Wildflowers...

Just a quick post... it's late and I gotta get to bed, but I just had to share the wildflowers...

no bluebonnets today. I'm actually getting tired of them, believe it or not... today there was a roadside full of indian paintbrush though...

they photograph a little redder than they actually are... there's actuall a bit of an orange tone to them. The old fashioned name for this color was 'flame' but nowdays we tend to call in Day-glo

This patch actually has a few of the albino or yellow flowers too...

At the fence line at the back of this patch we got some wild prickly pear...

and scattered around there's some milkweed...

And the coreopsis are just starting to open too...

Hope everyone is having a great week.

later.

Well, it's been over a week...

And it's been raining off and on all week... not really great light for pics or anything, so yeah... I've seen some fields of bluebonnets, and the coreopsis are beginning to show, and the indian paintbrush is painting some fields orange-red, but not in the kind of light that I can take a pic of...

So you're going to have to settle for Siberian Iris from my yard...

The origional plant came from an abandoned farm site. They were fixing to start plowing it up to build a strip mall, so I ran myself down to rescue these, and some crinum lillies.

Now Siberian Iris aren't as flashy as the German Iris that most of us think of when we think iris... but they're much sturdier plants, at least in this part of the world. Don't get me wrong... Those full bodied, blousy bearded iris do just fine here. But they do best if they're thinned every two years, or they stop producing large amounts of blooms.

Siberian Iris are just the opposite. These guys do best if you leave them the hell alone. Seriously. Don't even think about digging around they're roots... They'll survive it... but they will skip blooming next year.

They're actually very common around abandoned farm sites for exactly this reason. No one is messing with them.

These had to grow 2 years in my yard before they produced a flower, and they've been thriving, in a huge clump that is threatening to crack a sidewalk, for the past 15 years, without me so much as deigning to throw fertilizer on them.

The leaves are very upright, to just over a yard tall, the flowers floating about six inches above the surface of that... The leaves do die down for a dormant season in the heat of summer. I'm told that they would survive if I watered them constantly. I'm not gonna. About September, the leaves resprout and keep growing all through the winter and they bloom in late spring. What more could I ask for?

And now, garden tip for the day...

Always go to used book stores, and look for the publications that were put out by your LOCAL garden clubs in the 50's to 70's. Almost every garden club put one out... they tend to be stapled or ring bound paberback books that look like those cookbooks that schools, lions clubs, and churches put out... these books are so valuable, because they were written when people actually gardened, and were written by people who were actually growing things in your climate... Modern gardening magazines are written by people in a very limited gardening zone, and are usually being paid not by the magazine, but by a nursery organization. Lilypons was pretty bad about this. I've read plenty of magazine 'articles' telling all about how to use Lilypons liners, pumps and etc without ever mentioning that anything that holds water can be a pond. Seriously... I've seen 6 dollar kiddie pools from Wal-mart being used to raise koi, by people who then turn around and sell you $100 pond liners, so that you can put the danged koi in your back yard.

One of these articles really about sent me lunar... They were talking about tropical water-lillies, (which lilypons just happened to be selling that year, what a coincidence, huh?) and the author actually said something like, "While tropical water-lillies can be kept from year to year if you have a green house, I've found it too much trouble, and recomend buying a new one every year..."

Those blasted plants cost over a hundred bucks each! And, I know from reading old garden club magazines that you most definitely don't need a green-house, you can let them go dormant and keep the root in a bucket in the basement until next spring.

The whole point of this little tirade is that if you want real gardening advice, you go to the older books... since most modern gardening books are simply advertisements trying to part you with money you don't have to spend.

I think I'm done now... for the moment...

Well, I had a good run yesterday...

I had to pick up something... (It's a high security delivery so I'm not allowed to say what or which company... but I must say that it's probably not as important as everybody is making it out to be... it's not uranium or anything, and I seriously doubt that Osama Bin Ladin is gunning for me... ) before 4 pm on Tuesday and deliver it to Oklahoma before 7:30 AM on Wednesday. I don't really mind this... these overnight deliveries pay extremely well, but it does make planning your life a little difficult...

