Category: Anita’s blog

  January’s freezes led to some interesting resaca happenings. This particular tale happened to a friend who lives on a resaca near Bayview. After the first January freeze, frozen fish popped up to the water’s surface and drifted to the edge of the resaca where he could scoop them out and examine. Some of the…

BY ANITA WESTERVELT Hosting our resident and winter-visiting birds is always fun here in the Rio Grande Valley. It’s possible to increase the variety of birds coming to your property by planting native trees. You may recognize the mantra, November through February is the ideal time to plant trees in the Valley. Cooler months help…

  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,…

  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…

  Few birds and even less people were on the beach when we arrived on a mid-August weekday. It was somewhat eerie to be on a deserted beach on a hot summer’s day, but the draw of the surf and objects on the glistening sand quickly captured our attention; all thoughts of an apocalyptic death…

  Plants are like people — some you like instantly, others you have to get to know and some will always remain charming acquaintances at the peripheral of your mind. Mallows were in that middle category for me. They didn’t resonate with me until Christina Mild, one of our Thursday morning volunteer team mates, mentioned…