Butterflies and Salvia Coccinea

Boy, it was a pain in the butt trying to upload this to Youtube. After failing to upload for four times, the fifth time was the lucky charm.

For the past couple mornings, yellow butterflies have been flocking around this plant, Salvia Coccinea. It came from the Hummingbird Garden Kit. I'm so impressed with this plant that I think I'm going to start buying seeds to toss into that bed for next spring.

Easter Cactus - Fat leaves? Look like cactus?

Is this normal? I have an Easter Cactus that likes to grow random leaves that look like mini-barrel cactuses or something. What causes these fat leaves with lots of bristles sticking out of it?

Schlumbergera Seeds

Terrible picture! hehe.

While moving the thanksgiving cactus and christmas cactus out of the greenhouse so that they'd get some rain, I found out that two of the seed pods fell off so I brought both of them in. Unfortunately one of them inexplicably disappeared somehow. I opened the other pod and pulled out the seeds. They look healthy so I figure I'll plant them tomorrow and see what gives..

Phlox and Butterflies

These are my Grandmother's phlox. After she passed away in 2003, my mother dug them up and brought them over. They've gotten real huge this year! Major surprise...




Probably the only picture where they didn't look like a blurry mess... With the constant flapping and glaring sun, it was a nightmare! hehe.

Identify Plant?

We have a winner! I knew we would. From a capsule in the Desert Gatherings' "Hummingbird Garden" tube (Post 1, Post 2), I introduce you to a really nice plant that has overpowered all the others!



A close-up.



Can anyone identify what plant this is? It looks familiar but... The other plants are still growing but they're hidden and sort of trying to grow out a bit but I'm not sure how long they'll last.




And of course, the sunflower in the sandbox has flowered. ;)

Sunflowers and giant Ants?

What's going on here? The bottom of every leaf looks like this! It's creepy. I thought maybe these big giant ants were eating something under the leaves but now I wonder if the ants themselves are eating the leaves.

Searching Google shows nothing except people making claims that ants do or don't eat. Would anyone happen to know what's going on?

Dragonfly

Dragonfly was a bit patient but very skittish and kept flying around. These two photos were the cleanest out of a batch of blurry pictures!

Amaryllis

I thought I posted this yesterday! Guess not... hehe.

I spotted a couple of opened amaryllis seed pods. I collected them and have the seeds spread out on a paper towel to help them dry out. I am gonna get my hands on another flowerbox and start this next batch. Fun!




Then I went to check on the flowerbox for the seeds I planted - they're coming up!



Amaryllis galore! How can you not love this? hehe.

Definitely not Birdhouse Gourd

In my previous blog entry, I posted about a vegetable-type plant growing in my bed. I was hoping it was birdhouse gourd making its weird random appearance but that wasn't the case. The plant has started sending out male flowers. I haven't seen any female ones yet...



If it is pumpkin, it's gonna be an ugly mess pretty soon once the bugs discover it. I'm not going to make an effort to save them. I gave that up years ago.

Volunteer Pumpkin?

Close-up of Sweet Banana Pepper bloom



Some are thinking this is pumpkin. I'm scratching my head and wondering where it could've come from. Sure, we dumped a few pumpkins in the woods in the backyard but that's far away. I really hope this isn't pumpkin. The bugs will kill it flat in no time! But uh.. Here it is... taking over the bed.




Guess we'll see in time of what it produces.

Sunflower in Sandbox / Century Plant Seedlings!

I know that pictures shouldn't be taken when the sun is pretty much gone but couldn't resist.




Sunflower growing in sandbox. An interesting experiment by my nephew, of course...




A bit excited to see this. These are Century Plant seeds coming up.

Over the weeks, I slowly put in more seeds when it looked like they weren't coming up. I ran out of Joshua Tree seeds and so far it appears none of them are going to come up. It was just neat that Century Plant actually grew! hehe.

Vegetables

The vegetables are slowly coming along!





The squash are hit and miss. For some reason the plants sent out a lot of female flowers first so a good chunk of them rotted off before the male flowers popped out.





These tomatoes are uh... Not sure. The two big ones are Husky Cherry - I believe. The small flimsy one is Grape Tomato. There were two but one sort of broke off but it re-rooted and I stuck it in a separate pot. I know I should remove one cherry tomato plant but they're so big and healthy and.. I may as well let them stay and see what I can get away with. hehe.



Amaryllis seed pods! I may have to get another flower box and plant more seeds!

