Survivors





I'm making myself get out to exercise in small doses.  So today I picked up the camera and went looking in the backyard to see what survived the drought and neglect.  I used to have a garden.  Somewhat chaotic - like me.  Squirrels would tear out the little tomatoes, take a bite and decide green tomatoes just weren't tasty.  Everything ate the chard.  The herbs did well until the heat and then they sank into maintenance. 



sage - close up

So I wasn't expecting a single thing.  Surprise, surprise!  Nature is hardy.  My garden or culinary sage is going great guns!  I think it's the Biedermeister variety.  Large leafed and tolerant of the high heat, high humidity we have in the summer.  It's thriving.   A tiny bit of it got sacrificed for dinner tonight but I think it will survive.

Then the rosemary (three different kinds) is also thriving.  It's happy as pie in what I used to call the Mediterranean garden since it rarely got watered was somewhat rocky and very sunny.  Someone once told me that the Texas Hill Country is very similar to the Mediterranean area.  I can agree based on the herbs here.  The rosemary and the sage grow side by side.  I also found a tiny plant of Salvia Greggii - which isn't a bit culinary but has nice flowers.  It didn't do so well but I found it and some remains of the German Irises still holding on. 





Lantana

I think Rosemary remains my favorite herb.  I really love it.  Earlier this summer, I had cut some for cooking and left it in a cup of water on the sink and it seems to have rooted.  I'm going to try to transplant it into a pot and see if it grows.  The whole yard could fill with rosemary and I wouldn't mind in the slightest (The bees would like it as well)      Besides these leftovers I had various introduced plants... or what I I could refer to as the birds garden.  Most of these have come from seeds left by the birds.      I love the lantana and it will bloom until the very last minute.  Somewhere I have the paler variety but I love the brightness of the blooms so much.    




  We also have a wild grape that a neighbor shares with us.  It's never produced grapes but does have blooms.  This year I really thought it had died but no I found small branches with grape leaves growing.  It trails along one of the fallen trees we've never cut down.  I was sitting on one when the resident woodpecker started complaining I was out and about.  I hadn't seen him be so active and quite so vocal before. 

Among plants I didn't find a good place to snap a photo were Wild petunias and Pigeonberry which does very well in our yard.  Pigeon berry reminds me of dock just smaller and tinier. 

  

I did find a really nice set of tiny little amaranth - I am not certain what kind it is but the sun really lit it's spire.  I found several small colonies.  When I plant garden amaranth it just won't grow but the wild variety does well in my yard.  Not certain exactly why.         

 



wild amaranth