Blog
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American Beautyberry
American Beautyberry prefers to grow in part shade. I planted mine in May 2023 in a bed close to the back of the house. This is indeed a part-shade situation, but the sun it does get is hot afternoon sun and being newly planted and then subject to weeks of blistering heat and drought, it… Continue reading
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My Pollen Baskets Are Full
Usually my first stop in the morning is to visit the native grasses and watch the busy bees for a few minutes. They’re hard to photograph, because once they land on a flimsy grass stem, then everything swings around wildly. Here’s one I managed to catch, though, with bulging yellow pollen baskets. I am not… Continue reading
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The Scourge Of The Spotted Spurge
I consider Spotted Spurge to be a weed here. It thrives in heat and grows as a mat that crowds out other plants. I had noticed that each plant has a long tap root, and the drier the ground, the harder it is to get that root out intact. Consequently, I did less weeding during… Continue reading
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How’s the Texas Mountain Laurel Doing?
A Texas Mountain Laurel tree was the first plant that I bought here and it went in the ground in March 2023. Then in July I noticed that half of the tree was paler than the other half. This photo is from that time. I asked several of my native plant colleagues as to what… Continue reading
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Large Dragonfly
This may be one of the largest dragonflies I’ve seen. It was resting on a Live Oak tree, but flew away before I could get closer for an identification. I often find dragonflies hard to photograph because they can be fast moving and transparent, but this one happened to catch the morning sun for a… Continue reading
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Making Hay While The Sun Shines
The Bermudagrass in my front and side yards is not dead, but during the summer drought it turned brown and stopped growing. Most of the grass is short from being mown at the beginning of the summer, but there was one area where sunflowers had been growing beside the house and I hadn’t mown there… Continue reading
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Look At Feathers But Don’t Pick Them Up! (It’s Illegal)
The possession of feathers and other parts of native North American birds without a permit is prohibited by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA). I found this feather on the ground in my back yard, so of course I wanted to know who used to wear it. It’s 12 cm long. First, I reached out… Continue reading
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Tidying Up The Patio
At one point I thought I’d put a shed in the back yard to keep garden tools and equipment, in order to make more space in the garage. For various reasons, that idea is off the table. So then the situation morphed into the garage being used for big and rarely used garden items, and… Continue reading
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When Wings Look Weird
When I first saw this butterfly on a Sunflower, I thought it was odd that it seemed to have an extra set of wings. A companion on the same plant looked the same, so I concluded that it’s supposed to be that way. iNaturalist told me that this was a “grass” Skipper of some sort… Continue reading
About Me
Nature Lover.
Inquisitive Observer.
Student Gardener.
I invite you to join me on my journey to convert my sterile (from a nature point of view) new house lot to a healthy and diverse ecosystem, as I make discoveries, mistakes, and hopefully progress. I am not an expert or professional. The project started in February 2023 and the location is Seguin, Texas, USA.
Rewilding My Lot 