This Week in my Garden - Oct 12, 2025

Bees Galore!

There is nothing I love more than seeing all the activity of bees and flys at work at my plants. This afternoon, there were at least 4 bumble bees / carpenter bees buzzing around my Esperanza and Duranta, and a number of native and honey bees on the yellow flower I can't identify. I tried to follow the bumble bees back to their hole in the ground, but I never was able to.

 Clouded skipper

I saw this guy fluttering around the garden. I really like his double set of wings. It seems that Flame Acanthus is a larval plant for this. So woot!

Getting ready to bloom

This week, the yellow flower that I still have not confidently identified (cowpen daisy, maximillian sunflower?) is in bloom, and the frost weed and white mist flower are getting ready to bloom. I always coincide (or hope to) the blooming of the white mist flower with the arrival of Monarchs. Hopefully they coincide this year!

It's Alive!

I had thought my Post Oak, purchased in 2018 and planted in my solar garden, was dead. But I was roaming around the garden this week, looked under the Mutabilis rose bush, and saw it growing!  For a plants that is 6 years old, it is embarrassingly small. I know it is a slow grower, but it is not bigger than the day I bought it!

And the garden has grown around it, so it is in pretty deep shade, so I doubt its growth will accelerate But hey, it's alive!!

New Plants

Sideoats Gramma
Bouteloua curtipendula

I purchased three small Sideoats gramma. i am trying to introduce some native grasses into my bed, as they provide good food for birds.

2-3 ft stems with purplish, ot-like spikelets. The basal foliage often turns shade of purple and red in the fall

Water Use: Medium
Light Requirement: Sun , Part Shade
Soil Moisture: Dry , Moist
CaCO3 Tolerance: Medium
Drought Tolerance: High
Cold Tolerant: yes
Heat Tolerant: yes
Soil Description: Medium-textured, well-drained soils. Disturbed, igneous, limestone-based sands, loams, and clays.
Conditions Comments: Often found growing with Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), but doesn't compete well with very tall grasses.

Use Ornamental: An attractive grass good for wildflower meadows, prairie restorations, and garden accents.
Use Wildlife: Provides bird food, nesting material, and cover, as well as graze for mammals.
Conspicuous Flowers: yes
Attracts: Birds , Butterflies
Larval Host: Green Skipper butterfly, Dotted Skipper butterfly
Deer Resistant: High

Blue Gramma Grass
Bouteloua gracilis

Only 12-14 in. in full flower, this is among the shortest of the native ornamental grasses. It is fine-leaved and produces blue-green seedheads which are suspended horizontally like tiny brushes from the tip of each stem. The plant turns tan when dormant. Blue grama grows in bunches in the south, and as a sod-former in the north and at high elevations. It is a perennial.

Water Use: Low , Medium
Light Requirement: Sun
Soil Moisture: Dry
CaCO3 Tolerance: Medium
Drought Tolerance: High
Cold Tolerant: yes
Heat Tolerant: yes
Soil Description: Well-drained, low organic content, gravelly soils or sandy loams, clays. Calcareous or granitic.
Conditions Comments: The most drought-tolerant native turf grass, more so than Buffalograss. Can survive with as little as 7 inches of rain annually. The drier it is, the less likely it will be to form a solid mat by rhizomes; it will stay in separate clumps. For this reason, it is often mixed with Buffalograss and/or wildflowers for a solid cover. The taller you let it grow, the less water it will need, because its roots will be shaded.

Use Wildlife: Graze, Seeds-granivorous birds
Conspicuous Flowers: yes
Interesting Foliage: yes
Attracts: Birds , Butterflies
Larval Host: Skippers

Kidney wood
Eysemhardtia texana

I already have one of these plants, but couldn't remember. I think it is one of the two plants growing in my street bed. Now, I have a second :) It can grow big, so i will have to think about where I want a large plant...

This week in my garden - October 3, 2025

Native Find! Pearl Milkvine

I purchased and tried to grow this plant last year... and it died. Then, when i was gathering chicken fencing to use in the backyard to keep the dogs in, I found a plant that looked a lot like that same Milkvine. But I had to pull it up to get to the fence. But just today, as i was sitting in the back bench, I looked at a vine growing up the iron fencing, and thought it might be milkvine... or morning glory. So i took out iNat, and it identified it as milkvine.

New Plant: Gregg's Tube tongue

Justicia pilosells

When I was at Natural Gardener last week, one of the staff excitedly mentioned this rare native, but when she went to look for it, it was already sold. She said she had come across this species when she worked in Dallas, but hasn't seen it since (in 12 years or so). So when I saw them there today, I couldn't resist. The staff today couldn't tell me much about it, but I decided to splurge and try something very new. They were able to tell me the grower is a small grower in Dripping who focuses on rare native plants. 

There isn't much online. I see this repeated everywhere:  Usually found growing in a colony, and looks best when planted en masse. Great addition to a shade or woodland garden. Larval and nectar food plant for various species of checkerspot butterflies. Good for wetland gardens and habitat.

At $15 a pop, en masse isn't going to happen. I bought two.

We'll give it a try and see what we learn. If it is a wetland plant, it won't last long in my garden.  But the label on the plant from NG said it was drought resistant.  Hmmm.

Yucca Plant Bugs

I found these crawling all over my weeping blue yucca. I took pictures to identify them and learned they were, unsurprisingly perhaps, Yucca Plants Bugs.

The Ohio State University page says "the bugs further reduce the aesthetic value of yucca blades by depositing spent yucca extract in the form of black, tarry waste spots. The little black waste and yellow spotting on the branch above is a result of the bug." Well, they definitely deposit black spots and cause yellow spotting. I'm not so concerned about the aesthetic value, as much as the eco-value.

Everything I read about these bugs gives information on how to eradicate them with pesticides. It says the bugs could eventually kill the plant.  I will watch and see what happens. My hope is that these bugs become some yummy food for a lizard or bird. It seems kind of hard to believe that these little bugs could kill a whole plant. And if they are yucca bugs, presumably if they killed the yuccas, they would no longer have any food to eat, thus ending their life cycle.

So, let's see!

It must be Fall, if the Fall Asters are blooming!

The first blooms started this week. 

And the butterflies continue to amaze me!

Common Buckeye