When I decided to dedicate one of my edible garden beds to flowers I was originally planning to make it half native and half zinnias or other flowers. That is what it is this year but I am planning to change that next year to an entirely native bed and move the zinnias to one […]
Tomato Season Begins
It was a bit of a rocky start to tomato season and unseasonably hot temperatures in May thwarted a lot of the production but we are finally starting to harvest some tomatoes. So far they are all primarily Chris’ tomatoes that he ended up buying not long in the planting season after the ones he […]
Egg Bombed by a Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly
A few weeks ago I had a momma pipevine swallowtail egg bomb our Aristolochia fimbriata plants. We have several different mounds of the plants as the original location has spread via seed to other locations in the garden, and this isn’t a problem because we get one or two generations of caterpillars coming through and […]
White-striped Longtail Butterfly (Chioides albofasciatus)
Over the weekend I came across a new-to-me butterfly in the garden while we were working on the edible garden fencing. It flitted from blackberry flower to blackberry flower and my first reaction was “oh, the long-tailed skippers are here already?” Then I did a double take and realized that wasn’t a long-tailed skipper and […]
Around the Garden | Late April 2022
Despite the delay in spring, things are slowly waking up and moving along in the garden. I still haven’t mulched all of the flower beds nor have I caught up on clearing the paths of weeds, but I’m doing what I can. Frankly, I look back at the energy I had even with a newborn […]
Ruby Mize Azalea Garden
A few weekends ago we drove to Nacogdoches to attending the SFA Spring Plant sale to pick up some native plants we’ve been wanting for a good while. We had gone once before, I think when I was pregnant with Forest, so considering that was 8 years ago, it has been a bit since we’ve […]
Violets, Wild Plums, and More from the Garden
The garden was a bit slow to get going this year for some reason and others around the state have noticed the same. A few folks are relating it to drought conditions that are plaguing various parts of the state to differing levels. We are not nearly as dry as areas west of here but […]
A Glimpse of Spring
Saturday was one of those February days that lets your know that spring is indeed on the way. Despite all of the rollercoaster temperatures, warmth is coming. We’re going to rollercoaster down once again later this week but for now we’re enjoying the high point of the rollercoaster, getting a look out of the landscape […]
Nature Tidbits from 2021
With my blogging taking a significant hit over the last year mostly due to a lack of desire to write, I now realize I have a lot of things I can post about now that the desire to write here is back. With that, today I’m going to share some random nature bits from the […]
Salvia madrensis Blooms + Bonus Orchid Spikes
A few years ago I bought a Salvia madrensis plant from the local nursery only to have it never make it to its late fall/winter blooming period as it ended up being nipped by a freeze. This year our very warm fall, soon-to-be winter, has allowed a new plant I bought earlier this year to […]
