Another.
Gardening with Texas Native Plants & Wildflowers Part 8
One to go after this one.
Last one. These are completely wild, saved by selective mowing.
This message was edited Aug 23, 2005 12:32 PM
Those sure are pretty Trois, I have seen some around this area, but I don't have any of them, they are very delicate and my slope is too full of big plants so they don't make it there. The heat sure is being difficult, I spend half my time watering because I don't want to lose the plants, but many of them are showing the stress.
Thank you for showing them to us.
Josephine.
Here is an adorable little guy Pink Powderpuff, (Mimosa strigillosa)
I found this growing on a neighbor's front yard all by itself so cute and adorable. I am going to see if I can get a cutting to get it started.
Powderpuff's foliage is sensitive to the touch and folds up at night.
Those are nice. We have some almost year round here. Also the look alike, with thorns. And I noticed today we still have a lot of the yellow puffs.
We also spend too much time watering, and the plants don't like our well water as much as they like rain water.
trois
Josephine,
Thanks for posting that photo of Mimosa strigillosa. I think we have some around here, but I had never seen a flower. The leaves look so similar to Sensitive Briar that if anything looks like it, it gets the hoe.
Trois,
Your Purple Gerardia are so pretty. Did you start off with a variety of colors or did that just evolve?
A while back you posted some plumeria photos. Maybe you can answer a question I have regarding my plumeria. Last year, thinking that they were the same variety, I planted 2 plumeria plants in the same pot. When it leafed out this spring, one plant has a reddish tinge on the leaf stalks, but the other is all green. The plant with the reddish stalks has been blooming. Every stalk has a cluster of buds although only a few buds open at a time. The other plant shows no signs of buds. I think that plant bloomed last November, but I was on vacation at the time. I thought all plumerias were summer bloomers. Do you have any solutions for me?
When we first moved here, we saw almost no wild flowers, not even primroses. Once we started clearing, and it rained too much to allow continued mowing, the flowers slowly started showing up. First it was Lyre Leafed Sage, then primroses, then 2 years ago the first few Purple Gerardia. The flowers were then all pink. Since then I have been selective mowing and vastly increased the numbers of wild flowers. Last year I saw a few of different colors. This year more. It took a couple of months for me to get IDs on the Purple Gerardias. Since then the 4 petal Willow Primroses and West Texas Mist have appeared. This morning I spotted several orange Flax looking plants that closed before I got back to them .. Tomorrow, maybe.
I have access to several Plumerias and will check to see the differences. I have a young one that is all green and not blooming. So much to learn.
trois
Bettydee, I guess we have the same problem. This one with the redish stalks is the only one blooming. My others are just green, with no blooms at all this year, but they look very healthy.
A visit to sunnytx, about 7 miles from my house. She has a beautiful yard, with one of the largest American Willows I have seen. Also a large and heavily loaded Pecan tree.
A few of her flowers follow.
Coral El Capitolio hibiscus.
Hello Veronica, how are those house plans coming along?
Have got it started yet? Or may be you are waiting for the weather to cool down. I bet you are really looking forward to your new house.
Josephine.
Red El Capitolio.
Mandevilla # 1.
Mandevilla # 2.
Trois,
My plumerias are healthly too. I've been using Bayer's 2-in-1 in addition to MG. I wonder what is going on with the green ones. I love that Red El Capitolio. I bought one early this spring from Almost Eden.
Josephine,
The architect is making some modifications for us. We should be getting the plans within 2 weeks. We also have a local builder lined up. What we do have to do before any construction can start is have the soil analyzed. There is a lot of clay in that area and we may need a different foundation. We also need to have the electric company to get electricity to the site. Electric companies like to go in a straight line. If I have to pay them extra to go around our large oak trees, I will. I hope to be in the house by the end of next year. The thing I look forward to is having access to all that storage space in the house (One of the things I liked about it.) I've had so many things stored in the barn these past 4 years.
That also means having to start my garden all over again. I will have some large oaks and pecans to garden under though.
