Garden Bloggers Bloom Day May 2013

This post was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.

The May garden has few surprises, but unexpectedly cool nights, days under 90°F  and some rain in the last month have made the garden look greener than usual. Funny thing - although the rain wasn't heavy enough to refill the reservoirs and it didn't sink deep enough for the trees and shrubs, there was enough near the surface to pump up the grass paths around the Trapezoid Walk.

In other years the daylilies have been in full swing by mid-May. In this odd year, the passalong dwarf daylily 'Vi's Apricot' has some flowers - here mingling with the annual larkspur:

 Another passalong, the Orange Daylily/Ditch Lily from Gardener of Good & Evil, has bloomed with more larkspur, a patch of Salvia farinacea started with shared plants from Rock Rose, and a brand new 'Silky Yellow' tropical Milkweed from The Natural Gardener...

 Other varieties like the 'Best of Friends' from Pam at Digging have made buds but none are open yet. Our weather is now changing from damp to dry with temperatures soaring up into the 90's F - sure hope all these buds won't be blasted!

Seedlings from the annual larkspur turn up all over the garden each year in late winter. Some seedlings are weeded out - many are left to bloom in the spots they have chosen - larkspur popped up with the Oakleaf Hydrangea. This variety is 'Snow Queen' and the plant is in bloom for the third spring in a row.

  
Salvia coccinea, Hummingbird sage, also seeds around. I planted the lavender but these Hummingbird sages not only planted themselves - they've selected their own color scheme. Behind the scrim of salvias and lavender you can glimpse the climbing mini-rose, 'Red Cascade'.

Also self-selecting are the annual poppies. This one turned up in a hypertufa trough on the patio.

Near the trough are two small native wildflowers that were purchased and planted so we could see them from the table. Four nerve daisy blooms most of the year but the Blue-eyed grass usually makes a short visit. The unusual weather has kept it blooming.

A couple of feet away is a little tapestry composed of Silver ponyfoot, White-flowering sedum and a wandering Ice Plant.

After seeing Renee Studebaker's garden on tour last year, I came home and pruned the fig tree and the pomegranate tree in the Secret Garden, hoping to make them more productive. That pruning also gave more sun to the Pineapple Guava and it has more flowers than ever before! Will there be fruit this year?

Another shrub in bloom now is a fragrant, double, yellow oleander, growing in a bottomless wooden box. Twelve years ago this large shrub arrived as a one-foot-tall rooted cutting from Plant Delights. If you want to grow one, check out the current Plant Delights catalog.

Near the Sweetheart Arch the Shasta daisies have started, backed up by Salvia 'Hot Lips', Salvia guaranitica and Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue'. I like the way the rusty reddish brown of the arch at right is echoed by the burgundy-leaved cannas on the left

When the flowers are in bloom the insects are blooming, too! These 'Bush Early Girl' tomatoes are making fruit in the vegetable garden near the cilantro, which has mostly gone to flower. I saw ladybug larvae on the cilantro (Good) but also saw a cluster of tomato-wrecking Leaf-footed stink bug young-uns on a patio plant (Bad). The ladybug larvae are still there, but the stinkbug offspring are departed.

From what I can gather from various sources online, this cute little Shiny Flea Beetle appears to be of Texas origin and seems to specialize in Scuttelaria - the Skullcaps. It seems to be more of a problem in places like Florida, where it is not native... but with 6 kinds of Scuttelaria in this garden, I'd better keep an eye on it. (Looks like friends on the Texas GardenWeb are also seeing these little beetles on their skullcaps.)

(The botanical name of the insect was misspelled on original photo so this was edited with redone photos and added links, May 19, 2013)


There's another type of insect larva that hasn't appeared this year, although I've certainly tried to attract them by growing milkweed in many close-together beds and borders. Maybe the Monarch butterflies skipped my garden this spring because they heard about the Titan School Garden here in Austin!   

More photos and the complete list of what is in bloom with botanical names can be found at Annie's Addendum.

Links to Garden Bloom Day posts from all over can be found at the May Dreams Garden Blog. Happy May Dreams, Carol!

This post, Garden Bloggers Bloom Day May 2013, was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose Blog.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day July 2012

My neighborhood has been very lucky! 

Over the past 9 days we've had a series of storms with time in between for the rain to sink in - six precious inches of rain as of last night. That's enough to make a real difference after last year's heat and drought. 

