Thank you, commentor Glidwrith:
I started taking photos of flowers I see on my one mile walk at lunchtime at work. I send the more interesting ones to my mom. These aren’t in my garden and I don’t know what most of them are, but I find it fascinating at the sheer variety of plants, if you just take the time to look.
The first [top] one is honeysuckle, and I know this is Texas privet.
White roses.
Unknown:
Looks like a giant bird of paradise…
Also unknown.
This was a holy crap! moment. A dozen or so Morel mushrooms sprouted from mulch in Southern California. This mushroom is supposed to be in damp forests, usually near oak trees.
Mom was all “quick, grab them before someone else does!”.
***********
What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
Baud
Mom knows the early bird gets the shrooms.
WereBear
Waiting for my rose shipment. Four different Canadian varieties, and two of them need more time in the greenhouse before shipping. But this is why I like High Country Roses. They want me to get good plants.
Roses are kind of like peonies. One must invest the time and nurturing for them to go nuts… eventually :)
mrmoshpotato
Oh man. I think my dome got a little sunburnt while doing yard work yesterday.
Good ol’ vitamin Sun.
mrmoshpotato
@WereBear:
Roses that turn into nuts. Interesting. :)
Kristine
Rain in NE Illinois!
According to my inexact but pretty rain gauges, maybe half an inch. This is way more than was predicted by the WGN weatherfolk. There’s a little more on the way and I hope they guessed low about that too.
Doesn’t dent the drought very much but we’ll take all we can get.
In blooming news, the wild hydrangeas have popped along with a few of the astilbes. And some of the milkweed have formed buds.
raven
@Baud: Here’s some shrooms at the dog park!
Baud
@raven:
Did Artie enjoy them?
satby
My garden is getting some much needed rain over the next couple of days, yay! And then a week of dramatically cooler temperatures to catch up to the growth spurt all the weeds will have after.
I have an update on Duke kitty. Last week after about 5 days off the antibiotic the bad vet gave him, he began to run another fever. After pouring over the 20 pages of records bad vet gave me, we noticed that we had never been told the urinanalysis showed an infection in the urinary tract because the vet had disregarded it. And it had gone to his kidneys. We had three very bad days of high fever, sub-q infusions every hour, and forced water and puree. Under the supervision of a different, much better vet we gave him new antibiotics more targeted to his actual illness. Duke turned the corner Friday night: the fever broke and began eating and drinking on his own again. Everyone’s contributions saved Duke twice. Thank you!
raven
@Baud: Funny you would ask!
mrmoshpotato
@Kristine: T’was a good storm about 1:30!
WereBear
@mrmoshpotato: Oh, the nuts in this equation are the rosarians :) No such thing as too many.
Kristine
@mrmoshpotato: Very happy to hear pounding rain on the roof. Even heard some thunder.
WereBear
@satby: Geez! But yes, monitoring vets is part of the job. Head kisses to Duke!
Kristine
@satby: So happy to hear good Duke news. What an ordeal for you both.
Baud
@raven:
Haha.
satby
And back on topic, loving the pictures Glidwrith! I missed morel season here; ramp season too now that I think of it. How lucky to find them just growing unexpectedly.
satby
@WereBear: The partner vet at that practice had been great. But old, and old school common sense. The new one, not at all.
OzarkHillbilly
Nice pics, Glidwrith. Sorry, but no help here with the unk nowns.
@mrmoshpotato: I wish the ticks here would get a little burnt, whether by the sun or other means. Just picked my 5th one off this AM.
WereBear
@satby: Good vets are great, bad vets are horrible.
scribbler
@satby: He’s so lucky to have you looking after him. I hope you have more restful days ahead!
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly: Yikes! Agreed!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
PictureThis app says the first “unknown” pic is a Flax Lily and the second is Bush’s Poppymallow aka French Hollyhock.
I do that on walks too, but taking pics to give to the app.
Last time we visited the grandkids we discovered the app will do its best to give a plant name to any picture. So they and I got very silly seeing what plant it decided we were. I was some kind of fungus.
Kristine
Thank you for the pictures, Glidwrith. I also enjoy taking photos during walks.
Wondering if the tiny purple flowers could be a blue eyed grass. I swear I’ve seen the bright pink ones as well.
ETA: and I was wrong about the blue eyed grass.
Anne Laurie
As a lifelong sufferer, I can recommend rubbing vitamin E into your poor scalp (if you can’t find the oil conveniently, I used to tear open vitamin capsules and squeeze them on the burned skin).