Veronica
You can go underground with the last 300 feet of Electric for about the same amount of money. It would take 900 feet of #000 size cable. (3 wires) Everyone around here is doing that. You can run the cable in 2 inch gray PVC pipe and save a good bit of labor cost. You can run around any trees and so forth. My son and I both did this to avoid removing a lot of trees, and it looks better.
trois
When we moved to this part of the ranch, we chose the site because there is a power line nearby running through the property. The power company tapped into it and brought it closer to the house. From there the line went underground into the house. My husband did pretty much what you suggested when we needed to power the barn. I get suckered into helping with his projects and we pulled a lot of cable that weekend.
The new house will be 3/4 of a mile from here and it may be better to bring the power in from another direction. Currently there are no other lines through the ranch. I wanted everything underground, but my husband, an electrical engineer, says the power loss, to bring the line in underground as far as we have to, would be tremendous. He insists we bring it in overhead for part of that distance and that's the part I'm worried about. The rest of the way to the house will be underground, being careful to avoid the underground pipelines that run through our property.
He's the electrical engineer, but guess who will have to hassle with the power company.
So am I and he is right. 300 feet is about the limit for underground.
trois
Trois, those areally beautiful hibiscus, and the Plumeria and Mandevilla too. Is your a friend a DG member also?
Veronica, bless your heart, you sure have a lot of obstacles to overcome in order to build the new house. You must really want it, but as we all know most good things don't come without effort, I hope you will be greatly rewarded.
Josephine.
Yes, she is sunnytx.
Hazel, Those pictures of the Scarlet Passion flower that you posted on the color threads are really amazing, especially the one of the ripe fruit. It looks like a heart with a network of veins encasing it. I wonder if the other members have seen it, if not, please go to the vines pictures and see what I mean.
Josephine.
I saw that, too, and thought the very same thing. Beutiful, striking!
Hello guys, look who came to visit us last Sunday, pretty cute ha?
My husband has slowly been opening paths into our wooded area to make it easier to look for missing cows. They have a tendency to go off by themselves to have their calves and sometimes get into trouble. This week-end, I was driving through these paths looking for one of them when I spotted the Gerardia. Trois, if I hadn't seen your photos a few posts ago, I wouldn't have known what they were. It's a good thing I was alone out there. I did a little jig and yelling, "I have some, too. I have some, too."
Wildflowers of the Texas Hill Country calls them Plateau Agalinis, Agalinis edwardsiana.
Forgot to include photo.
A close-up of the pink flower. It wasn't until I was previewing the photos that I realized that the leaves are so narrow that the plant looks leafless.
I spotted this caterpillar so I stopped to photograph it and discovered that it was feeding on a different Agalinis, the Prairie Agalinis, Agalinis heterophylla. This species has leaves that are not as narrow. The flowers are a pale pink almost white.
Another interesting thing is that the narrow leaved plant, when cut, will dry completely black. It is interesting in a dried flower arrangment.
trois
Frostweed be careful with those little guys, they like to make winter homes in attics.
Really Mitch, I didn't know that they could climb.
Frostweed that is a opossum they live in trees by nature. They can climb and are really good at it - check this out for more info.
http://www.opossum.org/facts.htm
Thank you for the information Mitch, we will make sure that there are no entrance holes to our attic. They sure ar unusual creatures.
Josephine.
They are great - back in OK we had some big ones that lived in a grove of trees near us. Being kids we loved to go down and watch them for hours!
That must have been a lot of fun!
It was - we lived way out in the country and simple things really made our day!
We have 4 of these young feeding on our bird feeders. Big moma feeds on cat food.
Love the pic trois! Dont they look sweet? We have a coon over here but we cannot find the critter just the tracks - one day maybe I will be out there at just the right time!
DW thinks they are cute, but she gets mad because they knock over things. Every night. The coons found a way into my son's chicken pen and ate 5 of them. We hear them every night.
trois
We like the coons, my wife grew up with a few for pets so she is really likes them. No chickens here or we would try to get them to move on. I am just a big teddy bear with all the little guys . . .
There are just too many here. They have cleared hundreds of acres around us, they are all coming to us.