Shutter Snapping, Spraying & Shopping

Does anyone out there know what caused these bumps on clematis buds? I've never noticed them before this year. Vertie is taking an entomology course - maybe she'll know the answer.
After that bud opened the flower still looked pretty against the white wall, but the bumps showed through the reddish-purple petals as white spots.
Root Beer Plant/Piper auritum has huge leaves that are used in Central Mexican cuisine. It's more common name is Hoja Santa and its odd white flowers were so hard to photograph that I just listed them for bloom day instead of showing them. I hope this photo can finally give you an idea of what they're like. I also hope the photo will enlarge if you click on it.
Although the Hoja Santa planted in a border is struggling, this plant is in a container and had enough water to bloom. Mine are interesting novelties but the Hoja Santa at EastSide Patch is a major player in the landscape!

Last October Pam/Digging took us along when she visited the Chicago Botanical Gardens. and showed us Salvia madrensis. I found a pot of this tall yellow-blooming salvia at the Natural Gardener last spring and watched it grow slowly from a small plant to its present seven-foot height. Can you see it peeking out behind the plumeria? No wonder its common name is Forsythia Sage! But it's so tall that any photos of the blossoms are either lost in green foliage or washed out against the unrelenting blue sky.
So many things that I want to photograph are way over my head! This mockingbird has been singing non-stop. I watched the bird for half-an-hour as it flitted from one branch to another within the canopy of a large yaupon. I'd previously noticed mockingbird feathers scattered in several places around the front garden and wonder if one of the wandering neighborhood cats caught this bird's mate.
Is he disappointed in love or just dismayed that the gardener was too busy taking pictures to brush out and refill the birdbath?


Philo and I had a great time at the Sunset Valley Farmers Market yesterday - a friendly, lively place with live music, wonderful food and many cool plants.

I'm still browsing through recipes for the White Patty Pan squash but these incredibly delicious tomatoes, the wonderful whole wheat pita from the Mediterranean Chef and delicious Rosemary-Spinach pesto from Sgt Pepper's Sauces didn't need any recipes!
This small Kaffir lime tree was only $6! The leaves are used as flavoring, especially in Thai cooking. (This is something I learned from the movies - not from real life.) It's a tender tree so I'll grow it in a container and bring it inside during cold weather.

We scooped the last gallon of compost tea from the Ladybug Products booth. Fresh compost tea is perishable - buying it meant we had to use it in the garden within a few hours. We sprayed it everywhere and hope it helps the plants deal with the stresses of this year.
Last night I took the camera out to play with the night flash again, snapping one of the geckos that hang out under the roof overhang.
Because the intense yellow of the Forsythia Sage/Salvia madrensis didn't show up against the sky in daylight, I got the idea to see how it looked with the night flash. Pretty dramatic, isn't it?
I then turned the lens to the Moonflower vine/Ipomoea alba once again, using the night flash to see its heart, glowing like a star in the night.

Today is the last day of the Austin City Limits Fest - and as a loyal Austinite, I'm glad the crowd stayed dry. But once the fest is over, I sure wish we could sing along with the Beatles to September In The Rain.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day for September 2008

On the 15th of each month fellow gardenblogger Carol of May Dreams Garden asks us to join Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. I've posted photos on this blog, but a complete list with botanical names can be found at my other blog, Annie's Addendum.
It's mid-September in Austin, and while the days are still hot, there are fewer hours of baking sun on the plants and more hours of restful darkness as we move toward autumn. There may not be many restful hours for friends and family hit by monster Hurricane Ike in the Houston area (including Herself, Nancy and Cindy) and those washed out by the greatest recorded calender day rainfall ever for Chicago . You are in our thoughts, even as we rejoice and share the ways the earth speaks in flowers. Last year I walked the chicken path when MSS of Zanthan Gardens gave me some of her Oxblood lilies. Instead of following her lead and planting the Rhodophiala bifidia bulbs all in one place for a big display, I tucked a few bulbs into 6 small patches, in front, back and side gardens. Just a few of these Schoolhouse Lilies can brighten a small area like the fence at the entrance to the Secret Garden above.


