Sahara in South Florida?

June did not waste any time coming and going, and we're already pushing mid July.

Though it's been raining about a mile inland, we've been unusually dry here on the coast. The westerly seabreeze from the Gulf is keeping the summer storms from making it to us. According to our rain gauge, we got only 2.39 inches of rain in June, and most of that fell in one enormous thunderstorm. The rest of the rain fell in increments of a few hundredths of an inch, not enough to wet more than the very top layer of sand.

 So far in July, we've had 1.01," with little chancce of more before the end of next week. ( I have to be careful about what I wish for. I was lamenting the drought in May, and we ended up with over 15 inches here at the house). I save as much rainwater as I can, but I have containers for only 40-50 gallons, and I've used it all. I irrigate as little as possible, almost on a triage basis, but if this dry spell lingers too much longer I definitely will have to drag the hose around.

Dune Sunflower, Helianthus debilis, a semi-vining, scrambling beach native.  It takes  major drought to slow it down.

It's hot. Hot and humid, with heat indices in the 100's for most days. The whiteflies are going to town, and it's time to dispose of  expiring tomato and pepper plants. Native plants are far from immune, one reason I pulled out bushels of spent Gaillardias about a month ago. In Florida Weather, Morton D. Winsberg writes, "... air over Florida in summer becomes so humid that conditions are similar to those during rainy season in the Amazon or Congo basins." (p.94). By afternoon in summer our skies typically are hazy, even milky due to the humidity.


The weather may have been keeping me indoors for much of the day, but life in the garden continues at a frantic pace. The Lignum vitae, Guajacum sanctum, completed a glorious flush of blooms the last week of June. The blooming period is short - only about a week - but the intensely blue-to-violet flower petals are so gorgeous that I can't mourn the briefness of their stay. Besides, there will be more flushes as the year progresses.

Lignum vitae, Guajacum sanctum

This very slow-growing tree has shiny evergreen compound leaves and deeply textured grayish bark. It will grow tall and spindly in deep shade, but given more sun, it often develops a somewhat spreading habit. The trunk of the one in our yard is virtually prostrate. It had to grow out instead of up to get the light it craved, and two hurricanes enhanced the lean.  The plant definitely adds to the garden even out of bloom. Birds love to perch in it. The ornamental seed pods remind me of small golden turbans. They open to expose shiny black seeds covered with a fire-engine red flesh which mockingbirds and cardinals relish.

Open Seed Pods and Shiny Red Flesh Covering the Seeds

Since this tree has such a slow growth rate, it's not surprising that the wood is extremely tough. It is so heavy it won't float. The high resin content - about 30% - means that items made from the wood are self-lubricating, and it has been used for centuries, especially in shipping, for bearings and pulleys, and in food-handling machinery to avoid contamination. Gil Nelson writes, "Hinges made from lignum vitae served the locks of the Erie Canal for over 100 years." (The Shrubs and Woody Vines of Florida, p. 371).

 The resin gives it great tensile strength as well. Belaying pins, cricket balls, croquet mallets, British police truncheons, and mortars and pestles are some of the many other items made from this wood. Lignum vitae wood was used for the "aft main strut-bearings for the USS Nautilus," the first nuclear sub in the world. An item of trivia : images of the flowers, which are the state flowers of both Jamaica and the Bahamas, were embroidered in Meghan Markle's wedding veil. (Most of this information is from the Wikipedia article on Lignum vitae).

The discovery of the wood's qualities coupled with the fact that its sap could be used to treat symtoms of syphilis, meant that from the 1500's on, vast quantities were cut and shipped to Europe. This native of tropical America, from roughly northern South America to the Florida Keys, is now endangered. Fortunately it can be grown from seed, and grows well in cultivation. If you ever get the chance to visit Lignum Vitae Key State Botanical Park, don't miss it! Lignum vitae key has one of the very few, perhaps the only, virgin tropical hardwood hammock left in Florida.