But a better long-term solution… get a hat, or hats, that you can stand to wear, and get in the habit of *always* covering your head if you’re gonna be outside, at least between March and October. Leave the hat by the door you use to go to the yard, or with your garden gloves, until you get into the habit.
WereBear
@Anne Laurie: Word! I am a hat fan. You never notice the part in your hair until you sunburn it.
eclare
@satby:
Yay for Duke! I hope you and he get some much needed rest!
eclare
@WereBear:
Exactly! I always wear a hat and sunscreen on my face while outside.
Villiageidiocy
The bird of paradise -like thing really IS a bird of paradise relative: the traveler’s palm, or Ravanela madagascarensis. From Madagascar, pollinated by lemurs there. Cool plant.
Gvg
It’s rained all week here, about 10 inches total. Rain lilies especially love that and I harvested a lot of seed from them and planted about 4 trays. Takes about 2 years to get to blooming size. I started with several transplanted pots from my last house and I am trying to increase them to enough to replace the grass that won’t grow in shade under big oak trees. About half my yard. Then I will get flowers all summer and it won’t need to be mowed. Rain lilies grow about 6 inches high.
I also transplant wild violets and wild petunia (ruellia not related to petunia) out of my lawn and into the shade where the grass peters out whenever I have time. Gradually the space under the oaks is filling in with pleasant plants to keep the weeds out. Keeping the leaves instead of raking and throwing them away as my neighbors do helps too. Society has some weird habits. It takes a few years to build up enough leaf duff though and I have a steep enough slope that the leaves can end up in the street without some plant help.
it’s been an interesting weather week though. Started with tornado warnings going into work Tuesday morning and has been stormy almost every morning since. This is not the usual Florida summer weather pattern which is afternoon storms. I had to adjust and were shorts and flip flops to work then change because the rain was so heavy in the mornings that my shoes and work clothes were getting wet in spite of the umbrella and raincoat. I have done similar things to leave work for years but never had to do it in the morning. I wonder if it’s climate change or El Niño coming? Next week is supposed to be drier, then another wet week. Oh, last week we were getting afternoon showers as well as the morning ones. It was really wet.
satby
I bet you could hear my primal scream of horror from there.
OzarkHillbilly
Going floating with my eldest on the lower Meramec today, expected high: 95. And because we aren’t even going to get on the river before 10:30, I’m not even gonna bother with my fishing rod. We’re just gonna do a 5 mile stretch but I’ll bet we lolly gaggle it into a 4 hour tour. In my old age I have learned that everything from the waste down needs to be protected from the sun, so that means full length jeans, and socks on my sandaled feet. Everything from the waste up is shoe leather.* Any over heating is easily solved by rolling out of the canoe and into the water.
*over heard post surgery comment among the nurses sowing my back together again: “Somebody call a shoe cobbler, this guy’s skin is like boot leather.”
OzarkHillbilly
Braggart.
So that’s what that was. They really are bad this year. Normally, their numbers tail off by the end of June. Not this year
frosty
@Anne Laurie: @mrmoshpotato: Here’s the answer to sunburned scalps:
Conner Hats
This is their UPF 50 collection. All certified by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency. Good enough for me!
satby
Avoiding sun has been a lifelong thing with me (fair skinned redhead, not vampire) and I really overheat in hats. so I’ve always done the majority of my gardening before 10 am and after about 4 pm, when the sun is less intense. And while everyone wears shorts and tanks, I’m in long-sleeved linen shirts and long linen pants outside. And siestas, I’m a believer in those too. Which became much easier after I left the corporate world.
sab
@eclare: Sun cream stings my eyes badly. I wear it on my arms and neck, but never on my face. So I too love my hat. Never go outside in daylight without it. I have pale skin and freckles so sunburn (and skin cancer) is an everpresent concern, but I hate sun cream.
sab
@OzarkHillbilly: My mom, died 2012 at 84, never stopped telling us about being sunburned through bluejeans in a canoe trip in Wisconsin in her youth. (Question I always had was what the fuck was she doing in a canoe with bluejeans? If you end up in the water you will sink like a stone.)
She was a brunette with redhead genes. Major freckles. I am like that. Brunette, but the sun is not my friend. Sunburn in 15 minutes even in the upper midwest.
kalakal
Finally getting some rain and the garden is loving it
Found one of these humungous caterpillars yesterday
Giant Imperial Moth
It’s an impressive beastie
MomSense
Lovely flowers and morels(!!!). That’s a great find.
