Garden Bloggers Bloom Day: April 2014

Days of irises and roses this Garden Bloggers Bloom Day (hosted by May Dreams Gardens). A day late to the party, but here's what was blooming in my garden yesterday.

Moved these iris from the driveway area a couple of falls ago, and finally a bloom!

Mutabilis rose is covered in peach, pink and dusty rose blooms

Gotta love Martha Gonzales rose this time of year

This shade of iris has been blooming for at least a couple of weeks (preceded by the deep burgundy ones)

First passion flower bloom of the year opened up on GBBD!

Bee enjoying bolted cilantro

Top heavy iris blooms hiding among the Gregg's Mist

Bluebonnets!
 
And bluebonnets going to seed en masse. These are all volunteers from a single bluebonnet that showed up in my front yard last spring.

California poppies in such happy shades of orange and neon yellow

The unstoppable show that is globe mallow

Poppies and massive globe mallow in context

White Mexican poppy

Future blooming excitement (aka artichokes)

Somebody's been eating the last burgundy iris, but they put on an excellent show this year. Definitely doing some dividing and transplanting this fall.

Happy late bloom day! And check out May Dreams Gardens for more gardens around the world.

Signs of Fall at Walnut Creek

White heath aster Partridge Pea Turk's cap fruit

Symphony in Yellow and Purple

In celebration of Texas Native Plant Week, I thought I'd share some photos from this week's walk out at Walnut Creek Park. A little color to balance this morning's rain. I've never seen the fall trails so thick with goldenrod and blazing star and penstemon...

Crinum and other summer bloomers

A crinum bloom! The first sign of anything pretty from this large stand of foliage against the side of the house. I'd love to move these to give them more space in the fall, but I've read that they're really difficult to dig up.

Some sunflowers with rust tones

My sister's zinnia patch

Various purples at the park

Scenes from the week

A watermelon! First one I've ever grown, it's the size of a large honeydew or canteloupe (sugar baby variety). Can't wait to test this out tonight...(this is the perfect side, but you can see here that someone already tried to test it).
I was moving the bird bath the other day and turned around to see a lesser goldfinch less than six feet away, nibbling on the rainbow chard. I had no idea that some birds eat greens! He was there and gone before I could grab a camera, so I grabbed the paintbrush instead. Bee enjoying cosmos in the afternoon sun.
Trying out cardinal vine on the trellis outside my shower window.

First time this tillandsia in my studio has bloomed. Not very showy, but it reminds me of a tiny closed parasol.

Most of the wildflowers at Walnut Creek are looking pretty shaggy up close, but from a distance, the huge drifts of horsemint are gorgeous.

Couldn't find this caterpillar in my butterfly ID guide, but it was a lovely tawny gold.

And I couldn't resist lining up the tomato varieties in rainbow order: black plum, gumdrop, cherry, yellow pear.