Now, back to the Sahara. In spring, summer and early fall, vast clouds of dust from the Sahara desert collect in masses 1-2 miles deep, and 5,000 - 20,000 miles high in the atmosphere. These clouds of dust can be as large as the continental US. The Saharan Air Layer, as it is called consists of hot, very dry dusty air containing much mineral dust, and can be associated with strong winds. It tends to weaken or depress tropical storms, especially tropical cyclones moving across the Atlantic. (article by Jason Dunion. I can't get a direct link to the article to work, but you can find it on the NOAA website. In the search box type "Saharan Air Layer," and it should take you to the article). Because it blocks the sun's rays, it also diminishes local convective thunderstorms, which along with seabreeze collisions are a major source of Florida's summer rain. While the SAL is in place, we can pretty much forget about rain. I don't think the SAL extends much farther north than South Florida in the U.S., but I haven't been able to confirm that yet.

For a fascinating overview of the contents of Saharan dust, and the effects it has on the earth, including fertilizing the Amazon and sequestering carbon in the ocean, read Jason Adetunji's article, "What Dust from the Sahara Does to You and the Planet." (I can't get a link to work for this article either, but it appeared appeared in theconversation.com. You can find the article by entering the title in the search box).


The reddish soil in an agricultural area in Miami-Dade County known as the "Redlands" is possibly the result of tons of deposited Saharan dust, which contains iron particles.

Scarlet Sage and Dune Sunflower

7-Year Apple

7-Year Apple, Genipa clusiifolia, is a wonderful native plant that should be used more in south Florida. It doesn't make sense that it can be hard to find, because it should be a gardener's and landscaper's dream plant. Though it bears individual flowers intermittently all year, the "big event" occurs in  spring and summer. Then it produces intensely fragrant white, star-shaped flowers over the entire shrub. Flower buds and the tips of petals are apricot-colored. Even out of flower, its large (up to 6 inches long), evergreen glossy leaves make it a good choice for a medium-to-large sized shrub/small tree. The smooth leathery leaves are slightly turned under along the margins, which lowers the transpiration rate.

7-Year Apple - Staminate Plant

 A lot of plants are said to be trouble-free, but this one really is. Nothing bothers it. It grows freely on the back side of the beach dunes here. It is extremely drought-and-salt tolerant, untroubled by diseases, and free of insect pests. It is listed as the larval host of the Tantalus Sphinx Moth, but ours has never shown any evidence of chewing. In general it is also wind-resistant. Ours came through Hurricane Wilma in 2005 with minimal damage. Irma, last September, though, tore it apart.

When we moved to our house on a barren lot I broke a cardinal rule of gardening - don't place shrubs and trees too close to each other. I knew the theoretical mature size and spread of the things I was planting, but could not visualize how the bare slips I was committing to the earth would ever reach those dimensions. Besides, I didn't expect everything to thrive. I planted a Jamaica Caper, the Genipa, and a Coontie (Zamia pumila) on 3-4-foot radii in the vicinity of a medium Christmas Palm. Then later, I added a Lignum Vitae (Guajacum sanctum) which had outgrown its pot because there seemed no other place to put it.

 For a few years everything in the garden was lovely, and then everything took off at once. The Coontie has formed a massive clump at least 5 feet in diameter, and the Jamaica Caper is 12-15 feet tall. The Lignum Vitae, which already had developed a spreading form in the pot, spread even more in competition with the others. The Genipa started getting shaded out. Genipa bears most of its leaves in clusters at the ends of its  branches, so it is sort of hollow "inside," but the growth is typically dense and compact enough to protect it from wind. The branches on ours had become so elongated and spread out that Irma's winds ripped the shrub apart. It is badly disfigured now, and the problem of too little space for too many plants remains. But it is blooming so profusely now that I can't bring myself to be rational and ruthless.

My main reason for loving it is its incredibly fragrant flowers. By now  the Jamaica Caper has ceased flowering, but the Genipa is still going strong, and I go out at least once a day, but usually more, just to get my "hit" from the fragrance. Butterflies, skippers, other small insects, and probably moths, love the flowers too. Ours started blooming in March and is still not slowing down.

