YIPES! THERE'S A COONTIE IN THE COMPOST! :-)

Have you ever found a plant growing in your compost pile after you have thrown it away? I find elephant ears and gingers that seem to thrive there. But this was different.

I totally freaked when I saw this! It had been since March when I tossed the DEAD coonties into the compost.

I even could see that the surface bulbs were mushy. I was really sad since I had just bought them in November and they were growing so well.

But apparently one little coontie wasn't about to give up.

Zamia pumila ~ a native of Florida

                                                  Its new home next to another cycad. Does anyone else grow coonties?
                                           I'm thinking I love these little guys. They look so fragile, but apparently they're one tough cookie. I'm getting some more if I can find them. They're good even in zone 8. Anyone in Austin growing them? Thanks for any comments or feedback.

UPDATE (9/21): It was a year ago that I bought these and now they again on sale at Houston Home & Garden Centers for $6.00 (Katy, Texas). This only happens late in the season and it must have just happened this week, since they were very expensive last time I checked.  Trust me, that's a very good price. Happy hunting.

ZINNIAS IN SEPTEMBER

The hot weather just drifts along in a seemingly endless pattern of heat and humidity. No relief and September is 1/3 over. So...there's only one thing to do: plant zinnias.  I think of zinnias as early summer flowers and was actually excited to see them for sale this time of year. They love heat and some varieties are tolerant of humidity.
These are the very short variety and will bloom until it gets cold...which is currently beyond my imagination.

                                                 Is this bright enough? :-) Whoa!

                                                       The petals have a light peach tone in the white.

                                                  Another bright color to liven up the day

.                                Half the fun of buying a variety pack is waiting for new colors.

                                                 There are still some surprises in the bunch.

                                               I'll close with a closeup of the Porter Weed I just bought.
                                              It is quickly soaring to the top of my favorite's list.

THREE FOR THURSDAY: 3 FLOWER CLOSE-UPS

Justicia fulvicoma: can bloom in shade here in Houston. A close cousin to the Shrimp plant. I wish I had more of this little guy.

Asclepias curassavica; attracts Monarch butterflies

Stachytarpheta jamaicensis; Purple Porter Weed

I just got this one from Buchanan's Native Plants on 11th Street. There was a hummingbird drinking from the display flowers. That sold me on the spot! :-)

As always, a thank-you to my blog friend Cindy at My Corner of Katy for the great idea and format. She's on the favorites side bar. Go visit ASAP!

Do you have 3 garden photos of something? Join in the fun. Three favorite weeds to pull, 3 garden art shots, 3 bugs that bug you...anything is fair game. :-)

That's it from here. Also, I'd like to thank my new best friend Hermine for bringing us 2.85" of rain and breaking our 40 day dry spell. Hermine is making rainy day friends all over Central Texas and now Oklahoma.

We should name cool fronts that hit Southern Texas. Cold Front Agnes ...already came and went

Cold Front Bob...we're WAITING..hurry up BOB!

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY ~ HELP FOR THOSE REALLY STUBBORN WEEDS

Any weeds come to mind?

Maybe Nutgrass?  :-)

HAPPY LABOR DAY

Hope your garden chores are not quite as bad as this.

Background: This is from the museum in Castroville, Texas. When the Texas State Parks Dept. purchased the land, they hired help to clean out an old Mill Run along the Medina River. A 100 foot underground section had completely filled with muck.

Castroville also has lovely antique shops, so let's finish on a positive note. We loved this rustic antique shop in the downtown section.

Rustic garden and shop.

GARDEN NEWS HERE AT TROPICAL TEXANA.

Things are hopping around here.

It's DAY 40 with hardly any good rains, but Tropical Storm Hermine(?) is out in the Gulf bringing us storm clouds and the prospect of floods(!) during this drought-like period.

Also, we saw our first warbler in the garden yesterday and our first hummingbird.

I cleaned up the hummingbird feeder and got it up and running.

They've already found it.

Can you see the green hummingbird? It's on the feeder.

It's a ruby-throated female.

THREE FOR THURSDAY: 3 ABSTRACT PICS FROM THE PAST

Are you sad when you see the photos you've taken of plants you had in the past? These 3 shots are exactly that: tropical plants that fizzled out for whatever reason. Yet the memories are worth it and hey... we can always try again. Right?

Peace Lily ~ Spathiphyllum species ~large leaf variety

Cat palm in bloom. Died in the last freeze. I'll definitely try this one again.

Chamaedorea cataracterum

I actually had two gardens back in 2004. My neighbor let me grow all of our sunloving favorites in her front yard. We loved our sunflowers the most. This one even looks like the sun itself.

