rain lily reproduction!

This morning I took my coffee out to the front-yard sitting area to wait to catch Tommy when he finished mowing down in the pasture. As I looked around, I was very gratified to see that my 'Prairie Sunset' Zephyranthes had reappeared. I bought it from Painted Flower Farms last fall. It had leaves and one bud then, which opened after Steve planted it, but then of course it all disappeared in the winter.

When I got up to move my chair out of a sun-spot, I discovered more of them! Behind my chair was a clump with two flowers and two buds. This has to be where the original pot was planted. So a seed from that one flower last fall evidently germinated 4 feet away, and was able to bloom its first year.

This speaks well for the possibility of their spreading over the yard. And also urges me to get seeds right away (if the County doesn't mow them) from the golden ones blooming now at the Bayless-Selby House.

summertime….

…and the livin' is easy -- don't know about the fish swmmin' or the height of the cotton they don't grow in Denton County any more, but the Doak Orchards "Bowie Peaches Guy" is back on station in the corner of the bowling alley parking lot across from the mall, and summer is oh-FEE-shully here! Last year the late freeze did in their crop, and it was terrible. They had east Texas peaches at the farmers' market; they were good, but not the same.

Summertime flowers at the Ridge - the bull-nettles and spiderwort are gone and the black-eyed susans are passing. The tall yellow evening primrose is beginning to make a show. And there's a lot of horsemint this year. It will be showy for a long time.

But the speckled, creamy blossoms that the bees love, hiding under the bracts, will be gone I think by early July.


Got critters. Lots of birds, of  course. Mammals - I saw the gray fox a few weeks ago, first time in years. I came downstairs after I heard a metallic rattle in the front yard the other night, to find a 'coon that had failed to get into the birdfeeder, hoovering up the sunflower seeds underneath it. I see a cottontail in the lane often, especially down in the woods near the mailbox. And one night I slowly followed a young 'possum up the lane for a lo-o-ong way, till it finally went off into the grass to one side.

 This lizard was on the outside of the upstairs porch screen last week. Clearly it has never lost a tail to a cat.



The grasshoppers are very numerous, hopping up in front of the car in clouds, even when I seem to be travelling on a bare dirt section of the lane. They have been getting noticeably bigger the last couple of weeks. Today I photographed some that were posing on the windshield.

honeyvine, bluevine, swallow-wort

I think the milkweed vine down  by the lane is a Cynanchum laeve, though now that I have looked it up I need to go see it again. Probably I need to resurrect the plant press.

Aside - I washed out and refilled the hummingbird feeder yesterday, and it apparently tastes good again. Hummer just visited for maybe a dozen swallows  Of course I picked up the phone to try a picture just too late.

Here is the photo from the Natural Resource Conservanion Service (public domain via  Wiki Commons), and then two of mine.

 

Wikipedia says it's considered a noxious weed in some areas, but it doesn't seem to be here. I can see that it could be kind of kudzu-like, but it doesn't compare to greenbrier and Carolina snailseed. I am glad  to have found it.

Weathermen changed their minds

Or maybe the weather changed IT'S mind. Today's discussion says,

"Looking ahead to the the second half of next week...the nation
could be in for a significant pattern shift as upper level high
pressure builds to the east and a deep trough develops across the
west. If this solution verifies it could bring increasing rain
chances to North Texas before the end of next week. "

Sure hope they are right about that rain. One afternoon of drizzle isn't going to make it.

The last rain of any really significant quantity was three months ago, on June 21st about 3 am. It was a nice 2-inch rain. The only problem was that it was accompanied by the worst hail I have ever seen, practically covering the ground here in the dark outside the back kitchen door.

So much hail accumulated in a pile where it slid off the roof in the valley by the rain-barrel, that the pile of ice did not melt till the sun hit it at noon, even though the morning temps were in the nineties, Here it is around 9am, along with all the oak twigs it brought down. Vegetation was just flattened. My thyme never recovered, and gave up before the heat broke, even though it was watered.

The hailstones were large enough, and blown hard enough by the very strong west winds of the storm, that the gallery glass wall now has three holes in it, after surviving 60 years. And the screen on the west end of the upstairs porch was all pulled out of its staples.

The frostweeds were pretty severely impacted by the hail; those big leaves of theirs were fairly well shredded. There are not nearly as many around the premises as last year, but a few ragged ones have survived the drought so far and are about to bloom. I have seen fields of snow-on-the-prairie in bloom, on the way over to McKinney. Don't know how it manages it. A few other fall flowers are showing up in the wake of that little drizzle we had last week. But mostly the ground is pretty bare.

Well, Alex is moderating the temperature this week

Hurray! Last week was at or near 100°F every day. Yesterday was nice and cloudy; we got a lovely slow rain for much of the evening and night, and the rest of the week promises to be cloudy and low nineties, or even lower, with possibly more rain if Alex slings it our way.

Lots has been happening at the Ridge, that I haven't gotten around to writing about. The spring flowers have been and gone. The horsemint is blooming now, and deerpea. The black-eyed susans made a good show, but have totally dried up now. The last rain before last night was a thunderstorm in the early morning of the 15th, two weeks ago, and 3/4" of rain doesn't last for two weeks.

The bees, after a slow start, got going with a new queen, who is laying lots, Unfortunately the nectar has apparently dried up, so all those new bees don't have enough to do. Unemployment leads to too many security guards, and I got stung a second time Saturday, because I didn't heed the extra buzzing and flying around, and go right away to get more protection on.
In the first couple of weeks of this month, they made about 2/3 of a super of honey, but almost nothing since then. I am really hoping that this rain and, with luck, more this week will restart the honeyflow for a few more weeks.


Later -- the rain gauge in the herb garden by the front gate says 2.3 inches! A good "rescue rain," as Elizabeth Moon says. It will last a week or so, and we might possibly get some more later in the week, hope, hope.

The horsemint is done, however. The handsome upright stems with the white whorls of bracts still look lovely, but the bracts shelter globose clusters of maturing seeds, with very few flowers left. The snail-seed vine is starting to bloom, for whatever it may be worth to the bees, and the mesquite on the tank dam is blooming. The mimosas continue to bloom, but I have seen very few honeybees working it -- there was a bumblebee on the old one in the corner of the yard today.

(note — these two pictures of bees by my cousin Kieren Ladner)

firsts

First scissortail, and also pink evening primrose, back on April 11. What's more, now some primroses have come up in the front yard! not that far from where I just planted two more I got from the native plant society.

Indian paintbrush showed up a couple of weeks ago, and is getting widespread. There's quite a bit of slender vervain near the blue gate, also paintbrush and crow-poison, making a modest red-white-blue display. The first spiderwort has appeared, just before you get to the gate coming up the drive. The white violets are done blooming. They're kind of buried in a sea of bedstraw.

Hummingbirds - I heard at Redbud Day that they had been seen at feeders, so I put up my little 3-ounce one the next day. This Monday, the 19th, I saw a male several times. The feeder looks very small until compared to the bird; then it is big!