Wild Bluebonnets...

First, I was on a run, so I didn't have enough time to find the best shot... these are quick snaps... but I finally found some wild bluebonnets to photograph for you...
and they were so perfectly set against a rundown farm house too...

I think this last shot may be the best...

Mom came to spend the night yesterday, and left today about 2 PM, so I spent the rest of the afternoon doing yard work... specifically the front yard. The alley still isn't finished, but it's an alley, the front yard is what everybody sees and it desperately needed some attention. After about 3 or 4 hours, I'd achieved quite a bit, and then, since the sun had softened down, I decided I would take some pics... Not much new here, and they're in no particular order, but I was more having fun than anything else...

Here's the Sweet Williams, in full bloom now...

And here's the M. sonorensis ssp. craigii, even though the blooms were bigining to shut down for the night...

And here's Phennig, keeping watch for any mockingbirds in the curly willow tree ...

And this is a shelf that I rigged against the fence in the back yard... it gets the perfect amount of sun for the cactus & succulents, and as rough as it looks, it still looks better than the bare fence... It'll do until I can get something better there... you can see some Agave americana pups that I've potted up on the left. I'm waiting for them to root good, then I'll take em to the flea market to sell for a couple bucks each.

And here's another tray of succulents that I'm doing the same thing with. The Echeverias keep producing baby's and my friends run when they see me with one... so, off to the flea market they go... Not turning any profit on them, but at least they have some chance of finding a good home.

And I don't know if you remember me telling you about the abandoned crown of thorn plant that I found on my front step in a previous post... well, he's been repotted, and he's growing and blooming. Kinda cute... and that's the pachypodium beside it...

And here's on of my Sempervivum's going haywire in the pot tower...

And that's it.

Hope everybody out there had a wonderful weekend!

Later...

golden cat tail blooming...

My cleistocactus winteri, aka 'golden cat tail' or 'golden rat tail' (I prefer cat because 1. it's more accurately descriptive and 2. it just sounds better) has decided to bloom this spring... This is unusual.

Usually it blooms several times from late spring to summer, about 3 flushes... and last year it didn't bloom at all. Maybe these are some buds that started to develop last year and didn't until now...

You've probably seen this plant before, kind of... it's crestate or monstrose variety is quite common on those little grafted cactus you get at wal-mart. A South American native, it likes a little more water in the summer than most cacti. It will survive the winter outside here, but it has to be kept absolutely bone-dry, which is a little bit more than I can manage, so I bring it in...

Rambing around...

Well, I did manage to see some buffalo today...

But then the weather turned on me. Nasty, rainy, and cold...

And then the speaker went out on my GPS... grrrrr....

Texas Bluebonnet Season has started!

Our state flower started blooming a couple of weeks ago, but they're just now starting to really put on a show... Unfortunately, I haven't been able to stop and take pics during my deliveries. If I've got a few minutes, there doesn't seem to be one in sight, and when I'm surrounded by them, I'm on a run!

so this single solitary specimen that has managed to survive in my yard will have to do...

They'll continue to bloom until the summer heat really hits, although after Mothers Day they'll be much less impressive. There's a rather annoying tradition of people wanting to take pictures of their children running through the bluebonnets on Mothers Day... consequently, most of the displays beside the highways, which the state seeds at some expense, end up looking pummelled. A few years ago, the state troopers started ticketing people for it, but it still seems to happen. There are a few places along the highway where on M. D. They have a mowed path down to a circular mowed patch, where you can sit the kids on a bench with a fine display of the flowers spread out behind them... and this usually has a trooper standing there making sure nobody grabs a handfull of them... that's illegal too...

nithing too special...

Nothing too exciting... just posting a few more pics of the back alley...

In the front, is the tire planter. Behind it, is the O. engelmanni that we use every year to make jelly... behind that, you can barely see the spanish bayonet...