Gulf Fritillary and Genipa

The plants are dioecious - that is each individual plant has either "male" (staminate) or "female"(carpellate) flowers. The staminate plants produce clusters of flowers, while carpellate flowers appear singly. When you buy a Genipa, it's the luck of the draw which one you get, same as with hollies. You'll get fruit only with a carpellate plant close enough to a staminate plant to be pollinated.

Immature Fruits

The immature fruit isn't quite so "deco neon" - I'm no master of Photoshop Elements! In spite of the name, the fruit takes about a year to mature. Fruit in various states of maturity can be found on the same bush. It starts green, turns yellow, and then dark brown when ripe. It is about the size of a Comice pear. It is vaguely edible, but not palatable.

Fallen Ripe Fruit

I've never eaten a fermented prune, but that's what came to mind when I tasted Genipa. The fruit is little more than a pulpy sac containing numerous seeds, which are said to be emetic. Mockingbirds apparently have developed a trick of pecking a small hole in the fruit and eating the inside goodies - leaving an empty sac still hanging on the branch. Other wildlife, especially raccoons, eat the fruit as well.

Smashed on a Concrete Walkway
Anybody Hungry?

7-Year Apple is native to Cuba, the Bahamas, Turks , Caicos, Bermuda, and southern Florida. It grows in sandy or rocky substrates. Why do garden centers concentrate on exotics that need coddling when there are natives like this?

Summer Fragrance

One of the things that defines the transition from spring into summer here in the garden is fragrance. It starts with the Gardenia, whose heavy tropical fragrance  envelopes you like humidity, feels liquid enough to drink. Gardenias seem to suggest a seductive beauty, sultry southern nights, the songs of Billie Holiday. Sticking your nose into a gardenia flower and inhaling is near-intoxicating, as "high" as I need to be.


Since gardenias love acid soil, keeping one remotely happy in our alkaline conditions is a constant struggle, and Irma's salty winds set it back even more, but it still bloomed.  Right now it is teetering between permanent decline and slow recovery. Perhaps I should just replace it. The front yard, more protected from salty winds and a little shadier, might be a better location, but the front is crowded already. I would have to redo the area by the front door or dining room window (same area) so that we would be able to enjoy the perfume. Just one of the many landscaping dilemmas one runs into in a  garden, especially one as small as ours.


If the gardenia is like a heavy wine, the frangipani, Plumeria sp., is more like a refreshing sip of lemonade. Plumerias practice deceit pollination. Their light, sweet odor promises nectar, but the flowers don't deliver. Insects, especially the sphinx moth, keep looking for the nectar in vain, thereby transferring pollen.  Traditional Hawaiian leis are made of frangipani blossoms.

Yellow and White Blossoms Are More Frangrant Than Reds and Pinks

Frangipani copes with winter drought and cold by losing all its leaves, and the turgid, lumpy, leaf-scarred stems look dead. The first new growth and the flowers sprout from the very tip of the stems, and have an oddly other-worldly effect when in bud, like some growth out of science fiction.

New Leaves and Flower Buds

Frangipanis typically grow wider than tall. Thanks to Irma, our frangipani is leaning pretty badly. I may try to stake it, or just leave it as is, pretending I'm striving for a more picturesque effect. Before I do anything, I have to remove a mass of Gaillardias, but they're still blooming vigorously.


The flowers of Jamaica caper (Capparis cynophallophora) and 7-year apple ( Genipa clusiifolia) begin opening about the time the gardenia peaks. Just breathing near these 2 shrubs on a warm, late afternoon is a sensuous - even sensual - experience. This is when the white flowers begin serioiusly releasing their fragrance, sending olfactory signals to lure the moths that will pollinate them overnight. They are visited by day-flying insects and butterflies as well, and emit periodic bursts of fragrance throughout the day.