The blue plumbago next to the back door has bloomed for months - now it's joined by the pale yellow Brugmansia, with a pink Cuphea barely visible at lower right.


The two tropical milkweeds had gone to seed, so a few weeks ago I chopped them back. They're blooming again, attracting aphids and milkweed bugs. I've seen Monarch butterflies checking out both plants but if there are any Monarch caterpillars they're hiding too well.


. The 'Julia Child' rose is finally looking good again - especially from a few feet away where the cut-out shapes on many leaves are less apparent. The damage hasn't stopped the buds and blooms and is probably done by leaf-cutting bees so I'll ignore it.


The Divas of the Dirt helped make this front garden in March. The Mutabilis rose, striped cannas, 'Black & Blue' salvia, Gregg's Mistflower, Flame Acanthus, white Gaura and yellow Bulbine strive to fill the footprint where an Arizona Ash once grew.


As you can see in this view from the other direction, the 'Mutabilis' doesn't really need any help, just some water and some time.

Here's a closer look at the Mistflower/Conoclinium greggii, 'Black & Blue' salvia and Bulbine frutescens. Mexican oregano is an herb in the kitchen, but looks like a small flowering shrub in the borders.... I planted two small plants in 2005 and then Pam/Digging gave me one for the Pink Entrance Garden in 2007. Until this summer I didn't want to cut them too much, so still used the dried Mexican oregano when cooking dishes like black beans. (Who was asking about what to cook with this herb? Was it Entangled?) The plants now have enough substance so that harvesting some won't leave a noticeable gap.


Did you notice those hot pink petals scattered around the light purple oregano flowers?
Our neighbors' enormous hot pink crepe myrtle sheds petals with every gust of wind. I'm not fond of the color, but the birds like the dense branches and it adds privacy in addition to the pink confetti.

You've seen the colors that I do love over and over in photos of the intense Blue Butterfly Pea/Clitoria ternatea and the delicately shaded Clerodendrum ugandense/Blue butterfly flower. They're not only blooming continuously, both plants are growing vigorously.

Some of the Salvia 'Nuevo Leon' died soon after the heavy rain three weeks ago, but this red-flowered native is less finicky about heavy clay. Both plants of the Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii have grown well and are covered in flowers, ready for a daily visit by a pair of hummingbirds.



Does your town have rules about when you can water your garden? We're allowed to hand water with a garden hose or watering can here in Austin but the use of sprinklers is regulated - my days are Wednesday and Saturday before 10 AM and after 7 PM.

On Saturday night I placed a 'bubbler' in the root zone of the 'Forest Pansy' redbud and turned on the kitchen timer. When the bell rang, I went out to turn off the water and had a lovely surprise!

It looked like June instead of September as a scattering of Lightning Bugs (or maybe you call them Fireflies) flitted around the front yard, grazing the box hedge and swooping over the 'Mutablis' rose. I caught one and took it inside, intending to get a closeup under the kitchen light. The beetle escaped and flew to the top of the wall.

I aimed high and snapped the photo to see what the camera could do - it's not a closeup, but it's a recognizable lightning bug.



Both the blue pea vine and the Moon vine got a late start this summer - I delayed planting them on the tall metal obelisk because the 'Cupani' Sweet peas didn't stop blooming until mid-June! The Blue Pea had already seeded itself from last year, and it grew fast and bloomed quickly. I had to soak and plant a couple of saved Moonflower seeds, and it took a lot longer to climb the tower, finally opening flowers this week.

You can usually tell if a moonflower bud will open that night by the way it looks in the afternoon.
I went out in the dark and tried out the new camera, testing its ability to capture the texture of the Moonflower petals.

How cool! The new camera lets me see in the dark.


