The moisture always brings out the colors of the Little Bluestem grass. (A setting on my camera brings them out even more.)
Pine Muhly in the foreground.
Our sudden, early December ice storm did some damage to my spineless prickly pear cactus. The "branches" are slowly drooping closer to the ground and a few of them broke off. I will have more on this tragedy in a future post. I think it will survive, but it may be too early to know for sure.
Possumhaw Holly or Deciduous Yaupon is one of my favorites. The red berry covered branches are upright again after being bent to the ground under the weight of the ice in December.
It has been quite a while since there has been any rain water standing in the rain garden.
Bushy Bluestem grows in the rain garden.
A close up of Bushy Bluestem.
I do a little garden maintenance when we have warm weekends. I may trim a perennial here and there to tidy up the garden a little, but I leave many of them until mid-February because the seedheads add interest to the winter garden and provide food for birds. This is Rudbeckia above.
Salvia greggii.
Zexmenia.
Skeleton-leaf Goldeneye.
Eryngo. Most of the seeds have fallen to the ground...
and sprouted. These plants will not bloom until late summer.
Bluebonnet seedlings. These will be in full bloom in a couple more months.
The Buffalo Currant sent out a few early flowers. There should be many more over the next month.
Four-Nerve Daisy continues to bloom throughout the winter months.
In the vegetable garden, I planted a couple of varieties of onions in January.
Shallots and garlic were planted in October. The garlic will be ready for harvest at about the same time as the onions. This is my first time to grow shallots, so there will be some guessing as to when to harvest them. Inside the cattle panel cage, the roots of asparagus are preparing to send up new shoots. I cut back last year's ferny growth in January.
This is also my first time to grow Brussels sprouts. I have a purple one and a green one. The purple one is quite attractive in the garden.
I also have four broccoli plants. I harvested florets from two of the plants over the winter. Maybe there will be more to come. I covered my vegetable plants for the December ice storm, but I have not covered them since. They have been exposed to temperatures in the mid teens and it does not seem to have harmed them. When the plants are cold, they look like they melted to the ground, but then they perk up again when the weather warms. They are in mid perk in the pictures above because we had about three consecutive days where the temperature did not get above freezing.
And then there is my poor red oak tree. It is not perking up. It suffered several broken limbs after the ice storm. There is more damage than can be seen in this photo. As much as I would rather do it myself, I think I need to call in a professional for this job.
I am ready for spring.