"Morning After" Pink Flowers

When in bloom Jamaica caper is one of our most beautiful native plants. White 4-petaled flowers open in late afternoon or early evening and in the course of the next couple of days morph through a suffused pink to deep maroon before falling. Numerous long stamens whose filaments go through the same color progression as the petals radiate out from the flower's throat, creating a startling beauty.  During the day the flowers can be humming with bees and small flies. I have noticed monarchs nectaring on them as well.

Jamaica Caper in Bloom

The plant's glossy evergreen leaves, which reflect light strongly, make the plant attractive even when it is not in bloom.  Rufino Osorio writes, "The leaves are an extremely dark green .... The effect is hard to describe - the plant appears both dark and bright at the same time." (A Gardener's Guide to Florida's Native Plants, p. 239). Numerous scales give the undersides of the leaves a scurfy appearance. New twigs are cinnammon brown, and older wood is gray.

Jamaica Caper Inflorescence

The seed pod is a brown pod 4 - 8 inches long. The pods on my shrub are more like 3 - 4 inches long. Linnaeus thought they resembled a dog's phallus, hence the species name, cynophallophora. Folks in those days apparantly were less prudish than we are, despite  our foul language, and called things as they saw them. The inside of the seed pod is bright red, and the open pods extend the decorative  phase of the shrub. Cardinals and mockingbirds relish the seeds.

Open Seed Pods

Jamaica caper is an absolutely "cast iron" landscape plant in frost-free areas of Florida once it is established. An inhabitant of coastal hammocks, it is both drought and salt-tolerant. It is untroubled by disease or pests. Occasionally ours shows some light damage from the leaf-rolling larva of some insect. Only  once in the past 20+ years has it become noticeably defoliated, and it recovered quickly and completely. I never water it, though since it is close to the seawall, its roots no doubt reach into the brackish water table. During a close pass of a hurricane years ago, salt/brackish water 1-3" deep covered the root area for several hours during high tide without doing any damage.


Our Jamaica caper was not damaged much by Hurricane Irma. Again, the root area was under water until the storm surge subsided. In fact, much of the back yard was covered during the surge, but no plants suffered any noticeable dmage from the inundation. (The surge line didn't reach the gardenia). I can't remember if or how badly the Jamaica caper was defoliated. There was just too much other stuff going on. There were very few broken branches. In any event, now you'd never guess it had been through a hurricane, while the eastern side of the bougainvilleas in the front yard is still not completely leafed out.


I haven't made a  satisfying watercolor of the Jamaica caper flowers in all the years we've lived here. My quick studies don't capture the glossiness of the leaves or the combination of grace and sturdiness that characterize this lovely plant. But I try.

Jamaica Caper

Next up : 7-year apple.

May - Prelude to Summer

(Just a reminder. All the writing, photos and artwork are mine unless otherwise noted, and protected by copyright. If you're interested in using any of the material, please contact me).


Where has May gone? I feel the time running through my hands like water. ( I stole that image from my sister-in-law,  E.).

Apart from a few afternoons, it hasn't been terribly hot yet; in that regard it clearly is not summer.

South Florida does have seasonal patterns. Things start happening by late February or early March, and the pace gets increasingly hectic until the onset of drowning rains and crushing heat of deep summer applies some brakes.

Every plant and animal seems intent on reproducing. For plants that means germination, growing, flowering, seed production all at a dizzying rate. I can't draw fast enough to record the abundance, much less the process.

Despite drought*, abundant sunshine and seemingly incessant wind, the yard is full of furiously blooming plants, crowding each other, sprawling over each other, all vying for the most light. White and lavender Heliotropium groundccovers, Gaillardias, Coreopsis, Dune Sunflower, Camphor Weed  (Pluchea rosea), Goldenrod, Blue Porterweed, Gopher Apple (Licania michauxii), Vinca, Scarlet Sage (Salvia coccinea), and Bidens alba are all vying for attention up to a few feet off the ground. Frangipani, Jamaica Caper, 7-Year Apple (Genipa clusiifolia), Red Geiger, Bougainvillia, and Simpson's Stopper round out the list for flowering trees and shrubs.

