Wildflowers, Garden . . . and More Rocks

The wildflower season has begun here.  The lupine  – also known as Texas Bluebonnet – grow wild here and are in full bloom.  

 They bloom at the same time as the daisies (or at least they look like daisies to me) so it is a beautiful sight.

While most are a deep lavender blue, we do have a few pink ones. 

The pink ones, called Pink Bluebonnets in Texas and pink lupine in the rest of the world, are more rare. 

There is a even a Legend of the Pink Bluebonnet in Texas.  You can read about it – where else? – at the Texas A & M website:

 http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/plantanswers/flowers/bluebonnet/pinkbluebonnet.html

According to the Aggies, lupine prefer hot, dry conditions, so I am not really sure how we ended up with them here in our rainforest.  Perhaps it is a different variety? They do grow out in the open where they get lots of sun, not in the shaded forest areas.  

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We have been busy working in the garden, planting and watering and weeding and trying to get the fence and gate finished.  You may remember last month when Russell & Mary Lou (Rick’s parents) were here they helped us clear some rocks in the orchard and the two perennial beds there.  Here are Russell, nephew Nick and Rick in May clearing the end of the asparagus bed.    

We wanted to get the other perennial bed ready for planting, so we decided to add the fertilizer and manure, run the rototiller through it to mix it all in and it would be good to go.  Not. 

Somehow there were still a LOT of rocks left in that bed.  Some pretty large ones.  So we ran the rototiller until we hit rocks, then we ended up digging most of it out with the rock picks. Some of the big ones were deep, so the soil is thoroughly mixed now. 

That bed is near the fence at the end of the chicken run, and even they came over to see what was going on.  The bed seems a lot lower now that we took out all those rocks, but I think whatever we put in it will have a lot easier time growing.  It does make you think carefully about what to plant when you go to that much time and effort to get the area ready. 

Our garden is growing well.  We are still very far behind other areas – like California – but right on schedule for here.  This was the garden about three weeks ago, notice the bean poles Nick and I put up. 

 And here it is with the peas and beans growing.  Soon they should have the poles and strings covered up and we will be harvesting peas.

For the most part the weather this summer has been hot and dry (for here anyway), but yesterday we had a little thunder cloud burst roll through.     

 It has made for some beautiful scenery and sunsets.