Sadly, my garden buddy passed away a number of years ago and our dual garden is now only a fond memory.

Gardens ebb and flow and I'm happy for the memories.

Do you have a nostalgic Three for Thursday tucked away?

Thanks to Cindy in Katy for the fabulous format. Please join us sometime. It's three related pictures of anything gardenesque.

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY ~ ADDAMS FAMILY HANGING BASKET

If you remember Morticia cutting off beautiful roses and just keeping the stems, you'll appreciate this lovely hanging basket.  It's in our garden and I just can't bear to throw it away. It kinda grows on you after awhile.

I tried to find out if there's a real Addams Family Mansion. The closest match is the one below.

Addams Family Look alike ~ Saline, Michigan

Do you have any Addams Family Dead Plants in your garden?

August Garden Bouquet ~ Tropical Heat

Monthly Garden Bouquet is a monthly meme (3rd week of the month) started by Noelle of AZ Plantlady fame. To view the complete collection, please visit her wonderful blog in my blog favorites...Ramblings From a Desert Garden.  There's a small, but beautiful collection of bouquets this month.
           My wife is starting to enjoy this monthly tradition. When I brought this one into the house, she just laughed and smiled. She already knew what I was going to say....Happy August! No other special occasion needed.
I really have 2 bouquets to post, mine and a friend.
She's a veteran gardener and great friend, but she won't reveal her age or how long she's been gardening! :-)

Red flowers~ Mexican fire spike, along with some yellow coreospsis and white black foot daisies.

The greenery includes cast iron plant, greenbriar (real greenbriar lol), and two types of bauhinias.

This garden bouquet is from my friend Helena L. in Danevang, Texas.

She lives on a farm there and we were out for a visit. I kept admiring the flowers and then it dawned on me; how can you have daylilies in August here in South Texas? I couldn't believe it.

These are a very old cultivar that blooms most of the summer.

The electrical cord is going to her pump house.

GARDEN TRIALS ~ RESULTS PART 2

With high temperatures and dry conditions foremost on my mind, the plants for this garden trial have had an unfair trial period. I'm used to 90 to 95 with at least a little rain. This August, we've been at 96 to 100 (37C) and hardly a drop for almost 4 weeks solid! We did get .10" of an inch today and saw rain all around us. Yea!
ALL OF THESE PLANTS DID SUPERBLY THIS SUMMER. I WOULD SAY THEY ARE WELL-ADAPTED TO WELL-DRAINED, PARTIALLY SHADY SITES IN ZONE 9A OR ABOVE.

The Silver European Fan Palm has very small leaves and has a spiky look. It will take a year to tell how it fits in.

The Needle Palm is absolutely my surprise of the summer. I had no idea they were so beautiful and lush. They remind me of a fuller version of a lady palm. The leaves are shiny green with a pale underside. They are adapted to very low temperatures, so I'm not worried about freezes for either of these.

Needle Palm ~native to the SE United States

I've already raved about the Black Foot Daisy, so I'll mention the

Pink Muhly Grass. I bought this on sale for a dollar since Lowe's had almost killed it.

Obviously, it is very drought tolerant to survive such neglect. It looks great in contrast to agaves. I can't wait for the bloom spikes this Fall.

It is a Texas native, so it is adapted to our weather extremes.

Agave celsii is my absolute favorite new agave. I was delighted to find it on sale at Wal-Mart!

The Agave stricta is also a beautiful addition to the garden. I have never seen these for sale in Houston, so somebody is finally getting the message that gardeners would like plants that don't need endless watering.

I don't remember the name of this hybrid Coreopsis, but the foliage is outstandingly beautiful for a coreopsis. So far, it has bloomed nonstop in 97 degree weather with no transplant shock. Wow!

I'm guessing this is Zinna 'Prolific'. I went back to buy more, but they had sold all 20 in two days!

I'm not that fond of orange zinnias, but these seem to work well in the dry shady beds.

I'm going try to add about five more to give the area some pizzazz. It too had no transplant shock.

This is what it looks like here after almost 4 weeks without rain. It has rained all around us, but not in my area of Houston. It was 99 degrees when I took this picture. However, the news reported that we will only have a high of 90 on Saturday with possible rain. Yippee. We are on day 27 with barely any rainfall. I've take the garden through 40 days with no rain, but it's not easy.

That's it from Tropical Texana. Hope your garden is under less stress than mine.