So I picked up the box, kept it locked up until 2 am, woke up then took off for Oklahoma.

Now, when planning my route I ran into a glitch. I usually avoid toll roads. The ones in Dallas only save me about 3 minutes on a trip, and aren't worth the money. But if you're going to Oklahoma from Texas, you can take the $1:50 toll road and get where I was going in 3 hours or take another route, across what my GPS insisted were unpaved roads, and get there in 5 1/2 hours, not to mention the waste of gasoline... Very clever of those Oklahomans... got them quite a little money-maker there.

Now, Oklahoma is a beautiful state, full of rural pastures and scenery.

Not so much at 4 AM though... Nice skies full of stars... which my camera won't capture, but not really much else.

and I developed a tire issue... a slow leak.

Stopped a couple of times to fill the air up.

Got to Lawton, made my delivery, then waited around for a used tire store to open up. While I'm waiting for the tire store, I get a call from the person I just made the delivery too... seems that it wasn't supposed to get there until after 10, and he's quite irate as he just got woke up at home when I made the delivery. I explain that the order came through to be delivered before 7:30. Finally, we determine that someone in the main office is a total jack-ass... and we're all good. Then I got my new tire, and back on the road... this time going to Wichita Falls, TX... so back on the toll road I go.

Picked up, and finally, on the way back, I saw something worth taking a pic of... well it's worth photographing if you really stretch your imagination... Opuntia leptocaulis...
They're commonly called "christmas cactus" or 'Christmas cholla" by the more polite locals... and those little red berries are why. They show up bright red during the holidays... of course it's well into spring now, and the local mockingbirds have pretty much cleaned them off...

Now, if your not so polite of a local, you call them " that (insert cuss word here) cactus"

The plants have viscious little spines, and tiny little pads that break away at the slightest touch, and dig right into you. They're the bane of ranchers.

They're scattered throughout the state, and there seem to be varieties... the ones I see down around Austin are lighter in color and the sections seem longer. I once had one of them in the yard, but it didn't like our slightly tougher winters. Never bloomed and eventually just gave up the ghost after about 5 years.

These are growing north of me, and would most likely handle our winters like a dream. Might even think it was on a tropical vacation. So yes, I used extreme caution and brought a few little sections home to root. If you'd like to know more about them, try this link... or for a more detailed scientific discussion, try this link...

Anyway, I eventually dropped what I picked up in Wichita Falls in Dallas, and then I went home after driving 12 hours straight and collapsed in a small coma. And then, I woke up at midnight. I'd try to get something useful done, but then, come time to go to work in a few hours, I'll be tired out, so I'm using this time for lolling around doing nothing. I haven't had a good loll in a while.

And we got blooms... Woo Hoo!

Well, I know better...

So, I went to one of my local nurseries. It's not my favorite... actually, it's one of my least favorite. Overpriced and not good plants... And they have this cactus section.

This cactus section is one of my biggest pet peaves actually, and not only in this particular nursery. It seems that all the local nurseries sell cactus, but none of them have labels... You actually have a better chance of getting a cactus with an accurate label at Wal-mart or Home Depot... and even if it's not accurate, you at least have the right genus. Usually...

Anyway, this particular nursery has something that's really amazing... Succulents and Cacti that are actually dying from lack of water. Someone once told these people that cactus don't need much water and they decided that meant that they need absolutely none... I usually wouldn't lower myself to enter the door of this place. But I was bored. And, as usual, I saw a bunch of seriously deflated, under cared for cactus and succulents that were less than an inch from death. Even grafted cactus whose Hylocerius grafting stock had dried up and died already.

On a table full of Golden Barrel cactus (Echinocactus grusonii) right at that stage where they're losing their juvenile bumpy look and developing real ribs, I found this guy. I don't know if it's some sort of mutant, or if the stress it's been under has somehow damaged it... but for some reason, at the precise moment it started to put out adult ribs... it's growing point has split into 4 different heads.

Now, I've seen 2 headed Golden barrels, but never a four headed one. I kinda had to get it.