Mike S. (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
Lovely walk and photos.
The pink flowers between the traveler’s palm and the morell is a Rock Purslane, Calandrinia grandiflora, a native of Chile. It is a beautiful and very tough plant and gently seeds around my greenhouse which gets almost no water in the summer (because succulents!) It can get a bit lanky though.
Glidwrith
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
@Kristine:
@Mike S. (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!): Thank you all for IDs on the flowers. I’ve seen the purple berries on the flax lilies and wondered if they were edible. Wikipedia says they range from very poisonous to pleasantly nutty, so that’s a NOPE.
I’m following a rule with my garden: food, flavor or fragrance. I have thyme, sage, garlic, basil and rosemary. A lemon tree, mulberry bush and strawberries. Jasmine, lavender, mint and roses for rose hips.
I think Covid has given us a preview of the kinds of supply chain disruption that might happen with climate change barreling down on us. Giving up growing space for useless ornamentals won’t be an option.
WaterGirl
Lovely flowers!
I am officially giving the side-eye to everyone who is bragging about rain! :-)
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl: Very nice thunderstorm about 1:30 this morning. A cause for celebratory dancing – inside.
Jeffg166
I keep getting up every day really sore and wonder why until I remember I was out in the garden doing something the day before.
LiminalOwl
@frosty: Thank you for that link. SIZES! (Women’s hats, unless expensive/custom-made, usually come in one-size-fits-all. Except of course it doesn’t—and this isn’t fat-related, nor even bushy-hair; my mother could never find large-enough hats either. )
LiminalOwl
@sab: Same here: brunette with fair skin, sunburn in 15 minutes.
LiminalOwl
@satby: So glad Duke is on the mend. What a terrible vet; thank goodness you were able to figure it out.
Jeffg166
@sab: Strawberry blond in my youth with the redhead burn instantly gene. Dermatologists love me.
Two of my siblings were strawberry blonds with the blond tanning gene.
Jeffg166
@WaterGirl: Hope you get a good soaker soon. We had a not so wet winter and a dry spring. It has only started to rain here. This is the time of year it usually stops raining for a few months. I hope the rain pattern holds here for a while.
Gvg
@WaterGirl: that wasn’t bragging. It was a bit worried. Florida plants need a lot of summer rain but things are actually showing over watering stress and earlier this month I had mold growing on my grass which has never happened before. Had some trouble identifying it too. Early spring was too dry. Climate change is about extremes getting more so and unpredictability. Rain now is no guarantee we will have it later in summer. El Niño years can be rain in winter and drought summers which are flood fire for us. I remember other years.
oh well.
Glad duke the cat is getting better.
StringOnAStick
We had a soaking rain yesterday, not typical for here by now in the summer, but 3 weeks ago we had frost, also rather odd.
This last week I finished a long project, much longer than expected because I am crappy at estimating these things, installing 4 zones of a drip irrigation system in a huge pollinator garden at a local wildlife rehabilitation and education nonprofit. 3 zones in a repurposed pond depression (now terraced and in stunning bloom), 1 around the parking area that someone last year built a 2″ diameter pipe with holes drilled in it as a ” drip irrigation system”, and obviously all the plants except right at the start of that pipe died. I’ve got about 90 hours of field time completed and was so happy when I finished it on Wednesday! I didn’t expect it to take so long though I did well in the materials estimate. Now I need to write a care document for the 4 zones and make a list of native xeric shrubs and plants for the parking lot zone; the pollinator garden is pretty well full of plants. I’ll go back this fall and show them how to drain the zones before it freezes, plus I need to show a few people how to repair any holes from overzealous diggers (I think it is well understood that there can’t be ANY use of shovels in there now).
WaterGirl
@LiminalOwl: I remember being told I have a big head when I was measured for my cap & gown for high school graduation.
I have really fine hair, so no hats stay on my head, ever.
WaterGirl
@Jeffg166:
Well that’s hardly fair!
WaterGirl
@Gvg: Okay, you are forgiven. :-)
Around here if it gets too wet, we get little mushrooms springing out of the mulch.
Not a problem at the moment!
jnfr
Colorado has been so rain-soaked that I had huge boletes coming up in my raised bed, amongst the perennial flowers. We sometimes get them in the yard if the grasses get long and damp, but out on open soil like that was a surprise.
Lots of flowers out now, salvias still, centranthus, yarrows, penstemon, pinks, mirabilis, and lilies, with the sedums just pushing up their flower stalks. The yard is incredibly overgrown, so we’re struggling to regain control!