Rachel: March 2008 Archives

In contrast with MSS' "black" blue cornflower, my own blue cornflower finally opened its first bloom yesterday, in time with my satsuma.  Apparently these are also known as bachelors buttons, but like MSS, I identify bachelors buttons as Gomphrena globosa, which is the more common flower here in Texas. 

I knew what I was planting when I put these seeds in the ground last fall, but I'd rather forgotten about them by the time they started growing this spring.  The tall, spindly plants, with green-silver leaves, were somewhat close to getting pulled as weeds out of the edges of my vegetable garden, but since they weren't spiky and didn't look like they'd give me a rash, I figured I'd let them grow so I could be certain what they were.  As isolated as they were, I suspected they might be a long-forgotten planting of mine. 

I'm slowly learning to be more organized in my planting, but it may take a couple more years to make a convert of me.

At long last, my Satsuma tangerine tree has started blooming!  It's covered in buds, but today, four opened up completely, and a fifth is partway open.

I spied this little guy visiting the blossoms, which have a beautiful strong, sweet scent like jasmine.  I think he's a gray hairstreak butterfly, but if you think otherwise, I always appreciate correction.

My husband's family is in town this week from Canada, and I'm thrilled that plenty of things are blooming in the garden for them to enjoy.

We got one of those "project starter" gift cards from Lowe's in the mail the other day.  If you spend $50, you can get $10 off.  An excuse to spend $50 at Lowe's?  Sweet.  (The card wound up not working, but that's another story.)

So we bought:

Carolina jessamine
chamomile
lavender
green and red bell peppers
lamb's ear
dwarf bottlebrush "Little John"
two S-hooks for hanging bird feeders
black oil sunflower seed
a couple of bags of mulch

Carol of May Dreams Gardens asks us to share what's blooming in our gardens on the 15th of each month.

Did you know that my husband and I were married on the 15th of July a couple of years ago?  I find the 15th of each month an easy day to remember, because we still celebrate our "monthiversaries," but that doesn't prevent us from being quite busy when the 15th rolls around.

This month, fortunately, the 15th falls on a Saturday.  I've decided that setup is ideal; it means that Friday afternoon when I get home from work, I can snap photos of what's growing in our west-facing front yard, and then Saturday morning as the sun rises over our east-faced fence, I can snap photos of what's growing in our back yard.  Bloom Day winds up being a two-day affair, but it helps me avoid the boring flat light that I encounter when I take pictures at less opportune times.

On that note, I begin March's Bloom Day entry with a look at my aloe bloom, lit from the east, which gives it a nice bit of three-dimensionality and contrast to set it off from the background.  Aloes are funny blooms; a year or two ago in my old garden, an ancestor of this plant sent up a shoot in preparation for blooming.  My roommate was upset because she'd be out of town when the actual blooming happened, and she was afraid she'd miss it.  Lucky for her, aloes are about the slowest-blooming plants I know, and she'd been back for weeks by the time it was well and truly blooming.  Fifteen days ago, on Leap Day, I posted a picture of this same plant.  Check it out for comparison!  It has obviously changed over the last couple of weeks - the stalk is much taller, and the groups of petals have branched out, but it's still not blooming!  You can see that the bottom flowers are starting to get the faintest blush of coral about them and are starting to peel away from the group.  Perhaps in another couple of weeks, the whole group will be blooming.

I picked up this Dittany of Crete a few weeks ago in the herb section of Green and Growing in Pflugerville.  Its leaves are so sweet and fuzzy that I couldn't help it - it followed me home, really.  I'm growing it in a pot now, and I'll try to keep it alive during our hot Texas summer.  If I can, I've been promised beautiful pink blooms.  Pictures will follow, naturally.

Another recent purchase from Green and Growing is this Dahlberg daisy and a beautiful cobalt glazed pot, out from which it spills.  Cobalt blue and sunny yellow are my two favorite colors in combination.  The daisy actually came in a multipack of six.  I planted one inside the pot, three outside the mouth of the pot to help simulate the spilling effect, and two in my border in the front yard, between bulbines and guara.
















I also picked up the Oxalis "Lucky" seen below, which I'm also growing in a pot for now.  I'm really a sucker for oxalis, weedy though some consider it.  I love the different types of foliage and flowers that they display.  At last count, I've got at least four different varieties in my garden: this dark purple variety with yellow flowers, which I purchased, a green-leafed, pink-blossomed wood sorrel that I brought over from my last house, a green-leafed, white-flowered variety that we inherited with this house, and a green-leafed, yellow-flowered sort that is probably a weed but which I enjoy.

Here is the pink wood sorrel that I mentioned, planted in and amongst my newly-identified baby blue eyes. 

Here's a bright little planting that I'm enjoying, as well: yellow and orange French marigolds planted among red and orange gerbera daisies.  Also in this planting is a lyreleaf sage that lay flat as a rug all winter but is starting to grow upward and take on some shape.  Its blue flowers will be striking in this little bed.

This satsuma tangerine is still in its nursery pot.  I bought it on clearance at Lowe's last fall, and I've managed to keep it alive this long.  I was so encouraged to see it starting to bud out a few weeks ago. 

Now its buds seem full to bursting, and every day, I think it will start blooming.  So far, it hasn't, but you can see how close it is.  I'm hopeful that we'll get some fruit off this tree in the next year or two, but I need to learn more about how to take care of it.

In the west-facing front yard, the poppies are continuing to bloom.  The yellow poppy has been blooming for a few weeks, but it has three open flowers today, which is its all-time best so far.  This bud is wide open this morning, but I was excited to capture it in this transitory state.

My second poppy plant has many buds, but it only finally bloomed for the first time yesterday.  It's pink!  Its papery blossom is still wrinkly with newness.

Other things blooming in my garden include:

• Orange bulbine
• Roses
• Purple trailing lantana
• my new lantana "Anne Marie" - more on that to come!
• Mexican bush sage
• Mexican mint marigold
• Pansies
• Snapdragons
• Strawberries

My garden in March seems to be cashing in on all the potential it has been hinting at in previous months.  I can't wait to see what April brings!

These plants started coming up this spring, and I've been waiting and watching them for weeks to try to determine what they were.  I'd about decided they were weeds, attempting to take over my garden, but fortunately, they've begun to bloom now.

What are they?  I don't remember whether I planted them myself in the fall, or whether they were planted there by the previous inhabitants. They're a pretty blue/lavender color, five petals per bloom, fading to white in the middle.  They grow three to four clustered together, as you can see by the buds to the bottom-left of this photo.   Each bloom is around 3/4" in diameter. Their foliage is fuzzy, intricate, and sort of scalloped.

The flowers have the look of phlox to me, but the foliage doesn't resemble any phlox I've ever seen.   They are planted in an area of mostly shade.

 Any ideas from the blogosphere?

Update:  Thank you so much to Annie of The Transplantable Rose and MSS of Zanthan Gardens for helping me to identify these as baby blue eyes!