings and parties and there are several flower beds there. I would guess she has about 14 flower beds she tends.
I've never really taken a close look at them all before - they always look nice and she always has something in bloom. So yesterday we strolled through and looked at all the flower beds and I took pictures. I leaned sooooo much! Many of the plants that I saw in Lowes that are marked as "annuals" Ann tells me will come back here year after year. And some of the tropicals she just plants in her flower beds and they do fine, unles it's a hard winter. She leaves her geraniums in the ground all year and she said they do just fine. So I just learned so much - I didn't take notes, but I took pictures!
Then after we visited Ann, hubby and I came home to "raccoon-proof" my birdfeeders. We put all the feeders on poles rather than just scattered around the yard and we put baffles on each pole. Now he can't get to the feeders - or so we thought. Well at 3:30 this morning that little devil woke me up - knocked over one of my potted plants again, looking for handouts. He couldn't get to the feeders, so he was checking out all my flower pots. I went out to chase him away and he was not the least bit afraid of me. In fact he sat up on his hind legs begging. I tried to shoo him away and he started walking toward me thinking I had something for him. I picked up a rock and threw it at hime - not to hit him but to just scare him - he thought it was something to eat and went and picked it up. I could not get rid of the little rascal. Finally I just had enough and I yelled at him go away and ran after him and he ran off.
But this morning, when I went to fill my birdfeeders, I can see that he was trying his darnedest to get to the bird feeders last night. He had been digging all around the poles that the feeders are hanging on. They are secured in the ground with cross pieces, so he couldn't have dug them up I don't believe, but he sure was trying. Don't know what we are going to do about this guy.
It is still raining and raining and raining. Some places getting as much as 8" in 10 hours causing flash flooding. No flooding here where I am, but it certainly is wet. The ground squishes when I walk on it. The birds seem to love it - maybe it's the cooler temperatures they like.
So the only gardening I've been doing here lately is a little "armchair" gardening. We have decided we are going to stay in this house for a while, even though it's a rental, it suits us for right now. And the owner has given me carte blanche to plant whatever and wherever I want so I've been sitting here plotting and planning what I want to do.
The first thing I want to tackle is the front flower bed. When I moved in here there wasn't anything in that flower bed except five roses and I love roses so I thought that was great. But they looked pretty neglected and sad. So I gave them a little TLC and waited for them to bloom - they did - each one had one single bloom and that was it. Finally it dawned on me - that flower bed is in complete shade ALL DAY LONG - it gets no sun whatsoever. I was pretty sure roses are sun lovers. So I dug out my Rose book and it says 6 hours or more of sunshine a day! These poor babies were getting none. So that's the first thing on my plan. Find a new home for these roses and transplant them.
Then next, figure out what to plant in that front bed. First it's got to grow in the shade and second tolerate Texas' hot, hot summer. So I've been on the Internet doing some research on that. I have tons of notes. I've never really grown a shade garden before, so this will be fun!
Thirdly there's a really bad area by the carport where water drips off the roof. There's no rain gutters on this house unfortunately. But this makes an ugly mess that I just can't tolerate. So I want to build a little rock garden there. I've already started on that - drove all the way into Arkansas to get some nice big rocks for the border and I have some nice big petrified wood that I inherited from my Dad that will work for accent pieces.
And then I'm going to start on all those pecan trees. They are just begging for some nice flowering shrubs around their bases. I'm thinking azaelas - but that will be next year when Lowes puts all their azaelas on sale for $1.98 - I can't wait for that. It will look so pretty!
Oh I have tons more plans - the back patio is an eyesore - it needs so much work! And I want crape myrtles planted along the driveway - I'm thinking shrub-type - low growing so they're not competing with the pecan trees.. Oh gosh my head spinning - now if it would only stop raining!
We've been getting some much needed rain all day today. A few thunderstorms this morning and then rain off and on all day. We really needed it - it's been so hot and dry here. Much of Texas is suffering from drought conditions.
The birds are very active when it's stormy and rainy. I don't know why exactly, but it's fun to watch them as they chase each other and fight over the feeders. There's really no reason to fight, there are plenty of feeders for everyone!
Even the hummingbirds fight over feeders and there are six hummer feeders. They are very territorial. But they are finally using the window feeders that are attached to my office windows. I just love to watch the little hummers while I go about my daily business in my office.