Intensely Fragrant Genipa clusiifolia

Coral Honeysuckle and the bizarre flowers of Pipevine represent the vines. Not to  mention a few blooming Tillandsias and orchids. And this is all happening on a 60 x 110-foot lot that also holds a house, driveway and sidewalks. Apart from a few boat trips back into the mangroves, I haven't managed to get out into the natural world for several months, but things are happening there, too.

The first tiny Easstern Lubber grasshopper nymphs, which popped out of the ground in early February, have turned into adults. Birds are nesting. Osprey "chicks" have mostly fledged by now. Tropical hardwoods like gumbo limbo and mahogany are shedding their leaves in anticipation of summer's rains.

Lubber Grasshopper Nymphs. These individuals have molted several times already.

Adult Lubber. It was crawling up a screen. Don't know why I didn't sketch  that.

Monarch caterpillars are devouring milkweed faster than I can coax it to grow. Even if you can find plants in garden centers, by now they usually already have caterpillars or eggs on them. I feel like a factory worker in the old Soviet Union. As soon as he met his quota for the month, the reward was a higher quota to meet. And on and on. It's the same with the caterpillars - raise one or two successfully, and before you know it you've got multiple broods chomping down leaves and even stems. If I can't find some more milkweed, some of my caterpillars are going to starve.

I would like to use native milkweeds instead of the West Indian scarlet milkweed (Asclepius curassavica), but they just aren't available. Even my trusty native plant nurseryman hasn't had success bringing them through our hot and humid summers.

Asclepias perennis. I can't bring it through our summers.

Perhaps we butterfly gardeners are pushing the monarchs' range farther south than it should be, and encouraging them to stick around instead of migrating, but we are in the range of their cousins the queens and soldiers. The fact that both have been around for a while makes me think that there must be some native milkweed(s) surviving further inland. White twinevine  (Sarcostemma clausum) is one possibility - I've seen it growing in several locales, but it wouldn't provide a great deal of forage, so there must be others.  For some reason the queen population in my yard has crashed. I used to have swarms. Last year I had just a few, and I haven't seen any at all so far in 2018.


The downside of all the vegetative abundance in the yard is that there are far too many plants for it to be a garden. At present large parts of this small plot are virtually impassible for anything other than rodents, reptiles and birds. I hate to rip out perfectly healthy plants, but from time to time I have to harden my heart. It would be nice to have a garden again.

A Riot of Color; Not So Good for Moving Around

*Our drought has been replace by heavy rains. We've had over 9 inches in just one week here at the house, and plenty more is in the forecast. Just another way Mother Nature turns things upside down.

Weeds I Like III - Southern Fleabane

Erigeron quercifolia, "Southern Fleabane," or "Oakleaf Fleabane," bloomed vigorously all through March and April, and has gone to seed now. Individual plants will bloom sporadically throughout most of the year, but spring is the time for the big show.

"Big show" is misleading, because this diminutive annual is one of the quiet bloomers. It just does its job, does it well, without fanfare, and in general is overlooked completely. However, in March and April masses of it adorn roadsides bordering ditches and  brackish bays. The pale heads seem to float above the ground like a layer of dew-bedazzled spider webs. Pollinators like it, but most homeowners who know it regard it only as a turf weed, if they are aware of it at all.

I've always liked this plant, yet I can't find any photos or notes, and I have precious few sketches of it.

The heads (see my post from Jan. 25, '18) are no bigger than a dime. Over 100 tiny white or slightly lavender ray flowers surround a central disk packed with bright orange-yellow disk flowers. The plant arises from a basal rosette, with clasping, often lobed, leaves with hairy undersides and edges.  A many-branched inflorescence, with each branch ending in a single head, arises from a central stalk, which is hairy to sandpapery in texture. Leaves on the inflorescence are sparse and smaller than those in the basal rosette. The entire plant grows 8 to 10 inches tall, possibly taller in particularly favorable  habitat.

