Garden Survivors.

This has been a tough summer in Central Texas. Extreme heat and drought - a bad combination. However, a few of my plants are tough and doing pretty well. They are survivors for sure.

Rose Mallow perennial hibiscus

Verbena Bonariensis and Portulaca

Esperanza (Yellow Bells)

Gulf Fritillary on Passion Vine laying eggs.

Gulf Frittilary caterpillar on passion vine (passion vine and perennial morning glory growing on fence together).

Barn Owl

We have a beautiful barn owl living on our property. We see him in the backyard nearly every day or evening. He swoops in and sits in a tree and sometimes even goes to the bird bath (water is scarce these days). He will sit and seem to look straight at me and doesn't move if I don't get too close. This year we have seen bobcat, deer, raccoons, opposums, armadillos, skunks and snakes on our property, in addition to the usual array of squirrels and birds. All are interesting and mostly good to have (not sure what armadillos are good for, except digging up the yard), but I think the barn owl is the most interesting of all. I hope to get more photos of the owl when my Canon returns from the repair shop.

Houseboat.

This summer has been terrible for gardening around here so not much to talk about there. We are staying busy with our new project - a houseboat. It is a fixer upper but we are enjoying the challenge. We still have the pontoon boat for actually going out on the lake. The houseboat is more like a floating cabin. Jerry has been doing some carpenter work on the exterior and I have been on cleanup duty inside. We will be painting inside and putting down new flooring. Also new ceiling tiles are needed. Here are a few photos. I plan to post updates as work progresses.

View out the back. Bunk beds on left.

View out to front deck.Side view and upper deck.

Cameron on the front deck.

Curtains for sliding door.

Trip to Smoky Mountains.

The travelers.





Smoky Mountain beauty.

The forest.

Mountain stream.

We had a great trip to the Smoky Mountains, Memphis, Nashville and Biltmore Estate in Asheville. Beautiful country that I had not visited before. We drove and hiked through Great Smoky Mountains National Park. What a rich history we found there! Biltmore Estate was amazing, Memphis and Nashville are both great cities to visit.

Birds, birds, birds.

This is a painted bunting in my small fountain. Had to shoot through window screen, so not a very good photo. The colors are spectacular on this bird and we have some every year. They nest in our wooded area and come in to bathe.

Another shot of the painted bunting. So pretty!

Just a few of the cardinals under our bird feeder today. Mostly pairs, the males are red and the females have an orange beak and are brownish with some reddish orange. Love cardinals, and we have many around here!

Earth Day.

Well, I have been spending too much time on Twitter and have not taken care of my blog. Spring is in full swing, we have gotten some rain and everything is green right now. I have taken some photos to show how beautiful spring is in our part of Texas. The top photo is Coral Honeysuckle in bloom - the hummingbirds love it! The other photo is of the path Jerry and I cleared in the woods. I have been walking on it every day and it is so peaceful. The birds are really singing and flying through the trees every morning. As you can see, Lucy enjoys the path also.

Hummingbird Moth.

This has been a weird spring with lots of ups and downs in temperature. Hopefully we will settle down now. I have lost some tomato plants (even though I covered them) and lots of new growth has frozen on plants. This afternoon I was out watering and saw a pair of hummingbird moths feeding on my columbine and dianthus. They are some of my favorite insects - not really related to hummingbirds but they remind you of them. Their wings go so fast and they feed on tubular flowers like hummingbirds do. Here are a couple of photos I took.