So I didn't even venture outside much today - left the garden and the birds and the plants all on their own in the rain.
This morning hubby and I went to the Farmer's Market across town. I wanted some peaches, but the peaches didn't look all that great when we got there, so I passed on those. But one of the other booths had plants and of course that drew me right in. Everything looked very happy and healthy. She told me she grows all her plants from seed or from starts.
She had this little tiny African violet in a little tiny pot. It was just so doggone cute. I fell in love with it. I love African Violets and always have them in my office. I used to have them in my office when I worked at EPA and now I have them in my home office. But I've never grown the minatures, but I just loved this one. It's called "Foxwood Trail." She said it's semi-trailing, but I didn't care about that, it was just so cute in its little pot, I just thad to have it.
And then I got bck to the car and I thought well, I really loved the other miniature she had in the bright green pot - so I went back and got that one, too. So I have two new little miniature African Violets and I love love love them! I have just been admiring them all day. Oh, the second one is called "Redwood Trail."
My young neighbor brought me some nice fresh tomatoes from her garden. Oh those taste so good right out of the garden. Yummy, yummy, yummy. She told me her garden isn't doing very well, but the tomatoes tasted fine to me. This is the first time she's tried to grow a veggie garden, I told her maybe next year we can try it together! I've never done that kind of gardening either - never done a vegetable garden in my life, although my grandfather and my parents and most of my family are all vegetable gardeners. Me, I just grow flowers.
But for the most part this week I've had my nose stuck in genealogy. Sometimes once you get started on that it can take a lot of your time and I've been contacted by a 2nd cousin on my maternal grandfather's side who has opened up a whole new family line for me and that is always so very exciting. Well, maybe not to everyone, but it is to me!
I still take care of all my plants and flowers of course. I have a special time I enjoy in the garden. I almost always go out and tend to my plants about 4:00 p.m. and then sit in my swing and just enjoy my plants and the birds and the quiet. The birdsare very active at that time of the day. It's so nice and peaceful. It hasn't been as hot here lately so it's been nice. But I've noticed that I don't have quite enough color right now - I NEED some more flowers - time to go hit Lowes for some mid-summer color, I think
Sweet potatoe vine. I don't think I ever saw that back home or if I did, it didn't register with me. But it seems to be everywhere here. So I bought a tiny little plant in a 4" pot and put it in the front of one of my containers. I thought it would trail down nicely. A cute little vine. Oh my gosh, that thing completely took over that planter and completely overtook any other plants in there. I could not believe that little bitty vine grew that big and that full in that short of a time. It's a wonderful plant, though, I like its beautiful color and great big glossy leaves. But the planter it is in sits on the ground and the vine is starting to grow way beyond it's boundaries, so yesterday I had to trim it way back, it looks nice and tidy now and I can see the other plants in the planter now, too. But it's really too bad I had to trim it back.
Got a raccoon who thinks he can help himself to my feeders. But he's a noisy little devil and he usually wakes me up and I chase him off. I think that he is very young because he is small and he is kind of awkward and bumbling. But he's already damaged a couple of feeders beyond repair. So this weekend, we are going to "raccoon-proof" the feeders. I have baffles and a pole system and all the feeders will have to go on the pole rather than placed around the yard here and there. I don't really like that, but gotta do what you gotta do. This is a kind of grainy pictures of him cause it was taken right at dusk through my office window, but you can see he's got his little hand on the feeder, checking it out.
Well I haven't written or posted anything for a while. I've been on a mission - my own personal mission. I'm trying to figure out this Texas or Southern gardening. Cause to tell you the truth I'm not doing too well here. And it's making me feel inadequate - very much so. I've been gardening my whole life and I've never had any problem getting plants to bloom and grow for me. But I'm sure doing something wrong here and it's frustrating me. Since the beginning of July, I've been gone from my garden for two different overnight trips. I watered well before I left and then was gone one entire day and came back the next. I thought surely my plants would be okay. Nope. Had a couple of casualties.
And since we started getting triple digit weather, some of my plants just up and died - didn't matter how much water I gave them. And some of my plants just quit blooming - still thriving, still growing, but all green and no bloom. I've never had problems like this before. Back in the Pacific Northwest I dealt with slugs and weeds and moss and squirrels digging in my flower beds and some watering restrictions sometimes in the summer, but nothing like the things I'm running into here. So I feel like a novice gardener all of a sudden and I don't like it one little bit.
