Talinum - my new plant find

Just a quick post about what looks to be a great plant. It's common name is "fame flower" and its species name is Talinum calycinum.

Take a look at Missouri Plants page for this plant. I'd never heard of it or seen it before I found it on the Critsite website's native plants list. Note that I've added Critsite to my favorite links. Critsite is just south of Kansas City in Belton. I hope to have time to check out their nursery this spring. They may be my most convenient resource in my search for plants to fill my new garden.

Funny that I didn't discover Talinum sooner. It was listed on the Missouri Wildflowers website which I've been browsing for months. It's probably because their plants list doesn't have photos, and I'm really a sucker for pretty pictures. If it's pretty, I'll click on it.

Anyway, Talinum calycinum is a little succulent plant that produces a deep rose flower atop a thin wisp of a stem. The flowers open late in the afternoon and from the photos I've seen it looks like a pretty pink cloud when a group is planted together. The plant appears to like rocky, dry places. Just the type of exposure that plants south and east of my yet-to-be-built pond will enjoy. I think some lucky plant will be adopted by me this summer.

One thing I discovered while browsing Critsite's list is that all the plants on the native plants list aren't exactly native. I started cross-referencing with the USDA Plants database to be sure if I was suspicious. If there was no reference to USFS MO Ecological Map on Critsite's page for the plant, that was a good indication to check USDA Plants for more information. In spite of that, I love browsing their list with all their great photos.

Happy frantic gardening between rain showers! It's a good thing I'm not afraid of mud :-)

Snow days are all about the birds

Okay, not only am I a plant freak, but I'm a bird freak too. It snowed, I don't know, maybe 7 inches today in the Kansas City area, and I had a great time watching the birds eating at my feeders and digging in the mulch outside my sunroom. I'm embarrassed to say it was almost as much fun as being outside yesterday tilling up the garden.

I have no idea why everyone doesn't get as excited about seeing unusual birds as I do, but at least today I know I'm not alone. In the process of identifying a bird I'd never seen before, I found this very fun website called Greensboro Birds with a great article about and photo of the very bird I was seeking. Reading that author's description of the bird made me smile. You know, when you read someone's thoughts and you recognize the funny things you think, but maybe don't say, it makes you happy. At least, that's what it does for me. Thanks Greensboro Birds.

Well, one of the birds digging for worms in the mulch in front of my house was the one I had never seen before. Turns out it was a fox sparrow. I actually saw two of them. I learned today that the fox sparrow is a fairly common winter resident. I mistook it for a thrasher or thrush that was behaving strangely and spent a long time trying to match what I saw with the descriptions of thrushes in my 3 bird guides. The definitive identification was the funny little dance one of the birds performed while its companion looked on. I was watching a robin throw my mulch around and dig a hole I had previously blamed on my dog when I noticed these two slightly smaller birds with spotted chests nearby. One was also moving mulch in search of food. Only this bird, instead of throwing mulch with its beak, was doing a two-hop shuffle and moving the mulch with its feet. I'd never seen that before.

The bird guides didn't mention the little dance at all, so I was stuck with the "iffy" descriptions of a highly variable species. Fortunately, the Greensboro Birds site as well as Cornell University's All About Birds site both described the fox sparrow's distinctive back and forth hopping habit. I think it's very cute.

It isn't a coincidence that I saw this bird on a snowy day, either. Both sites also mentioned that these birds are often not noticed until a snowfall. Funny that it has snowed before and I haven't noticed them. But today the two in my garden really stood out.

Anyway, I am yet again thankful that I'm so easily entertained. Usually I'm pretty grumpy when I'm stuck inside. But today I was excitedly running from room to room carrying books and binoculars trying to get a better glimpse of a little brown bird. My husband thinks I'm nuts. . . Like I said, it's good to know I'm not alone :-)

That bird wasn't the only one that distracted me from my household chores. There were tons at the feeders. The male goldfinches are rapidly gaining their bright yellow colors. There were several at the feeder or waiting in the bur oak for their turn at the feeder all day. I consider them my very own nearly care-free pet canaries.









There were also pairs of titmice. It's hard to know how many. They all look alike - gray and very cute with their big black eyes and little crest. The one here doesn't have its crest up because it's busy working on the seed in its mouth. They are very fast, like the chickadees, and often pick up a seed and take it to the tree to eat. Then the other in the pair will take a seed. They just keep doing that until another bird butts in.

