Author: Anita Westervelt
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Anita’s Blog — Snow in the Valley
The weather really played a trick on us in early December. As darkness turned into sunrise somewhere behind the cloud cover, white was accumulating on green palm fronds in my line of sight as I typed at my computer. I got the binoculars out to see what was happening. Amazingly, it was snowing. I…
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Anita’s Blog — Merry Christmas from the Park
In our Rio Grande Valley native plant realm, we have a Christmas cactus. Fellow Master Naturalist Barbara Peet and I never get to show it off during our December guided native plant walks because it’s not done what all the books say about it, at least not since we’ve been giving our walks in…
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Anita’s Blog — Totally Cool Insect Hotels
Is this just not totally cool? It’s a stack of pallets all decked out with a purpose. Read on . . . . Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Program Specialist, Dr. Wizzie Brown, presented a fascinating lecture recently entitled, Creating a Backyard Habitat for Insects. Most folks who know me know that I’m a die-hard…
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Anita’s Blog — One-stop Shopping
It’s the time of year to start thinking about what you want to plant during the next four months. Right now, for butterflies, plant anything that’s blooming. Give them nectar and they will come! Busy nectar bushes in my yard right now are fall-blooming mist flower, scarlet sage, skeleton-leaf golden eye, cow pen daisy,…
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Anita’s Blog — The Snake Incident
It was late, time to close up the house and go to bed. It was not the time to discover a coral snake in the garage two feet from the cat door. The cat door that enters the kitchen from the garage. Nor was it the time to see our young cat hovering over…
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Anita’s Blog — September Temptations
By the end of August, my plants were looking heat stressed, scraggly and just plain exhausted. It was so tempting to pull them all up by the roots and make the garden look all neat and tidy. If you’re not from the Midwest, you may not understand that biological-garden-clock sort of thinking. In other…