So I'm on this mission to figure it all out. The first thing I did was to look at what IS blooming and thriving in my yard. Well, the hibiscus are all doing well. Even the one that had a bit of frostbite cause I left him out one night in April. And the Gold Star Esperanza (which is a tropical plant) is doing well and blooming profusely. The Vinca is blooming great and so is the Lantana and Salvia. The Caladiums are doing well - they don't bloom, but they add nice color to the garden and they are doing really well. So I started a list (I'm great with lists) of what grows well in July in my Texas Garden: Hibiscus, Esperanza, Vinca, Lantana, Salvia, Caladium, miniature roses So that's a good start for my list.
Now what's not blooming well - my marigolds which I love and I have never ever ever had a problem growing - some of them just plain bit the dust and some are still doing okay, but no blooms, just lots of lovely feathery greenery. Could it be that it is too hot - but that doesn't make sense to me because I grew marigolds in the desert in Washington state and it frequently hits over 100 there. So not sure what the problem is here - need to figure this out also. Maybe too much sun and not enough water - that is my guess.
My geraniums are one of the things that are just putting out all sorts of lovely green leaves and no flowers. This really baffles me as I don't think I'm doing anything differently than I did back home and I've never had this problem before. I've always had prolific blooms. So need to figure this out also - does the intense heat affect them, also?
Petunias are doing okay, but they are getting kind of scraggly by this time as I planted them way back in April. So may need to look into replacing those plants because the growing season here is a little bit longer maybe?
None of my glads bloomed - they all came up, but not a single one bloomed. I just cannot believe that - I've never had a problem growing them either. And I love glads and I know they grow here cause I saw them in other people's yards - BUT a lot earlier than mine and a lot earlier than I expected them - so I probably didn't plant them right for weather conditions here. Need to look into this a little more. May need to plant earlier so they come up before it gets so hot?
Roses - there were five rose bushes here when I moved in - each one has bloomed once - one bloom and that's it. But they are in a flower bed that is shaded all day long - no sun at all and I think that is their only problem - I think I need to relocate them to a sunnier spot - I see plenty of roses blooming around town to know that roses do fine here. I have some garden books on Roses that I can dig out and take a look at, but the books are not specific to rose gardening in the south - they should still help.
So that leads me to my next step in my mission. Drive around town and see exactly what's growing in other's peoples' yards and gardens. And by golly, that was very enlightening. This is what I found blooming on a hot summer day in the middle of July in NE Texas: Hibiscus, Crape Myrtle, Daylillies, Asiatic Lily, Purple Coneflower, Vinca, roses, Begonia, Petunia, Zinnia, Salvia, Geranium, Lantana, Black-eyed Susan, Marigold, Mallow (just starting to bloom), Canna (just ending bloom), Trumpet Vine, Phlox and a Lily I could not identify which seemed to be growing everywhere (it looked kind of like a trumpet lily - but I will research that later). And then some other flowers that I was not familiar with - need to figure out what those are and familiarize myself with them!
Lantana
Caladium
Phlox
Now I have a ton of gardening books and gardening materials and I'm doing research. In one of my references, it just told me that Nasturtiums can't hold up to the intense heat of the south - oh, so that's why they just up and died, huh? OK, got that. Oh and I just read that at temperatures above 75 degrees Petunias will be " leggy" - aha - explains that one also. It says that is how "hot weather takes its toll on petunias" (so eloquent). So since it's hardly ever that warm in the Pacific Northwest I never had a problem and here in Texas where it's always warmer than that, I do. But I also just read that there are "Texas Superstars" that are bred to withstand the heat and do well here. I will just have to watch for those when I shop. See, I'm learning all kinds of new things.
No one ever said you can't teach an old gardener new tricks! ha ha
In fact I just rediscovered a book I bought many years ago called "Best of Texas - Landscape Guide" by the Texas Nursery and Landscape Association. It has wonderful information in it and I need to sit down and revisit this book and start learning what I am doing wrong. I think it's mostly a problem with choosing the wrong plants and the wrong time and just not being used to the intense heat in Texas and the need to water much more here than I did in the Pacific Northwest.
