OK, folks. This thread is for things you found in your garden. Mainly I want to see things you didn't expect to be there. They don't have to be really really crazy things, but not just things that you planted and didn't expect to see growing or blooming. To get it started, here's something I found in the garden yesterday.
That is a really long worm Carlo!!!
That's a Texas worm!
I actually injured him a bit getting him out of the ground. When I started digging him out, I didn't realize he was so large, and when he kept coming out, I didn't want to stop.
Next up, here's a mushroom that popped up in my yard after the recent rains.
Looks like a mushroom flower!
One picture I didn't get always comes back to memory as the strangest thing I have seen. It was of a squirrel going up a telephone pole near our house. That of course isn't odd....but it was carring a 6 oz paper coffee cup in it's mouth!! I am so glad my DH was with me at least we can confirm each other when we tell about it. LOL!
LindaTX8, yeah, I thought the mushroom was a flower at first glance as I was strolling by, too. But then my brain kicked in and I thought, "There shouldn't be flowers there!"
Frostweed and fancyflea, with regard to the worm, my aunt thought it was a garter snake when she first saw the picture.
Sheila, there is a squirrel nest in a Bradford Pear tree near my house. It has a visor in it! I guess the squirrels needed some additional shade? :-)
When I dig around in my flowerbeds, I am forever finding small toys, nuts/bolts, and pieces of ceramic. I found a perfectly good serving spoon one time. Is my house on top of an old landfill? Or previous tenants were real slobs!
Carla
LOL!! Makes you wonder sometime.
This little guy showed up on the salvia outside my back door this afternoon. What a delightful surprise. First one I've seen this season.
Here is a weird formation of dead tree fungus of some sort. Reminds me of "E.T. phone home"!
Loonie1, I think sometimes those things sometimes come in topsoil and filldirt when you buy it in bulk. I remember our lawn and garden when I was a kid had all kinds of crazy stuff like bottle caps and pieces of bottle that we would find as we dug. We were the first people to live in the house, and when we moved in, it was nothing but builders sand. I'm pretty sure that all the weird things we found were either from us or from the dirt we brought in. My dad would buy a yard or so of sand or topsoil every so often, and I remember we'd find weird things in it.
StephanieTX and Sheila_FW, those are great! Just the sort of fun stuff I had hoped that people would post to the thread. Thanks!
stephanie - that is an awesome photo!
I gotta go see what I can dig up.
I found this last night. It's some kind of mushroom. With the rain and now the high humidity they're popping up everywhere!
All that rain and humidity has made for some interesting formations!
Here is another gross looking mold. DH thought a dog puked on the stones. LOL!
It is black and firm on the inside.
Truthfully, I think that fungus is known as Dog Vomit Fungus!
Carla
We had that a couple of years ago when we had that June with all the rains on the concrete wall of the little flower bed in front of our house. It's quite alarming when you first see it and don't know what it is. You can sprinkle dry powdered garlic on it and it'll go away. Of course, if all this humidity would leave, the fungus would go away, too.
We've got some snow white patches that are showing up in our beds in front. I would say that it is white powdery mildew, but it really doesn't look like it to me.
Tried spraying it with neem, but didn't seem to help.
Had a big brown ball of fungus in the front yard that I mowed over yesterday before I saw it and could take a picture.
Carlo - I was working at Extension yesterday, and a lady brought in some leaves from liriope and shrimp plant, along with some mulch. They were all covered with something white - not powdery mildew. I put them under the microscope and I could see hundreds of teensy mushrooms. They wouldn't come off when I tried to wipe them off with my finger, but if I ran them under water and scraped with my fingernail, I was able to remove the mushrooms, but not all of the white stuff. The fungus was obviously anchored onto the leaves with root-like structures, but not invading the leaf. I had to guess it was some kind of decaying fungus that was brought in on the mulch, but I haven't been able to ID it. In hind sight I wish I'd set it up under the microscope that is attached to the computer and taken a picture, but we were sooo busy. I wonder if that is what you have. Do you have a good magnifying lens that you can check it out with?
ceejaytown, no, I don't know if I do have a magnifying glass. I haven't been too concerned as most of the white stuff has been on the soil rather than plants. I guess I figure it's doing something "natural."