Erigeron is a large, cosmopolitan genus in the family Asteraceae, or Composite.  The USDA Plants Database shows Erigeron quercifolius growing throughout Florida, west through Louisiana, and north through Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, but the Flora of North America limits it to the southeast. It likes moist to wet situations, and Tobe, Burks, et. al. classify it as a wetland plant. (Florida Wetland Plants. 1998).

 It actually seems able to cope with fairly dry conditions as well. Though it grows only in part of my swale -  the lowest point on the property, where there must be at least some moisture beneath the rock - it still blooms vigorously in our dry, windy spring conditions.

Canadian fleabane, Erigeron canadensis, is well known in herbal medicine with both external and internal uses. Some of the conditions reportedly treated by it include coughs, lack of appetite, hemorrhages, diarrhea, and kidney and liver problems. The common explanation of how it got its common name is that people thought that the dried plants repelled fleas. A more likely origin is Culpepper's description of the seeds as black, shiny and small like fleas in his 17th century herbal.
(A Comprehensive Description of Nearly All Herbs with their Medicinal Properties and Directions for Compounding the Medicines Extracted from Them. 1652). Southern fleabane probably shares some of these medicinal qualities, though it doesn't seem to have been studied.

This charming little annual probably is a little too wild to be a reliable part of a flower border, but might be a good plant to give interest to a moist meadow. Next year I'll be careful to pay more attention and sketch it more.

March Madness Part 2 - Iris and Brown Thrashers

March is the season for "Praire Iris," or "Dixie Iris," Iris hexagona, to bloom, but we went 3 years without any of these ephemeral beauties because the winters were so warm, even hot.  December of 2017 was cool, as was January of 2018. February got warm again, so even though early March reverted to more seasonal coolness, it didn't seem like we were going to get any flowers this year either, but in late March I was surprised by a few blooms. I just about  decided to take most of the iris  out, and put something else in my bog garden, a heavy-duty plastic mortar mixing tray I bought from Home Depot, when I saw that buds were forming.

Iris hexagona - Jeanette Lee Atkinson

Iris hexagona is one of our most beautiful wildflowers. Even though it has a fairly short blooming season, its erect, fan-shaped foliage stays attractive all year, and after nearly 20 years in our yard has not shown any insect or disease problems. Each flower lasts only one day, but most stalks will produce 2 or even 3 flowers in succession. They don't like full South Florida sun, and they do need moisture. There is a clump of these iris in the front  yard near the swale, where it stays a bit more moist than other areas, but in a very dry winter there aren't many blooms. One street away homeowners planted a big clump right in the deepest part of the swale, and they are flourishing, though I don't know whether they produced any flowers this year. This species occurs throughout Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas, according to the USDA Plant Database.

Iris hexagona - Jeanette Lee Atkinson

It always has seemed odd to me that these delicate flowers open during one of the windiest times of the year, and sometimes get completely dried out and wilted before noon, especially since they aren't wind-pollinated. Big black bumblebees really love them, and practically disappear between the standard and the fall. Skippers, like the one in my photo below, are experts at stealing nectar without doing any pollinating in return.

 Even though the bumblebees and other insects are diligent, my iris set seed only now and then. The dried seed pods are rather decorative and fun to draw.

Dried Seed Pod
Graphite & Colored Pencil

Early this March a pair of brown thrashers moved into our yard. We have lived here since 1994 and never seen a brown thrasher. In fact, I am not sure I have seen one since we left Georgia in 1990! I am delighted to see them, and hope they have not been pushed out of more suitable habitat. So far they  seem to be coexisting peaceably with the mockingbirds - something I don't think any other bird has accomplished. Just like the books say, they repeat their phrases only twice, whereas the mockingbirds will go on as long as they like. They spend a lot of time on the ground, vigorously digging through the mulch - in fact they make quite deep holes - 3 inches deep or more. I won't see them for a few days, and think they've flown on, but then they will reappear. They may be nesting now - I hope so! - and that may be one reason they're being secretive.

