Rewilding My Lot

We recently had a very heavy storm pass through, which brought 1.45 inches of much-needed rain.

Accompanying the rain was hail and extremely strong winds. The hail and/or wind was enough to flatten some plants and tear a few small branches, but nothing serious.

The winds were also fierce enough to blow open the large box on the patio that I use for storing soil and tools, and to lift off the lid of one of the rain barrels, sending it sailing over the fence into the neighbor’s garden. I had never had that happen before!

In addition to the much needed rainfall, another gift of this storm event was bluebonnet seeds. Some of the bluebonnets in the wildflower meadow are still blooming, but the majority have started the process of forming seeds. It is important to wait for bluebonnet seeds to completely mature before harvesting them, or to let them fall to the ground naturally in order to seed next year’s plants. They will only ripen fully on the plant.

Given how many bluebonnet plants I had this year, there will be more than enough seeds for next year’s meadow. I had planned, once seeds were fully ripe, to harvest some of the seeds to give away. This recent storm event handily flushed out any seeds that had already fallen to the ground to the nearby sidewalk, where they could be easily swept up and collected.

This presumably means that there are very few bluebonnet seeds in the meadow right now, but I will let future seeds fall to the ground to replenish the seed bank for next year.

And in the meantime, I have a nice little collection of seeds that can be shared with others!