Bloom Day - June 15th, 2011

Let me start out with this 7 day forecast for this week from KXAN:



It's not even freaking SUMMER yet!! And this has been going on for the better part of three weeks already. Good God. My garden is gonna french fry to little crumbly bits before summer is over. I will surely lose a bunch of plants. It went from winter to dead heat and drought of summer overnight. My sweet peas hardly even bloomed this spring before they fried in the heat and drought. At least I have a few hardy heat loving plants that don't much mind this desert heat. Here we go...

Mexican Oregano. This is just ginormous this year. I have already cut it back twice:



Behind it is Big Red Sage. Here is a closer shot. This plant was once thought extinct and was rediscovered in the 1980's. No worries in my garden for this guy. It has taken to reseeding itself all about in the gravel mulch. The hummers love this one:



The mexican milkweed popped up from seed everywhere and is now blooming although it is a bit small due to the lack of rain:



The Texas Bluebells are doing simply amazing! They are thriving in the heat. I do water them once a week. These reseeded themselves all over my gravel garden path last year, so I dug them up and planted them around the garden and they have just gone bonkers:



There are a whole bunch more of them here with the coneflowers which are also doing well right now:



A closer shot of the coneflowers. You can see the glad 'Atom' just finishing up blooming in the bottom left corner:



Here are a couple shots of what the glads looked like about 2 weeks ago:





Then there is the gloriosa lily. New this year and it has been blooming on and off for the last couple of weeks. So exotic!:



The always exotic Pride of Barbados is really taking off in the heat:



The purple passionflower is blooming right now and the vine has almost completely engulfed my butterfly bush. Normally the caterpillars of the gulf fritillary butterfly will defoliate this vine enough that it keeps it completely under control. Not this year! I guess there isn't enough rain for the caterpillars as I have seen very few of them and as a result the passionvine is going nuts! The flowers are so pretty:



The Morning Glory 'Grandpa Otts' is also blooming right now and looking fabulous in the early morning light:



The always fabulous and heat-loving turks cap has begun to bloom heavily:



And Batface cuphea is also looking fab:



Out front in the hellstrip along with the agaves, the rock penstemon continues to laugh in the face of the death star:



The hummers use the agave spikes to perch on to try and defend 'their' staked out penstemon flowers from rivals:



That's all folks! Happy Bloom day!

The Night Garden

Well, sultry summer nights have already settled in and it isn't even summer yet! It's 95 outside just after 10:30pm this evening. And with these sultry summer nights come the deep, thick fragrances of the night bloomers.

The Datura has begun to bloom and fill the garden with its intoxicating scent:



I'm still waiting for the tuberose and the abyssinian glads to bloom to add to the perfumery the garden becomes at night, but while I am waiting for those to bloom, the Moonflower has just began to bloom. It does LOVE the heat and really takes off once the nights are warm and humid. I so love this vine! It is just gorgeous with those big velvety-white flowers and the gardenia-esque scent:



Notice the gecko in the background there? He thinks he's safe hiding out on the porch and stuffing his face with moths, but danger lurks just above him:



I found this guy literally hanging out looking for yummy little gecko snacks to munch on. Yum.