Tag: wildflowers

Wildscape and Bird Station News

Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall1 Comment

by Catherine Johnson

We acquired several benches and chairs from Marketplace for the Wildscape and delivered them at noon, which is not as hot as later in the day. Many pollinators were flying around, including hummers. 

Kim Summers and I went back late evening to water and stayed until 8:00 pm, resting by the big fountain in the shade, while Cindy Rek told us about the Rio Grande Turkeys being delivered to Bird and Bee Farm, where our projects are located. 

Pictured are the new pathways in the birding station that Gene Rek has been working on. We also placed 100-year-old furniture in the Bird Station, which Ann Collins chose. 

Pictures also show new beds, which will allow native birds to enjoy plants that are watered by a drip system.

We are excited to be viewing all at our full moon Wildscape Celebration later this month: Monday, August 19, 6:30 pm – 9:30 pm. Guests are welcome.

Spiffing Up the Wildscape

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by Sue Ann Kendall

There’s going to be a big visitor event at the Wildscape our chapter sponsors, and it’s coming up fast, so the garden needed a lot of pruning, weeding, and encouraging. Members got out early this morning and got to work pulling up what shouldn’t be there (overly enthusiastic grasses for the most part) and directing what should be there to their proper spots. A lot of the roses needed encouraging!

This smells so good.

There were enough people to help out that only a little dizziness or other heat issues developed, and as always there was plenty of camaraderie.

Kim, Carolyn, Ellen, and Scott take a break
Neil and Catherne share a laugh
Sandra enjoyed the beautiful morning
Ann made her first appearance since she broke her arm in May (her first broken bone ever, by the way)
Allan ponders his next weeding move
Dixie watched the chickens and stayed out of the heat

I admit that I may have spent more time taking pictures of bees, butterflies, and other insects than pulling weeds, but I did contribute! Besides, everyone likes pictures of flowers and pollinators, right?

Variegated fritillary on Brazilian vervain
Blue waterleaf
Bird grasshopper of some kind
Happy hibiscus
Gulf fritillary on verbena
Sunflowers in sunshine
Bumblebee on button bush
Find the honeybee on the passion flower
Dirt dauber enjoying a water dish
Spearleaf Swamp mallow
Cowpen daisy
Acmaeodera mixta on upright prairie coneflower
Halloween Pennant
Carpenter bee
Carpenter bee on pickerel weed
Clouded skipper
Hibiscus with pollen
Detail of a hibiscus blossom
Cloudless sulphur on flame acanthus
The ubiquitous yellow garden spider

After we were finished, we headed to Rockdale for lunch, where we ran into Linda Jo Conn and her family. The people in the restaurant must have thought it very weird that everyone in both large groups seemed to know each other. Volunteering can be fun.

The fairy garden is being reconstructed, so here’s a totally fake one you can imagine replacing the one at the Wildscape.

Wildscape Workday

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by Catherine Johnson

The best time to work in the Milam Wildscape is after 7:00 p.m. at this time.  Everyone was ready to leave on a recent Saturday at 11:00 a.m.  However, Phyllis, Patricia, Dorothy, Carolyn, Kim, Jackie, and Catherine accomplished some specific tasks of pruning, eliminating aggressive vines and harvesting excess plants. 

Gene showed us the new major Bird Station in progress which will have water and native grasses and berries. Ann Collins is the coordinator and looks forward to future educational programs.

Native Texas Flower Bed Improving

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By Carolyn Henderson

Progress is being made on the flower bed the chapter voted to develop into a native Texas plot. If faces Travis Street, so those of us who are in downtown Cameron regularly have paid attention to the ongoing battle with the non-planted plants running rampant in it. 

The bed after weeding

Some might call them weeds. But, some of them are native wild flowers that tend to be invasive – in that they overrun everything else around them. For example, Persimmons are coming up repetitively all over that bed, and they are very hard to get up.

Luckily, almost everything we planted has survived and is growing. We plan to plant more things in the  fall with the hopes of all of ours overrunning all he uninvited plants. We could put poison on the interlopers, but we don’t want to risk what we did plant. Mulch is on order to be put down this week.

The photos are from work done today. Jackie Thornton and Liz Lewis, both regulars at the plot, as well as Connie Anderle and Linda Jo Conn did a lot of work on the bed today. We also had an unexpected volunteer – Ed Guerrero – who is a master weed puller. I’m pretty sure we would not have gotten the whole thing done without him.

The weed pullers

Past contributors to the project have been Catherine Johnson, Phyllis Shuffield, and Pamela Neeley. If you can pull a weed, you can volunteer. When we are done, we all go have lunch to celebrate winning this battle against those unwanted invaders.