Actually, I'm thinking it's a result of stress more than anything else, but it's intersting to note that the new heads all have juvenile ribs, and it will be interesting to see if, when they start their adult ribs, if they'll split again, which would point to a genetic mutation of some sort. regardless, it's an interesting plant.

just had to share...

more pics from around the yard...

Well, last Monday, my day off... I was out in the yard working and decided I'd take some pics of what's happening out there... The M. sonorensis v. craigii is just starting to bloom... Click on that link to see the whole plant and other stuff about it... This is one of the plants that I was really worried about. I didn't think it was going to make it through the winter, but it managed, although there is some dammage visible on the plant. I'm not gonna worry about it too much, I don't look as good as I used to either. We call it character.

Now, some of you may remember this plant from the absolute worst packing job ever...

This is one of five that I got in the mail... this one was outside to test hardiness, while the other 5 stayed inside for the winter. I really really thought I lost this one... after the last snow, I checked him, and the center growing tip was dark, almost black. I figured rot had set in. Turns out, not so much. He's just fine.

And the Yucca aloifolia... is blooming too... 2 stalks are up and open, and 1 is just starting out. Remarkable things aren't they?

And that's about it...

lotsa lotsa pics...

So, Good Friday is not a good day to deliver.

Quite frankly, it's an empty day. Many places are closed, and nothing much is required, or if it is required, it was delivered earlier in the week. I only had 2 deliveries all day. Not really that big a deal, I suppose.

My first pic is this... my Episcia has decided to celebrate the season by producing its first bloom ever. Not the best pic, it was almost impossible to get it to focus on the flower istead of the leaves, but I thought I'd post it anyway...
Next, the Texas bluebonnets are beginning to bloom. They're not in their full glory yet... the fields are only occasionally dotted with blue, but they're nice, cheerful flowers...

The next pics were taken in the Mansfield Old Colored Cemetary.

I've posted about the cemetary before. Mansfield had a large African American population of freed slaves after the civil war. This cemetary was largely abandoned until a few local churches have volunteered their efforts into restoring it, and it is now being utilized again. Their aren't many stones on the older graves though... grave markers were a rather expensive investment for a financially challenged community. Many graves were marked with wooden crosses that are now long gone, others with local sandstone rocks, others with homemade cement markers.

Still others are only marked by these ancient clumps of iris...

And finally, some of the naturalized Grape Hyacynth that I talked about in a previous post.

It turns out that I got pics of these just in the nick of time... no sooner had I walked back to my truck than a truck marked with Tarrant County Justice Department rolled up hauling a trailer loaded with mowing equipment. Out strutted two guards, and a crew of four prisoners. It was interesting to watch.

The guards were a perfectly matched pair. They were wearing their uniforms... Khaki pants and black polo shirts. They were of identical height. They both were thick waisted, not fat but certainly not thin... the kind of build that high school football stars get after they've lost their glory and started selling used tires, if that makes any sense. Their waists appeared to be of identical girth though, pants held up by black belts with lots of little tool pockets, and they both had shaved heads, and black sunglasses. They literally looked like identical twins... with one major difference... one was black and one was white.

Really, no Hollywood casting director could have found a better matched pair of actors to play their roles. I seriously considered snapping a pic, but for some reason I didn't.

Out of the back of the truck jumped four men. All of them came to about the shoulders of their guards, and were wearing scruffy jeans and stained t-shirts. The guards started barking, and the workers quickly, and very efficiently, unloaded their equipment and went to work, while one of the guards stood on the bed of the pick-up and the other stood on the trailer, both staring out through their ray-bans with arms crossed across their chests... in a rather powerful pose that I presume was to impress upon any passers-by exactly who was in charge.

At one point, one of the mowers got caught on a slight rise in the ground, and the worker struggled to right it's path... provoking the guards into making loud, disgusted noises and yelling instructions. When the worker eventually righted the machine, he tuned and went the other way and went about his job.

For some reason I can't exactly fathom, the guards found this hillarious and there was much thigh slapping and roars of laughter.

I don't exactly know the point of this story, or why I found it neccesary to include it... but it's there and there we are...