I have just started trying to sketch birds, and this attempt is pretty pathetic. At  least it's a beginning. I bought John Muir Laws's excellent book The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds, and am working my way through it when I can grab a moment. These sketches by no means should be taken as a reflection on the merits of the book! Laws  has an excellent website/blog, with lots of instructional and inspiring videos. It's one of my favorites.

I haven't begun to cover all the events that started unfolding in the yard this March, but it's already mid-April, so it's time to move on.

March Madness in the Garden - Part I

March is winding down, and too much is going on to document it all. The growing season is pretty much year-round here, but March still marks the end of the cycle for some plants, and the beginning for others. Soon the tropical hardwoods like gumbo limbo, mahogany and fish-poison tree will shed their leaves, with new buds anticipating summer's rains. 

As usual, it's windy and dry. Fire season is well underway, with between 17,000 and 18,000 acres burned so far in two brush fires that merged into one megafire. Both were started by lightning. High wind and low humidity made the foresters' and firefighters' jobs even harder. Thick smoke enshrouding everything meant very little outside activity, and portions of US 41, the "Tamiami Trail," and I-75, "Alligator Alley," south and east of Naples had to be closed at times due to poor visibility. 

Choking Haze of Smoke

Much of Florida's flora, and indirectly, fauna, is either fire-dependent or fire-resistant. The question that I have not seen addressed is whether all the branches and trees downed by Hurricane Irma made the fuel load high enough to make the fire truly destructive and allow it to get into cypress strands and hardwood hammocks, which burn much less frequently under natural conditions.

Gardeners mimic fire by cutting back native ornamental grasses hard either after they bloom or before new growth resumes in spring. I cut  back the Pink Muhly Grass this March. I also get down on my hands and knees to reach under the clumps and pull out old rotting thatch, which goes onto the compost pile. If we did not live in virtually de-natured suburbia, I would hesitate to do that, because a nice big clump of grass would be a great sheltering place for a pygmy or even bigger rattlesnake. As it is, I have gotten stung by wasps in hidden nests, so now I wear gloves and stay ready to run. 

Blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) has bloomed vigorously for months, and is now going to seed, along with Tickseed (Coreopsis leavenworthii). 

Coreopsis leavenworthii

Gaillardias (Gaillardia pulchella)are at their peak, and it won't be long before I have to start pulling them out or cutting them back hard. Dry, windy March is aphid, mealybug and whitefly season, and the foliage of the Gaillardias is getting ratty. The plants also develop long leggy stalks that eventually fall over, and the whole clump tends to collapse on one side. They will regenerate sometimes if I cut them back hard and water them, but it's easier to pull them out, because they reseed so readily.

Quick Impression of Gaillardia Clump

 There is  something inherently cheerful about Gaillardias, and they are tough; extremely drought tolerant, need no fertilizer. They flower so heavily that dead-heading can be an arduous task. I do some before I just give up. 

Cheerful Gaillardias

This year they are everywhere in the yard, blocking even the rudimentary paths I have through the garden. Other years they aren't quite as dominant, but they always come back.

I Love Sketching Gaillardias

One of the agaves bloomed spectacularly, and is now declining. I don't know the name. It was given to me years ago, and I've kept it going via seedlings. This year I don't think any seedlings formed on the inflorescence, but I have a couple pots of the plant, so I don't worry about losing the species. The stalk resembles a huge, tough asparagus spear.  I couldn't reach any flowers while they were still open, and had to settle for the withered ones that fell to the ground.

Reminds Me of Jack and the Beanstalk!

Red Stopper and CocoPlum are putting out new growth in varying shades of reds. Seagrape leaves already have changed from translucent coppers to mature green.  Depending on light conditions the new leaves can look delicately pastel or flaming, almost black-red.

Eugenia rhombea, New Growth

I'll have to catch up with the rest of March in the next post. Life in the garden goes on, whether I'm able to keep up or not!