Go to Carol's Bloom Day post and read the comments to find flowers in bloom all around the world.

Photos After the Rain

I thought my garden was going to be shut out of the rain-game when we'd had none by Tuesday morning. The many posts by rejoicing Austin bloggers made me glad for them, but glum for our part of town. Then the Roulette Wheel of Rain spun around to NW Austin on Tuesday afternoon, and by Wednesday morning the gauge showed an inch-and-three quarters of precious moisture. Hallelujah!

Another half-inch fell Thursday evening - from feeling unlucky we went to feeling very lucky. This afternoon a bonus 3/4 inch came down a little too fast and too hard with more possible over the weekend.

A few weeks ago, worried as the drought continued, I turned on John Dromgoole's call-in radio show, and heard his voice remind us what kind of leafy green vegetables we should plan to plant in late summer and assure us that when the August rains came our gardens would perk up.
Yes, he said when - not if. Maybe John was whistling in the dark, but he made me feel better, and he was right. During the last few dry months I've hand-watered the borders, shrubs and trees and each day I filled the four birdbaths. Enough moisture traveled through the ground to keep the strips of lawn adjacent to those watered areas alive. In the shady parts of the yard the grass isn't lush but it's alive. In sunny places any grass more than 2-feet from an irrigated section is brown. St. Augustine doesn't go dormant - it dies - so there are completely dead patches and the parkway's in sad shape.
Now is the time to watch, wait, think, and take photos so I can analyze what worked and what didn't and what should be changed. Did you notice that there are photos today? The last camera didn't work out, so Philo and I bought a different point-and-shoot camera and are experimenting with it. It's fairly simple but with more settings than my old EasyShare.

Unless noted, these photos were uploaded without enhancements - no contrast, no color balancing or sharpening - they're just cut and reduced to 130KB or less - my usual blog photo size - so I can test how they look on the page.

There's enough detail to see that while the blossom of the Blue Butterfly Flower/Clerodendrum ugandense has gone to seed since GBBD, new buds are forming and the blue bloom will go on. I can show you the way rained-on Silver gray Lambs Ears/Stachys byzantina look with orange Crocosmia.
The camera can get in close enough to catch the way neither heat, drought nor storms could destroy the Balloon Flowers/Platycodon 'Fuji White'.
I can get your ideas on why one Persian Shield/Strobilanthes dyerianus plant responded to the rain with entire branches wilting and looking awful...while the second Persian Shield 4 feet away looks refreshed and revived. One was in shade and the other in sun when I took the photos, but in the course of a day they get the same mixture of filtered light.

I can share my excitement at taking a picture of this bee on the Salvia coccinea. It wouldn't be a big deal to most of you but it's my best Bee Photo to date - the EasyShare couldn't do this much.

Today there are no Passionvine flowers, but there's a Gulf Fritillary caterpillar - the first I've seen this year.

Today you don't just hear the news that the seedling Blue Butterfly Pea/Clitorea ternatea vines have reached for the top of the obelisk and are in bloom - I can show it to you
I can also show you a crummy photo of the Cypress Vine/Ipomoea quamoclit which gets daily visits from hummingbirds. Here's an even worse look at one of the hummingbirds - even after I used Photoshop Elements on the picture. My hummers don't hover at feeders but zip quickly around an entire garden planted to entice them. There's nowhere I can hide to sneak a snap so I took it with auto settings from about 15-20 feet away. Even a bad photo of a hummingbird is a triumph when it's the only hummingbird photo in 4 years of trying! I think of this little blur more as evidence than art - Mary's photos of the birds at her feeders can be art. Buying a better camera can't turn me into a bird blogger or a bug blogger or a macro-flower blogger - but I hope that this one will let me illustrate or document the things I want to talk about.

