Texas Gardening: Gardening with Texas Native Plants & Wildflowers, part 16., 0 by maggiemoo

maggiemoo wrote:
This whole year I have only seen one Monarch cat, and that has just been this last weekend. Here he is on Sunday (10/26). I've brought him in the garage the last couple of nights because of freezing/near freezing temps(!) Hope he still has a chance to head south as a butterfly.

And yeah, really few bees. About a handful of bumbles over the whole summer. And yet, when Ella was here she found two hidden bee hives without really trying. They aren't honeybees, I'm just glad they thought she was too cute to sting!

Josephine, my aster seemed to have a bad case of male pattern balding this year. As it got larger, the middle part lost leaves, so in the end there was a large, bare spot with a fringe of flowers. Should I have pruned/cut back the plant in the spring? Our local master gardeners recommend cutting back Copper Canyon Daisy (mine still hasn't bloomed) and Mexican Mint Marigold by half on the first day of every month from April through July to get a good thick display. Do you think that would work with the aster?