She recently had new mulch put down. It's on the mulch and parts of plants in several different spots. I was just curious if you had the same thing...
I'll take a look, but mine's on bare, old soil where much of any old mulch has washed away.
Here's something that's popped up in my yard, and I have never seen it before this year, but it's spreading pretty good. I posted it in the Identify forum, but no one bit. Anyone here recognize this "weed" growing in my yard?
It looks like False Queen Ann's Lace.
I don't know, frostweed. Look at the leaf pictures at http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/86124/ I'm looking for the flowers to get a bit bigger to see if that helps identification, but I'm not hoping to have this take over the yard if it's something I should get rid of. For now, it doesn't have thorns and doesn't seem to be hurting the grass, so I'm letting it go. I'll post other pictures if it gets more obvious identifiers.
Well, as you can see the foliage on your plant doesn't look like the one on your link, so that is not the one. There is another plant by that name that is very common and that is what you have, I can't think of the scientific name right now, but I will keep looking
O.K. I found a good link Common name: Field hedge parsley, Torilis arvensis, but we know it as False Queen Anne's lace, goes to show you how the common names can be very confusing.
http://www.sbs.utexas.edu/bio406d/images/pics/api/torilis_arvensis.htm
http://www.cas.vanderbilt.edu/bioimages/species/toar.htm
Shelia I just found that same fungus (http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=6522229) for the first time in my garden yesterday. Bizarre huh?
Last year I counted 11 var. of fungus growing in my yard... and one is a very bright orange color. I also have those small round brown ones that blow up a little brown cloud when you step on them.
Yesterday when I was moving some moss from one bed to another, I noticed a coiled 'object' (cha-right, we're in Texas). I mean I KNEW it was a snake, but was very small and seemed to be all coiled on it's SIDE which is what threw me off. I kept working and coming back to check on it. Finally on the 3rd pass it had stretched out and was on the move. It was clearly a king snake so I cheered him on! 'Go little man, Go!!' LOL
Thanks frostweed. Non-native in the yard—I think it's going to go. Not particularly beautiful. I didn't want to pull it all up if it were some Texas wildflower.
Got my garden surprise: a large turtle that had climbed over rocks and boulders to get into a raised garden bed, to lay its eggs... Look at that algae; it's been around a little while.
Cool, ceejaytown! Great share!
Here's a surprise from early this morning. This thing has popped up along my back fence line where I get a lot of water when it rains. I've been trying to get lyre-leaf sage and other shade and part-shade plants to grow as ground cover to cut down on erosion, but among the things that have popped up this year are some of these. They're all about two or three inches tall right now with about as equally long leafs. I just noticed them a few days ago. I have no idea what this is. I've sprinkled some shade tolerant wildflower seeds along there a while back, and I wonder if something finally took off with all the rain.
I don't quite recognize it yet, but it could be Day flower Commelina erecta they grow everywhere.
http://wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=COER
http://wildflower.org/gallery/result.php?id_image=17419
Josephine.
I just became familiar with the dayflower yesterday! It is growing in with wood fern along my neighbor's fence - on my side. Pretty thing. I left it.
Cajun.... That type of fungus also made a puff of black ash the next couple of days. Guess that is just spreading it when that happens? Uck!
CarloInTX, those white patches sound a lot like mycelium to me! Keep checking around them to see if any mushrooms pop up! Shelia_FW, yes, those black clouds that it's sending out are actually millions of little spores, what you have there is a puffball mushroom!
Olympiad, they're pretty patchy and have disappeared from the flower beds (no mushrooms yet). They have spread into the bare spots in the yard—my yard has a lot of bare "dirt"— but I sprinkled them with garlic powder this morning to see if that had any effect. I can certainly smell it ;-)
If garlic will work let me know!
Sheila_FW, I just tried it because Stephanietx suggested it earlier. I know I've had pretty good results using something called Garlic GP, a liquid garlic extract-based anti-fungal on my crape myrtles.
We usually have to apply several dustings before it's gone. Be persistent! Garlic also keeps the bugs away I've discovered. LOL