For two years I've tried to take a photo of this native rainlily for the blog. It's called Copper Lily or Habranthus tubispathus . I couldn't make either my EasyShare or the returned camera capture it, but today you can see right down to the pollen why I was so happy that these bright little lilies popped up in my yard.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day - August 2008

Last month I posted a list for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day at Annie’s Addendum because my camera broke.

Philo and I ordered a camera. The camera came. It didn’t work out. It went back. We’re still looking.

So it's mainly text in my official entry for Carol at May Dreams August Blooming Day. If you want to leave and visit the blogs with both flowers and cameras don't worry about it! This list is to help me know and remember.

Although I water the borders by hand every few days and the containers every day, some plants that bloomed last month are dead and others have no flowers. That’s not always due to heat and drought – many plants are now in the “off” parts of their bloom cycles, and others were cut back to regrow and perhaps rebloom in fall.

It's August! Even with relatively cool temperatures and early summer rain, last year’s Blooms Day post for August 2007 was still snoozeville for flower-fiends.

Any plant not on the July list but blooming in August has an asterisk.

Abelia chinensis - six shrubs – all with a scattering of flowers.

*Agapanthus sp unknown - Pam/Digging gave me some bulbs of agapanthus about a year and a-half ago. I have them in a very large container with a twisted willow. There are two flower stalks open in a lovely deep blue violet. I tried to capture them in this photo taken by the returned camera but the color and texture is all wrong.

Anisacanthus quadrifidus var. wrightii,, a native Flame acanthus, also came from Pam/Digging and now has a flush of bright orange tubular flowers.

Antirrhinum majus, – two plants of yellow snapdragons have survived and been in bloom since Christmas!

Buddleja lindleyana, Weeping butterfly bush, many long, drooping, lavender colored flowers.

Canna ‘Bengal Tiger’ one orange flower head

Capsicum annuum – a dozen pepper plants have buds, flowers and almost-ready peppers. The birds love the wild Chili pequins.

*Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, also called Blue Leadwort, has a couple of dark blue flowers just opened

*Clerodendrum ugandense – Blue butterfly flower. My friend Ellen gave me a start of this plant in spring. It made two large flower heads in late July. The photo was taken with a borrowed camera a few weeks ago - it's almost done now. .

*Clitoria ternatea- the Blue Butterfly Pea climbed the obelisk and is flaunting bright blue flowers. The Ipomoea Moon vine grows next to it but it got a late start and hasn’t bloomed yet.

*Conoclinium greggii Gregg’s Mistflower – just starting to bloom in front wildflower bed

Coreopsis 'Crème Brulee' (5 plants) has flowers but in fewer numbers than in July

Crocosmia, may be ‘Lucifer’ – sprays of orange flowers on 4 plants – but few buds left to open along the stems

Cuphea ignea, Cigar flower, covered in tiny orange flowers

Cuphea llavea – small pink & lavender form (two plants), covered in tiny flowers

Cuphea llavea –red & purple ‘Batfaced’, covered in flowers

Cuphea llavea 'Georgia Scarlet', covered in red-orange & purple flowers

Dianthus – a few pink and red ‘Telstar’ hybrids haven’t given up!

Echinacea purpurea alba? – a white coneflower with a few drying flowers left

Evolvulus glomeratus, the ‘Blue Daze’ are tough as nails and making flowers

Gaura lindheimerii ‘The Bride’ (two plants), still making a few small flowers on long wands

Gaura lindheimerii, unknown tall rose-pink variety (‘Pink Cloud’?), some flowers

Helianthus, might be a native? This 9-foot tall annual sunflower has more seedheads than buds or blooms right now.

*Hemerocallis ‘Pinocchio’ two flowers – can’t believe it

Hibiscus moscheutos ‘Blue River II’, a few buds – no open blooms.

Impatiens walleriana, bedding impatiens. More than a dozen plants, some with many flowers, some barely alive

*Indigofera amblyantha? A couple of flowers on the pink false-indigo – think that’s the right species

Ipomoea quamoclit, Cypress vine. Many red flowers open each morning and are fried by afternoon. The hummingbirds better be morning persons.