Green Reflecting Bug?

Does anyone recognize this green bug? Even though it was green-ish, the body still reflected me and my camera as you can sort of tell in the picture there.

Darn birds!

I hate it when birds pick THE worst places to build their nests. I walked by my hanging tomato plant and this madness of fluttering zoomed by my head. A bird didn't like me being too close. Too close to what? .. Apparently the hanging tomato basket!

A lot of fidgeting, ladder climbing, leaning in awkward positions - I was able to find out that the nest did not have any eggs.



I feel like a monster for pulling the nest out and chucking it aside but the tomato plant is more important. If there were eggs in there - then I'd be really out of luck. There's been situations where we were way too late and we had no choice but to leave stuff sitting in one spot for weeks. A couple examples - One bird made a nest through a hole on the side of the grill. Because there were eggs, it had to be left alone. Another situation, there were three folding chairs on the cement porch out back and someone threw tarp over it to prevent it from getting wet. A bird actually made a nest in one of the cupholders of the folding chair. There were eggs in it so we left that mess alone until the babies hatched and they all left.

I need to put something over the holes to prevent this from happening again to any of them.

I can play here all day long!!!

There's a family of rabbits living under the shed. Must be... I was told that two large rabbits were in the yard over the weekend and now this little one has been playing in the grass for hours. Makes me a little nervous to think of letting the dogs out there. The rabbit ain't too far from the shed but you just never know if the dogs will get to the rabbit first!

Dragon Arum and Phlox

The second Dragon Arum opened!



Phlox!



Kind of weird how when you look from the top, it's all uniform.

Updates on a few things

The first picture is really for my personal record - With the Grown-From-Seed Amaryllis planted in the bed, I decided to fish out my batch of Amaryllis seeds that I saved from last year and re-used the flowerbox. I think this batch of seeds have some seeds from the pink/white Amaryllis too. Who knows. It's all mixed together.



The "Desert Gatherings" update (Original Post - 20th of April). The Century Plant and the Joshua Tree seeds did not grow thus far.

For the Hummingbird stuff, Seeds from one capsule EXPLODED as you can see from the picture below. The pot next to it shows two of the big brown seeds have germinated. All the other pots have done nothing.



My Easter Cactus is blooming like crazy! A picture of a red bloom open. :)

Amaryllis Bed

Now with the Hibiscus gone, the Amaryllis bed can come to fruition! Also a Banana Plant just to be random.




Now there's temptation to gather the other colors of Amaryllis!

Next - To get a batch of soil for the flowerbox so that I can plant Amaryllis seeds that I saved from last year!

Dragon Arum - Opened!

Brrr.. Stepped out and it's 52 degrees! I also noticed... Dragon Arum!







Probably a little grainy since the morning sun is obstructed by all the trees. It was so weird to see it in person. Looks funky and unusual! I love it!

Unfortunately I could not smell anything. I also did not see any flies. This may be because it's way too cool outside right now. There's also tons of honeysuckle vines (you can vaguely make out all the flowers covering a tree in the background of the second picture) and their sweet smell is very overpowering right now.

I was told the stench was overpowering yesterday when the flower was in the process of opening while the hot sun was beating down on it.

Dragon Arum

The Dragon Arums are doing okay. As you can see, for some reason they tend to pout and curl their leaves. I'm not sure what's causing this.

It amazes me how all those weeds/grass was ripped out over the weekend and all it takes is a few days for them to come rushing back. :\




The reddening edge! Can't wait!!




Close-up of the two blooms ready to come...

A combo...

Probably the only image of the Iris that even came out well. The sun and my camera don't mix too well.




The two dragon arum blooms. One caught up with the other so they seem to be about even in their process. hehe.



And I found my green elephant ears! They're coming back! Whoa!

A white and yellow colored Iris

One of my favorites!




I think the very light purple Iris may not pop up this year. The plants seem to change colors every year for some reason. hehe.

Red Amaryllis

Amaryllis is opening!

I have plans of sticking all the potted amaryllis into the ground once they're all done blooming. They'll go into the old spot where the hibiscus used to be.

Eggs under Leaf - Bugs?

I was watering my spider plants and noticed this.




A close-up. I wonder if anyone knows what they're eggs of? Pretty neat to find!

Dragon Arum - Sending out flowers!

I don't believe it. My two biggest dragon arums are each sending out a bloom.





Hard to see. I tried getting closer shots but the camera decided to focus on random parts instead of the part I wanted. hehe.