There are many rewarding experiences when gardening with plants native to Deep South Texas but one of the most spectacular for me was this third of August bloom of over 40 heartleaf hibiscus flowers in our front yard in Rancho Viejo.
Category: Sept2023
For those of you not familiar with iNaturalist (iNat), I offer, here, an abbreviated overview of what it is and what it is all about. Briefly, iNaturalist is a nonprofit social network that enables individuals to record and share observations of living things—across the globe—either from iNat’s website on their laptop / desktop or via iNat’s mobile application on their cellphone or other electronic device—iPad, for example.
Aah, nothing compares to the soothing, pulsing choirs of frogs, crickets and geckos of an evening! Geckos? Yes, some of those chirps, squeaks and clicks may come from Mediterranean house geckos that hunt along our fences and bricks as they entice mates and defend turf.
I accumulated a few one-gallon pots of upstart plants from the yard in late spring and stashed them under the arbor in a make-shift nursery. There were no more plant sales slated; several of the plants were naturalized, rather than native, but a mantra goes through my head sometimes, “no plant left behind,” and I end up babysitting stray plants.
Each of these species spends time in both the Denver metro area and the Rio Grande Valley. This summer we are staying with my daughter in Thornton, a suburban area north of Denver. My daughter’s house is at the entrance to a subdivision overlooking an open space. This space borders a long walking trail that follows the creek which was once a watering system for agricultural. I remember riding my bicycle along this road before it was paved when we lived nearby.
South Texas Border Chapter Texas Master Naturalist (TMN) Robert “Zeke” Schmidt placed second in his age division during the recently concluded Southern Exposures Youth Photo Contest with his entry of a ribbon snake taken at the Edinburg Scenic Wetlands and World Birding Center. The annual contest sponsored by the Valley Land Fund premiers the work of young photographic artists from throughout the Rio Grande Valley.