Lagerstroemia indica, pink crepe myrtles. Five were in bloom in July – the sixth has joined them.

Lagerstroemia x hybrida ‘Acoma’ white crepemyrtles (2 trees); they keep blooming if I deadhead

Lagerstroemia indica 'Catawba', in container. I cut off the old blooms a few weeks back and it’s made new buds and blooms.

Lantana, only the white trailing kind is blooming – the others are not blooming and the leaves look hideous– maybe the Lantana lacebugs are sucking them dry.

Lavandula intermedia 'Provence', I cut it back a couple of weeks ago and it’s reblooming

Lavandula multifida, non-stop flowers on this fernleaf lavender. The plant is 8 times the size it was when planted in spring. Too bad it doesn’t smell like lavender.

Liriope muscari, in flower around beds both front, back and side.

Lobularia maritime, Sweet alyssum – one plant still blooming from late winter

Lonicera sempervirens, coral honeysuckle (a couple of flowers)

Lycopersicon lycopersicum, even the ‘Juliet’ grape tomato has slowed - just a couple of flowers

Magnolia grandiflora 'Little Gem' (one bud up on the top)

Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii (two plants), It’s doing well in the back border – barely alive in front woodland garden.

Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii, a few white flowers on two plants. It survives, but the plant has terrible form.

Oxalis crassipes 'Alba' (dotted around and in containers), several blooming

Pelargonium – the coral geranium inside and the red ones on the patio are still flowering. I hope the white ones are “resting” and not “dying”.

Pavonia lasiopetala, pink rock rose. This is a native plant. Every morning there are pink flowers. Every afternoon the flowers dry up. Even thought this plant has plenty of sun and some supplemental water, it’s always covered in mildew. If I had to look at it from the breakfast room window it might be compost, but it’s by the mailbox so I don’t care.

Perovskia atriplicifolia, Russian Sage (two beds), stressed but still not giving up.

Petunia multiflora? Two flowers. I can’t believe it’s even alive!

Phlox paniculata, one plant of my Grandma’s white phlox looks in bad shape – the other one has put up one stalk with a flower.

Platycodon 'Fugi White', (one plant); Platycodon grandiflorus (several plants), Platycodon 'Miss Tilly' (3 plants); Platycodon 'Sentimental Blue'- I keep deadheading and watering these Balloon Flowers and they reward me by pumping out blue and white flowers.

Plumeria sp unknown the red and yellow plumeria have one flowering branch each – they live in large containers that stay in the garage for the winter.

Plumbago auriculata (two shrubs) these two shrubs are over 4-feet tall, growing on either side of the back door and covered in sky blue blue flowers

Poliomintha longiflora, Mexican oregano (3 plants), two have flowers, one looks unhappy. I use the leaves to flavor black beans

Portulaca – assorted Moss Roses and Flowering Purslanes – still hanging on and blooming in red, orange, white and coral

Rosa ‘Julia Child’, no open flowers but a handful of buds

Rosa 'Mutabilis' (two good-sized plants) I keep watering these roses and they keep opening new buds every day.

Rosmarinus officinalis 'Prostratus' – a scattering of flowers

Ruellia brittoniana 'Katy'-a few flowers

The ONLY SALVIA that is doing anything is Salvia farinacea…even 'Hot Lips' kissed off Bloom Day

Scabiosa columbaria ‘Butterfly Blue’ - 4 flowers. This plant was blooming in January…blooming in August…and every month in between.

Scutellaria suffrutescens, pink skullcap (2 plants), lots of tiny blooms

Scutellaria wrightii- a few blue flowers on one of 3 plants

Tradescantia geniculata -still making many tiny white flowers on little water

Verbena bonariensis – produces both flowers for butterflies and hummingbirds and seedheads for goldfinches.

A few plants of white Zinnia linnearis and some rose-colored Zinnias have flowers.