Oh, and my Gold Star Esperanza - it's one of the "Texas Superstars" - guess I lucked out there. But it's only hardy to Zone 9 and I live in Zone 8a, so I will have to overwinter it - but I will absolutely do that cause I love that plant!
Gold Star Esperanza
Hope everyone had a great fourth. We were able to get away and spend some time in Hot Springs, Arkansas with some friends at their condo on Lake Hamilton - it was really super. We watched Fourth of July fireworks from the Belle of Hot Springs and it was like one big gigantic party. Thousands of people on hundreds of boats all on the water having a great time - all at the same time - and all celebrating the same thing - what fun!
Before we went on the Belle, we toured the town and went on the "strip" which is very touristy and fun. I found one little shop that was a "garden" store and I was so excited! They had a sunflower-shaped birdfeeder that I have been searching for for a long, long time to replace one that is quite worn out. I bought the original one years and years ago from a mail order catalog, like Carol Wright or one of those and have never been able to find it again. I was so happy to find this one to replace the worn out one. I'm sure everyone in the store thought I was crazy - I squealed in delight (really).
The friend I was with, Ann, loves flowers also, but she is not really a gardner, per se. She never knows the names of plants, she doesn't know a perennial from an annual. She's never grown anything from a seed or propogated a plant or a cutting. She doesn't own a single gardening book and doesn't real about plants or search databases on-line or anything like that. But she loves flowers and she has lovely flower beds, she just buys what she likes and puts it in the ground and it works for her.
Now me, I'm the total opposite, I take pictures of plants wherever I go. I have tons of gardening books. I do research on the Internet. I belong to sites like this I make notes about plants I like wherever I see one that interests me. I'm a total nerd about it. So I was taking pictures of the plants I saw as we strolled through town. There weren't a whole lot actually, but I did take the following picture. And Ann, pointed to the "grass" in the picture and said she just couldn't grow "pampas grass" and did I know what she was doing wrong.
I just laughed - I said, Ann, that's not Pampas Grass and she gave me this sweet little ole southern smile of hers and said, oh, what is it? Doggone it, she had me there - I knew what it wasn't, but not what it was. I HATE that. So this morning, I have been searching and searching on the Internet and I finally found it (I think) - ta da! Purple Fountain Grass (or Red Fountain Grass, or Burgandy Fountain Grass). Now I want to just call up Ann and tell her, but you know what - she doesn't really care - she just wants to know why it won't grow for her - ha ha. So I found out that it is treated as an annual in colder climates and is only treated as a perennial in Zones 9-11 and we are in Zone 8a, so that might be why hers keeps dying!! I think that she could possibly overwinter it, but she never does that kind of thing, so I know that won't happen.
Before we left on our little vacation I noticed that my little hibiscus had bloomed. This is the one I bought for like $2.98 at Lowes and I never expected it to bloom, but it did. The bloom is tiny, but oh so sweet - I love it - it's yellow! I took a picture cause I knew I wouldn't be here to enjoy it - I hope it blooms again. This is my first time growing hibiscus and both the red one and this have both bloomed for me, so I must be doing ok.
We also went to a neighbor's garage sale just before we left - she has the most wonderful garden. They have lived in their place for 13 years and the drive is lined with peach trees (all loaded with fruit) and then she has hundreds of Cannas all along the back fence and in a border beside a barn or garage and then alongside the house. It was absolutely beautiful. There was one yellow one blooming right by the house and I had never seen a yellow one before - it was really pretty. I saw an awful lot of neat ideas there that I would like to incorporate - I wish I'd had my camera to take some pictures!
This cute little chickadee was posing for me this morning as I sat out on the carport just enjoying the morning. He was so cute I took a whole series of pictures. Usually chickadees flitter and flutter around so fast I can't get pictures of them, so I was happy that he was posing for me!
My young neighbor is growing a garden in the cow pasture in an enclosed area behind a barn-like structure. But there's no water there. And her house is too far away to run a hose there, so she runs a hose from my house to the garden. We are on a well, so it's not a big deal and she's very thoughtful. But the other night when she came to shut the water off - I had to chuckle to myself. Here she was in shorts and a tank top and wearing COWBOY BOOTS. It was one of those "only in Texas" moments to me. But really it made sense cause she had to tromp through the cow pasture to get to my house - it just struck me funny at the time. Here's a picture of her garden in the cow pasture.
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