This was one of those weeks when I just wanted to give up and let the weeds take over.
After more rounds of thunderstorms, exterior clean-up is still ongoing. Kudos to the City of Dallas sanitation crews for working as fast as possible to deal with all the downed trees. The week was filled with tornado watches. Fort Worth/Arlington were hit by tornadoes last Sunday and downtown Greenville (about 50 northeast of Dallas) was struck Wednesday with a mesoscale convective complex.
We certainly will not be in drought this summer after this amount of Spring rain. Magical as it is, rain has both good and bad sides: good for veggies/flowers and unfortunately just as good for weeds (bad for gardeners). The fertile soil in the gardens makes a perfect landing place for weeds. Intermittent sunshine, 95o+ temps (105o+ heat index) and humidity create perfect growing conditions for them. They come from nowhere and everywhere and never seem to go away. The will to keep pulling a few every day is waning as rapidly as the heat is rising.
With help from my kids tomorrow, we will replace the two fabric canopies destroyed by hail.
THE GOOD: Total rainfall in my yards since June 12: 4-3/4”. Image from Sun June 16 ‘19
THE BAD: A marvelous 3’ tall crop of weeds in 2 days. Is this pigweed? It doesn’t bloom.
The spindly stalks are dallisgrass, crabgrass and/or bermuda going to seed.
MORE BAD: Unknown weed. Eesh, look at those seeds. Anyone willing to hazard a guess? Help me!
Spindly stuff looks like young dallisgrass seed heads.
THE INVASIVE: scrub dayflower (commelina erecta) is blooming everywhere in the gardens. Nasty multi-pronged root system dives deep, refuses to give up and steals nutrients from other plants.
As a physical and mental cool down from the depressing weed survey, I wandered through the gardens to assess growth. I missed the first epiphyllum hookeri blooms overnight during the week; heavy flame acanthus branches are prostrate on the ground, still recovering from hail. The butterfly garden is progressing fast and a walk through the fennel was headily fragrant. Spotted both black swallowtail and yellow tiger swallowtail butterflies lingering.
Emerging fennel blooms
Almost there
Tada!
Fennel bulbs have doubled in size since planting in April.
Sunflowers setting buds. Love watching the leaves follow the sun across the sky.
Hail damaged sunflower leaves
Turks cap in bloom after deciding to climb trellis
Butterfly main attractions
Migratory banded wing dragonlet — a skimmer
Best of the crummy photos showing a migratory banded-wing dragonlet. Omnipresent common purslane ‘weeding’ up the bed.
Blue agave (Agave americana) is one of the most graceful and artistic plants in the garden. I’m continually fascinated by the intricate growth designs on the leaves. The plant is attributed to the Aztec goddess of longevity, Mayhuel. The name agave comes from the Greek word for illustrious; it is part of the very large asparagus family and is closely related to aloe. Blooming only once in its lifetime (15-30 years), it is considered a ‘century plant.’ Sap can be used as a vegan sweetener, and, of course, it’s what ferments to make tequila! The original single plant (a pass-along from a friend) has dozens of offspring via a shallow root system; many have been dug up and ‘passed along’ repeatedly.
Graceful curves of blue agave
A zig-zag pattern on the center leaf, abstract heart pattern on the right leaf, dentil pattern on emerging left leaf
A blue agave baby.
Attesting to its hardiness, the agave shows pock marks from hail damage. Behind: Artichoke cactus
What are your worst nightmare weeds and most intriguing plants??