The daturas have really grown well out on the side garden this year. We purchased several small containers of them from a nursery just outside of Nacogdoches back in February. The plants have already set seed this year and I suspect we’ll have a lot of volunteer daturas next year. Chris wants to get some more varieties as I think these were the double or triple purple variety. The plants themselves are probably 4′ tall and have survived being barreled over by the armadillos earlier this summer. I love seeing them when I take something to the compost bin.

Chris has been working hard the last few weeks getting the vegtable garden up and going for fall and winter. You may remember, if you read Sprout Dispatch, that we spent some time this spring building the perimeter herb beds but stopped when we needed to switch to work on Forest’s room. Chris was amped up to finish those beds these last few weeks and he’s done just that! He’s even hooked up the water to work out there, albeit on the hose and not through the trench that we’ll have to dig sometime later, but the plumbing in the garden is set up and he has it working through…

In the last week I’ve managed to spent a few hours in the garden doing a bit of weeding. It hasn’t been much but it has been enough to start trying to recover from two months of rampant and unchecked growth. Somewhere in the midst of it all there have been a few garden surprises such as this yellow lycoris. We planted the bulbs two years ago and I don’t believe they came up last year, however this year they sprung up and provided a happy surprise near the pathway and our front deck. This luna moth has been hanging out near the front window by our stairs. I saw…

I ventured outside yesterday to walk around for a few minutes. The air was warm but with a tinge of autumn to it. I missed summer, y’all. I’m a little disappointed by that, missing the growing season and seeing the garden in its peak fullness. We still have a few months left before a frost and freeze, but a lot of plants will start their trend towards dying back for the season in the coming months. I’ve missed a lot of blooms over the last few weeks but I did snap a few shots of what I could find amongst the weeds, like the African blue basil above. The brugs…

Late last week I managed to walk around the garden and check out everything in bloom. Despite the garden being overgrown and weedy, there’s quite a bit blooming. In addition, there’s a lot of wildlife flitting about in the form of bees, dragonflies, butterflies, lizards, frogs, and toads. So despite my thinking the garden horrendous, apparently the wildlife seem to appreciate the wildness. I’m quite happy with my self seeded tithonia that came up. It didn’t get nearly as tall as the plants that grew last year, which ended up falling over a few times and at least once or twice that was due to trampling by deer. I have…

This part of the garden is scary. The path is full of weeds and weeds have overtaken the some sections of the garden. Nevermind that the armadillos showed back up sometime last week and did some more jacking up of the garden. Ah, how nice it will be to bend down to pick up weeds in cooler weather. I’ll be bending down to pick up weeds, probably, before it gets cool again. We’ve had heat advisory days most days in the last week and none of those afternoon storms that get just so close end up coming over our house. August in Texas…yep, that’s where we’re at.

Sometime back in the fall or even last summer Chris’ dad brought us a banana tree from his yard that was supposed to be a golden lotus banana, a pup from one of the plants that we had given him back when we lived in Florida. In our garden in Florida we had several varieties of banana trees that we grew. Anyway, the banana died back over the winter and with the very harsh winter this year I was still surprised that it came back up in the spring when the ground warmed up. Golden lotus banana trees are typically squat and bushy so when the tree and its subsequent…

I’ve been patiently waiting for the Texas Star Hibiscus, Hibiscus coccineus to bloom. As it is a hibiscus and incredibly tasty to the palate of deer, I managed to ‘hide’ a few plants near the house on the side garden behind a some other plants. This paid off in great growth from the hibiscus and rewarded me with a bloom the other day. Of course by the time I got around to getting a photo the bloom had closed up for the evening. There are a couple of other Texas Star Hibiscus plants that are near the beehive that I would like to move since they are continually getting chomped…

For the last month these blooms have been brightening up the flower bed directly in front of the house. We have at least two separate plants, one labeled Physostegia correllii and one labeled Physostegia digitalis corellii, but we believe they are both considered to be the Corell’s false dragonhead, which is a rare and endangered plant. I can’t remember where we bought them, maybe the SFA plant sale back in April, but they are in cultivation. The bloom stalks are extremely tall, in the 5-6′ range, though ours are now bent over and winding from rain storms and wind over the last month. I’ve definitely noticed that bumblebees visit the…

I think this weekend I need to find a use for the remaining leeks we have in our garden. Earlier this month I used them in a leek and potato soup, salsa, and just chopping a plant up and tossing it in some beans and rice. Their blooms are almost fading and the plants themselves really need to be eaten. Maybe I’ll toss some into a pasta sauce or have Chris grill some with fish. They really have some magnificent blooms, though! Bigger and bolder than the onions and garlic, for sure. Also, I’m giving some seeds away over at Sprout Dispatch this week. Drop by and put your name…