We'll probably heat up again soon, but for now, the trees have had a deep, quenching drink. If you are living in one of the places that needs rain now, I wish & hope that it comes to you soon. 

Every day we see hummingbirds sipping from this salvia. Years ago I bought two colors of the reseeding annual Salvia coccinea (the standard red Hummingbird Sage) and the lovely Salvia coccinea 'Coral Nymph'.
Seedlings sprouted in following springs - some light coral, some red and some white. I love the white version and have let it reseed all along the edge of the patio. 

 Last year this dark coral version appeared in a patio pot & the hummingbirds were crazy for it. Instead of being annual, the plant died back to a stub in winter then quickly regrew to make hummingbirds happy again. 

The Crocosmia is back! There were few flowers in 2010, no flowers and few leaves last year. I wondered whether the small stand had died out but here it is, blooming again with Purple Heart/Setcreasia

We always grow a few vegetables every year but had not tried cucumbers in Texas until this spring. A few seeds of Sweet Marketmore from the Natural Gardener turned into rambling vines with huge leaves, yellow flowers and edible cucumbers. I like to watch them grow but don't eat them - Philo has had 9 or 10 so far and says they're delicious. I have a feeling this is beginners' luck because the squirrels haven't seen them growing before... might be a different story if we try again next year!

One stalk of an Amarcrinum 'Fred Howard' opened flowers about 10 days ago which was appreciated but not unusual. The a few days ago this second stalk came up on the same clump - totally unprecedented.

My friend Ellen gave me a passalong plant of Blue Butterfly Clerodendron a few years ago. In 2010 I bought another and then cloned a few more. Right now there are 4 plants in my garden, one in bloom, one with only leaves and two plants in bud. These buds are near the Amarcrinum, making big promises.

Tropical milkweed has lived over in some places and seeded in others. This seedling near the back door had a caterpillar on it. We see more Queen butterflies than Monarchs here so I'm not sure but there appear to be only two sets of filaments so it may be a Monarch caterpillar.

 

It's dropping blossoms now but on Saturday the Cenizo was gorgeous!

 Early last summer every pepper plant in the garden collapsed and died. In July I found a few new plants for sale, planted them in containers and got a few peppers. I used containers again this spring and we've had a small, steady supply of small peppers for weeks. The 'Cubanelle' and 'Carmen' are sweet but the 'Mariachi' can be pretty hot.

More than 50 years ago my grandmother grew a white garden phlox in Chicago. She divided it and gave pieces to her children, who divided it and gave pieces to their children. I gave some to my son and it's grown well for him. My dear son brought a piece to me last spring and I struggled to keep Grandma's Phlox going through last summer. Here it is, small and way shorter than in Illinois but every bloom is precious to me.

The red Turkscap is having a very good year... twice the height it was last year and covered in red flowers. These blooms were at eye level ... you may also have heard them called Wax Mallow or Malvaviscus.

You can see more of the tropical Milkweed in the background but what's in front is not really a flower. It's a developing Meyer's Improved Lemon, on the tree that froze back to a leafless, stubby framework in February 2011. I don't know if the dozen or so lemons can make it all the way to fall & maturity, but it is certainly a novelty having little lemons hang overhead when you walk down the sidewalk.

The finches were probably relieved to see seedlings of the cosmos sprout up - much later than in other years. We've seen both housefinches and goldfinches hanging on the plants like ornaments, trying to get the seeds.  

My attempts to divide and clone this plant have failed so far but I'll try again. It's a hybrid Skullcap called 'Dorota Blue', supposed to be a useful groundcover in some places but a pampered pet here. I really like the color. 

Watering the rainlilies doesn't work - they are not fooled by a hose! But real rain brought them out of hiding. This pink rainlily came from Plant Delights nursery, but in the front yard I saw buds emerging from native white rainlilies and native yellow Copper lilies - maybe I can catch them in flower, too.

Thanks for visiting the Transplantable Rose ~ I wish you enough rain and enough sun to make your garden happy and many friends to enjoy it with you!

For the complete list of what is in bloom and a few more photos, go to my Annie's Addendum blog.

To see a roundup of gardeners who have joined in for the July 2012 edition of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, the invention of May Dreams Carol, go here to Carol's blog.