This year, I'm mulching with straw. It doesn't look as pretty, but this area would take at least 20 bags of mulch, and it's too darned expensive. The yellow straw will weather down to a gray soon... I know it looks like hell, but it's enviormentally friendly, and anything looks better than johnson grass. NOTHING kills johnson grass except suffocation...


This is the other end of the bed... haven't even started on this end yet... I'm doing all this in the half hour or so of light I have when I get home from work, so it's going rather slowly.


The tree that your seeing at the top of the pic is a peach tree.. it grew up between the shed and the fence from a pit... I know that you're not supposed to grow peach trees from the pit because they won't be any known variety... well this tree produces some of the sweetest cling peaches I've ever ate.

Finally, the sun came out today... the rain was pretty much over yesteday, but no sun, and 45 degrees... Today, it got up to 80, and I loved every minute of it... really, when it comes right down to it, I'm a lizard. I kind of like the heat. Of course, come July and August, don't even try to remind me of that statement, because I'll come back, delete this post and swear you're insane.

But the sun and heat did finally prompt the Mammillaria sonorensis v. craigii to start opening it's buds... still not in it's full glory, but starting to put on a good show...

And a few Sweet Williams started to open up also... I planted this ones ancestors about 6 years ago, and there always seems to be a few around now...

And of course, since Julie showed off her tire planters, I just had to show off mine... You might remember this planter from when I illustrated how to make them in a post last year... click the tag under the posts and you'll find it. I'll take a better pic after I get the mulching and stuff done that I want. In there is an agave, one of the variagated A. americanas, but I don't know which one as I got it from one of those sellers on the side of the road. There's also an O. microdasys and a little sempervivum... I thought the Optunia, with it's little yellow dots would look good against the Agave with it's yellow stripes... both of these plants will get quite big. The sempervivum will spread out to make a ground cover almost, especially if I keep pulling chicks off the others in the yard and planting them in here...

Hope everyone is having a great spring!

GRRRR

Well, I got to Waco at 7 am on Friday morning, and by the time I got home, I had spent 13 hours on the road.

I looked, and i can assure you that there's nothing in Waco to take a pic of at 7 am, in the dark, in the rain. Maybe next time I get there I'll actually be able to see something...

Then I got home and collapsed, and I woke up at 3 am on Saturday. No chance of going back to sleep, so I'm going to spend the weekend trying to get my internal clock back on track... It's still raining, so I'll see if I can find some inside pics to take.

Hey.

Dispatch snuck in a job at the last minute yesterday, saying only that it was for tomorrow... then I looked at it, and I have to be in Waco TX at 7 am to pic something up. I strongly suspect that it's something you can get at your local Home Depot, but if you want to pay me large amounts of cash to carry it 125 miles, who am I to argue?

No pics today, it's been raining for two solid days, and looks like it's gonna rain all weekend. I'll have my camera with me, but I'm not sure what's to photograph in Waco at 7 am. But, you never know...

Anyway, just dropping in to say hey...

Spanish bayonets...

I've had this plant, Yucca aloifolia, better known as Spanish Bayonet for about 10 years in my back alley... It's one of the first succulents that I planted. The plant was origionally a huge root with no leaves that someone was discarding and I salvaged... without knowing exactly what it was. Luckily, I planted it in the alley, against the fence and a good 8 feet from the roadway. This is lucky, because it is a dangerous plant, they don't call it bayonet for nothing. Those stiff leaves are each adorned with a single spine that can inflict a painful gouge right through a leather coat... not a plant that you want too close to where people are trying to walk.
I got the first blooms about 4 years after I planted it, and I've come to rely on it as a very dependable barometer of when spring has arrived. When these bloom, it's safe to plant outside.

Currently, it's 4 trunks, the tallest at six feet, the shortest at 4. We're in the northernmost reach of it's range, so I'm pretty sure that I won't get the 20 foot tall trunks that the plants can develop further south, but I'm hoping for 10 feet or so eventually... When it reaches it's maximum height, it'll fall over. Then the growing tip will turn to point up and it'll continue growing, with more plants growing up from the roots... Eventually, they can form dense, inpenatrable thickets.

