Early Summer blooms Part 2: Patriotic colors for Fourth of July

The Fourth of July holiday is coming up this week so I put together a patriotic display of flowers in red, white, and blue from my garden to kick off the celebration.

Red Knock-out rose

Early summer blooms Part 1: Warm colors for hot weather

It's early summer and we're expected to have record heat today and tomorrow, possibly 105F/40.5C.     Before it gets too hot out there and some of the plants go dormant for the summer, I've collected photos of blooms throughout the garden to share.  Today I'm featuring the warm colors of yellow, orange, and pink.

Narrowleaf zinnia, which is a perennial in our zone, continues to bloom throughout the summer.

Wildflower Wednesday June 2013

It's Wildflower Wednesday and June 2013 brings an update on volunteer wildflowers seeding in the buffalo grass lawn.  The fourth Wednesday of each month bloggers celebrate wildflowers in their gardens by joining Gail at Clay and Limestone for Wildflower Wednesday. 

More flowers are finding their way into the wildflower patch and since I'm pretty sure the only ones I seeded were the Gaillardia pulchella or Indian Blanket flowers it seems the others have simply followed their friends to the party.  Due to a somewhat rainy and cool spring the purple Prairie Verbena is still blooming.  This combination of the yellow-orange and purple flowers is so pretty.

Plant ABCs: Q is for Quercus fusiformis

Plant ABCs is an ongoing series in which I am highlighting a plant from my garden for each letter of the alphabet.  I'm currently going through the entire alphabet A - Z, then will continue updating and adding plants to the list over time.  My previous posts in the series are on the "Plant ABCs" tab under the header.

The first choice for the letter "Q" in the garden would have to be Quercus (oak) because the resident live oaks make such an important difference that I can't imagine the garden without them.

Scene on the Street: Home on the Plano Range

Over the past few weeks I've written about our trip to the Dallas area in late May.  There's one Plano house that always gets my attention when we visit and this year, with my sister-in-law as a guide, I walked over and took some photos.

The Texas style house with limestone and a standing seam metal roof could be out on a ranch in the country.

Touring my garden with Pam

When I learned garden blogger and author Pam Penick was scheduled to speak in San Antonio, I emailed an invitation for her to drop by and visit my garden.  She graciously accepted.

Now what?  I had just invited Pam of Digging and Lawn Gone! book fame and her camera to our garden which is also home to numerous "works in progress".  Some might even be called "experiments" if you get my drift.  What do I do now?  As it turned out, I didn't do any more than I would if one of my local gardening friends was coming for a visit and all was just fine.

Rain measured in feet along with heat and humidity meant I could spend very little time in the garden last week so what Pam saw was the garden as it looks every day.  That's okay for some areas.  The front looks pretty much the same all the time from this angle.

White Rock East Garden Tour Dallas: Tour Wrap up

During a recent weekend in Dallas I toured nine gardens in the White Rock East area near the Dallas Arboretum.  The gardens on tour covered three adjacent neighborhoods and ranged from new homes with very standard landscaping and huge lawns to older homes with lots of character and personal backyard retreats.  I featured four of my favorites in individual posts and this post combines highlights from the other five.

Our tour of the Breedlove garden in Casa Linda Estates begins with a beautiful stone and brick home on a very large lot.

Gardening on the Rocks: What's new in my own garden?

It's been a while since I posted about my own garden and there have been recent changes that are beginning to pay off.  The biggest change is the wheel garden, which is bigger and better.  We've had several good rains so it's also been a good spring generally for the garden.

We built the circle garden last year to cover a bare spot in the yard.  At the time I limited the size of each wedge for ease of working and the amount of soil and other materials available.

New Fawn

While walking near my wheel garden recently there was a big surprise for this fawn born earlier that morning in the nearby wildflowers and buffalo grass.

White Rock East Garden Tour: Sherbet Garden

The third garden in my series on the White Rock East Garden Tour in Dallas is the Sherbet Garden.  During a recent weekend in Dallas I toured nine gardens near the Dallas Arboretum.  The gardens on tour ranged from new homes with very standard landscaping to older homes with lots of character and personal backyard retreats.  I'm featuring my favorites in individual posts and will combine highlights from the rest.  The third garden in the series, the Nady Garden, is featured in my previous post.

Our tour of the Sherbet Garden, which was featured as part of the Casa Linda Estates neighborhood, starts off with a look at the house surrounded with greenery, ground cover, and lawn fairly typical of front yards throughout Texas.

White Rock East Garden Tour Dallas: The Nady Garden and Eustis Avenue

The third garden in my series on the White Rock East Garden Tour in Dallas is the Nady Garden in the Little Forest Hills neighborhood.  During a recent weekend in Dallas I toured nine gardens near the Dallas Arboretum.  The gardens on tour ranged from new homes with very standard landscaping to older homes with lots of character and personal backyard retreats.  I'm featuring my favorites in individual posts and will combine highlights from the rest.  The second garden in the series, the Wright Garden which was also in Little Forest Hills is featured in my previous post.

The Nady Garden is set around a pretty Craftsman house built in 1938.  The tour brochure describes the house as "architecturally entertaining" which earns points for accuracy considering the use of modern tile on the column bases.

White Rock East Garden Tour Dallas: The Wright Garden and neighbors

This is the second post in my series about the White Rock East Garden Tour in Dallas where nine gardens were featured in three neighborhoods near the Dallas Arboretum.  The gardens on tour ranged from new homes with very standard landscaping to older homes with lots of character and personal backyard retreats.  I'm featuring my favorites in individual posts and will combine highlights from the rest.  My first post in the series was the colorful and relaxing Collins/Spalding garden.

The Wright Garden in the Little Forest Hills neighborhood featured a modern home with a no-lawn front yard which included a stock tank vegetable garden.