THREE FOR THURSDAY: 3 INSECT VISITORS TO TROPICAL TEXANA

Thanks again to Cindy from My Corner of Katy for thinking of this great idea. There are a number of us with this Thursday format, so why not join in? See my Blog Favorites and please go visit Cindy's  great garden! :-)

All gardeners know that the more time you spend observing, the more you see in a garden, even one that you  know inside and out. Here are three visitors we had this summer AND that held still long enough for me to photograph.

Always a favorite, this giant swallowtail just suddenly decided to land and soak up some sun. Fortunately, I had my camera.

If there are citrus trees in your neighborhood, chances are you'll see this visitor. I see them weekly and sometimes daily.

Looks scary, doesn't it? It was sucking on a fly when I first saw him. This Robber Fly is considered a good guy since they eat mosquitoes and flies.  The larvae live in soil and eat grubs and grasshopper eggs. My book on Texas insects says it can give a painful bite, so I didn't try to annoy him.

BTW: Click on the photo to enlarge and see his awesome 'feet'. He can catch prey by pouncing on them.

I wish this Green Fruit Beetle or Fig beetle had a cool name, but it doesn't. I see this member of the scarab family about once a year.

They are also considered good guys since the grubs live in soil and eat bad guys. The adults eat rotten fruit.

Latin name: Cotinis mutabilis, formerly known as Cotinis texana! (Wow!)

The underside is outstandingly irridescent and beautiful. He crawled away before I decided to go back outside and flip him over for another picture. I find them in our compost pile.

That's my Three for Thursday. Your turn. :0)

GBBD: Welcome to AUGUST BLOOM DAY! :-)

No rain, endless heat, high humidity, and lots of shade. Can anything still be blooming? Well, yes!
Welcome to our shady tropical garden in Houston, Texas.  Anything blooming at this point gets the thumbs up to stay around in future years.

These beautiful peacock gingers bloom all summer in dense shade (Kaempferia pulchra)

Their foliage makes them twice as nice.

In the front yard, Blue Daze (Evolvulus) has bloomed all summer long. It has the unenviable spot right next to the road. (Think dogs walking by..okay?)

The Cleomes looked better earlier in the summer, but still manage to bloom early in the morning.

My favorite drought tolerant plant so far is the small mounding Black Foot Daisy (Melampodium leucanthum). This is first time I've tried this plant. I put it in between Agaves for contrasting foliage.

The bright colored Four O'clocks are blooming now. Almost everything else is conserving energy to survive the dry spell.

I thought Ruellias only came in shades of purple. This is my first red Ruellia and it is taking the heat and still blooming. It's a native of South America and should be hardy here in zone 9B. You grow them from stem cuttings since they are in the Acanthus family. I'm growing to love the Acanthus family.

Do you see the camouflaged insect on this coreopsis? I wish I knew the name.

These zinnias totally surprise me. No powdery mildew this year.

Zinnias are native to Mexico and seem to love heat.

I showed the White Orchid tree last month and some are still blooming.

By the way, are you keeping track of all the colors so far? What am I missing?

 Finally, not all the colors in our August garden are from flowers. Here's a glimpse of our bromeliad collection. The brown spots are a reminder of the hard freeze we had in January.

Well, that's it from the hardest gardening month at Tropical Texana.

Those northern gardens are probably jam packed with gorgeous flowers!

Please visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens and see her wonderful flowers. She thought up the idea and has a list of over a hundred gardens that participate.

She'd love to have you drop by.

http://www.maydreamsgardens.blogspot.com/

THREE NATIVES FOR HOT SHADE IN HOUSTON

One common theme of all of my friends in blogland is a growing lack of interest in a traditional lawn.  Here are some shade grasses in my garden growing near paths. They take no care and give the garden a cool feeling. Since it's been near 98 degrees all week, I'll stare at anything to keep me cool.

This cutie stays about 8 inches tall in clumps. It looks best as a single cluster near stones. Our cats love to eat it. Grows all summer no matter how hot or dry. It's in the grass family.

The bright green grass (really a sedge) grows as a clump. It's very fine and feathery foliage looks good by garden paths. This one grows near the contrasting dark green monkey grass. I love this little sedge.

And this is my favorite. My blog friend over at a Growing Obsession has a wonderful  post about a similar looking sedge. However, this is a native grass with unusual pleated leaves and a blue-green color. Sadly, it is not evergreen, but an annual favorite.

I let these die down each fall so that they can set seed and spread. All 3 have willingly obliged us and are spreading nicely.

If you want to start some native grasses in your yard:

1)leave some small bare spots

2) feed birds in this area

3) water the area during dry spells

Thanks to Cindy at My Corner of Katy for the wonderful Three for Thursday format. It's catching on like native grasses! :-)