First Yummy Pomegranate

Can you believe that I ate my first pomegranate of the year and I forgot to take a picture of it first? I have been watching that pomegranate grow all year. It could have ripened a little longer, the seeds were only pink instead of red. I thoroughly enjoyed it anyway.

Free Water From Mother Nature

Just a little free water from above. I don't remember the weatherman mentioning rain this weekend. This storm is coming from the south, part of the hurricanes down by Mexico. It was a short but substantial little microburst. A lot of water came down. I'm sure my plants will be happy afer they recover from the beating.

Willow and Caterpillars

Caterpillars attacked my Willow tree last week. One caterpillar took up residence on each branch and chewed all of the leaves at the tip, then spun a cocoon and turned in to a moth. I was worried about the damage they were doing but they were gone in a week and each chewed branch started to sprout new shoots.

This tree has tripled in size. Now that the caterpillars nibbled on it I hope it will fill out. I am really happy with how fast it is growing. Too bad it has to hibernate this winter. I need more green.

My Verbenas are Blending

My purple verbena was planted when the house was built. It is a hardy plant but it needs to be cut back once or twice a year when it get leggy and brown. After a year or so I noticed white Verbena mingling with my purple. I don't know where they came from because I have not seen white Verbena in the neighborhood. Maybe it was just in the plant's genes. This year I noticed light purple Verbena too. It looks like the purple and the white cross-pollinated. Now I have 3 colors of pretty Verbena.

What's Blooming Now

Red Bird of Paradise-Fiiiiinalllly blooming!
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This is my favorite Lantana-yellow and pink

My Desert Willow is STILL blooming

This Gazania sprung up for free. A pretty weed.

Moths, Moths and more Moths

I looked out the back door the other day as the sun was setting and I saw a bunch of little hummingbird type things buzzing around my flowers. Looking closer I saw that they were moths. I had never seen such a thing. They had very long tongues and were sticking them in to each Lantana flower. I tried to take pictures but I didn't have my camera set for close-ups so the pictures are blurry. I found one from wikipedia that is clear.moth with flowers

This explains why there was a tomato hornworm living on my Lantana last year. He was a big guy. One of the biggest I've seen. I put him in a jar for a while but he didn't look happy so I let him go. The hornworms turn in to these hawk or sphinx moths. Fascinating.

My Texas Ranger

I did 2 things wrong with my Texas Ranger. I put my patio too close to it even thought I knew it was going to grow much bigger and I left the drip system too close to it's truck so that the roots didn't spread out. This is a low water plant so I can probably take the drip off of it altogether.

We had a big storm last Tuesday and my poor Texas Ranger fell over. Luckily I found it while the ground was still very wet so I propped it up with a rock close to its trunk. Once the ground dries out it cements the plant in place so if you don't put it upright fast, it will be permanently lopsided.



I was thrilled to see that it finally bloomed. I had read that it blooms when the air is humid but it has been humid for 3 weeks! I went out to look at it every couple of days to see if it looked like it was thinking about blooming. Then, on the day of the storm, when I find it laying on its side, I see it covered with flower buds. I am glad it survived the storm so that I could see it's beautiful flowers.