The first cactus bloom of the season! This will get more impressive over the next few days, as more buds open and the flowers, idealy, form a ring around the plant, but it's a cheerful little bloom, isn't it?

hmmm

Well, this darned cactus lamp has been giving me fits. Primarily in the lampshade dept... The plain white lampshade looked too unnatural... the pleated ivory lampshade was the wrong shape... I found a brown burlap one, that looked actually ok... except it was too long and it covered the top of the cactus...

and ultimately, this is an obnoxious lamp, and it needs an obnoxious lampshade...

Then it dawned on me.

It needed a sombrero...

Now, I origionally wanted one of those big velvet ones, with all the embroidery and mirrors on it, but even in the flea markets they run close to $20.00... which is the silliest thing I've ever heard since people go to mexico, bring the thing back and then sell it in the yard sale for a buck because they can't figure out what they're supposed to do with the darned thing when they get it home...

But I got this one untill I can come up with a better one...

What do you think?

It seems this week is all about the past...

or at least I keep wandering into things that I've already posted about...

remember this post - http://lpfleamarket.blogspot.com/2008/08/meandering-around.html where I told you about the mangenta shotgun house... If you don't want to click the link, don't bother, here's the pic...

Well, I turned a corner and there it was, repainted. I had mentioned before that I had seen it, and that it had been painted gray and quite frankly I'd lost all interest in it, but I took a pic anyway...

And then, of course, there was the beer can garden. Here's the link to the post... http://lpfleamarket.blogspot.com/2008/06/beer-can-garden.html Basically, it was cool, then the city made him take most of it down and it wasn't cool, and now the beer can garden has started to come back... Guess you can't keep a folk artist down...

What really crawls up my nose and annoys me is that the city decided that this gentleman had to take the cans down origionally. I understand that he had to remove all the cans that were on the outside of the fence, because that's considered city property, even though the city doesn't mow or maintain it... because it might impede foot traffic. Of course, you will notice, there's no sidewalks, so I don't really know what they're talking about... I think they were just making stuff up.)

Anyway, this was bothering the city, but within 1 block of this house, there is a house with about 50 coops in the back yard where the residents are keeping fighting roosters. Trust me, I was there at 6:30 AM. I heard them, and I saw them... There's about 3 more little fighting cock farms within 3 blocks... nobody needs an alarm clock in this neighborhood.

So, this gentleman can't decorate his home as he sees fit, but other residents can raise illegal animals... not to mention the fact that a large number of birds in those small yards might concievably be a health hazzard...

Regardless, before I go off on a rampage, I saw something else today that I found supremely annoying... I was at a Wal-mart, when I ran into a bag of mulch. Hardly surprising, it's the gardening time of year, right?

Well, this Mulch said, "NEVER MULCH AGAIN!"

Turns out, that this is fake, artificial mulch. Made from chunks of rubber that has been painted brown. So, I'm supposed to spread this stuff on my flower beds? You're kidding right? And my favorite package blurb... "100% recycled rubber!" Oh, so it's good for the enviornment! I see! I about had a sputtering, hissing, conniption fit, right there...

Why do I go into Wal-Mart? You'd think I'd have learned by now....

That said, I can possibly see using it on a potted something or other... provided there was absolutely nothing else available. Like rocks. Or broken flower pots. Or real live mulch for that matter...

They're not prickly plants, but they're blooming!

Northern Gardeners have wonderful little plants called Snowdrops... they bloom right through the snow with little white bells...

We can't grow them here. We don't have enough winter, and our summers make them rot in the ground... We can however grow a closely related plant that gets taller, the Southern Snowflake, Leucojum aestivum. a little taller...

They're nice plants, getting about 12 inches tall and growing thick. The individual blooms aren't that impressive, but they bloom en mass and they create quite a nice little display for about a month every spring. Right after the early daffodills, and at the same time as the mid-season and later daffodils.

Just a quick post to let you know that I'm still around! later