And, of course, there were several cardinals visiting often throughout the day. The females came much more often than the males today. This one sat on the rail while others pulled seeds from the feeder. Other birds enjoying the snow and my newly-filled feeders were white-breasted nuthatches, red-breasted woodpeckers, downy woodpeckers, carolina wrens, lots of house finches or purple finches (I can't tell them apart), and the tiny chickadees. I think they must be carolina chickadees - just because they are so much smaller than the titmice.

If I have time I'll post again tomorrow. I found another good reference site for native plants and stumbled on what looks to be a really great plant!

Until then, happy first day of spring!

Water garden plans and sunroom update

There wasn't much opportunity for gardening this week. Rain has left the ground far too wet for work. So I spent my free time drawing a plan for the water garden that will occupy most of the front yard outside my sunroom.

Speaking of the sunroom, the walls are painted and the woodwork is stained. It's very pretty. Jerry is working today to finalize the wiring and install the lights and ceiling fans. And tomorrow the slate tile will be laid. Those tiles are really beautiful. The only thing that will be left then is cleaning and sealing the concrete floor. Yes, the delays have been painful and disappointing, but it's hard to complain with such a beautiful space just begging for plants.

Okay, now that I've gushed over the sunroom, back to plans for the water garden. Here it is. Outside dimensions, not including the waterfall (brown area), will be 10' X 12'. I've moved the pond out from the house to insure a good view when I'm seated at my desk. I may run the supply for the bog filter through the pond rather than around, but this is the basic layout.

I was excited to learn about bog filters just a couple of weeks ago. There was a large article in Reflections, the newsletter for the Water Garden Society of Greater Kansas City. Nelson Water Gardens in Katy, Texas, authored the article that illustrated several possible layouts and explained the construction. It's actually called a gravel bog filter. I love the concept because it allows for a more natural looking planted area. You see, the plants are placed, dirt and all, in 12" deep gravel partitioned off behind a permeable rock wall. The roots absorb waste to feed the plants. By doing so they filter and clean the pond water in a way that mimics nature. So rather than placing my bog plants in water, I can put them in the gravel where water is pumped in at their roots. If you're interested in more details about the concept go to the Nelson Water Gardens website.

My builder will dig the deepest part of the pond for me. It saves us some money on fill dirt needed around the foundation of the sunroom and will save me a lot of hard work. I'll dig the shallow shelf and use that dirt to make the outside edge level, because my front yard has a gentle slope south and east to the street. Then I'll have the liner and rocks delivered. I think this will keep me busy for a while. I'll make sure to share pictures. Stay tuned - but don't be shocked at the mess!

Needless to say, with the weather as wet as it has been, the digging will have to wait a few days. But, if our weather man has it right this time, there will be several dry days this week. Of course, it will rain again on Friday but a few days of sun will dry things out quickly.

I have a few more plans to put together, so the extra time isn't so bad. The crocuses don't seem to mind, either. They are blooming brightly near the mud puddle beside my front door. They keeping me smiling in spite of the mud just because they're pretty :-)

Spring cleaning

The Kansas City area just experienced it's first weekend of 50/60-degree weather making it a great time to reconnect with the neighbors and with the garden. I spent all weekend outside and was surprised to find tons of bulbs under the leaf-covered gardens around my new home. It was also a good time to cut back a few small low-hanging branches that have been shading and impeding air-flow around the edges of the property.

My first task was tackling the low-hanging branches. On my property's perimeter are several pine trees of a very pretty variety with short needles and a top that weeps. Near the house on the west side of the yard are 4 of them. The needles on most are sparse and one of them is nearly dead.  I think they struggle beneath the hickory and oak trees behind them whose branches intertwine with the pines' branches. One was also nearly encased by an euonymus. That's the nearly dead one. They are free now after a couple of hours of sawing and clipping. I'll keep my eye on them this summer hoping for signs of recovery. There are a few on my property that are healthy. They're beautiful. So I'll keep my fingers crossed that I can keep them all.

Yesterday I tackled the island garden in the backyard. Here's how it looked when we moved in. I left the purple coneflower stalks standing over the winter, because I wanted to watch the birds eating the seeds. I wasn't disappointed. This garden is right outside my kitchen window. It was very smartly placed by Bob and Judy, the previous owners. You can see, though, that it hasn't been tended for a while and has become overgrown with coneflowers, walnut seedlings, and grass. Last fall I found that there are spring bulbs planted here, too.

As I cleared out the coneflower stalks it was difficult to avoid stepping on all the new green leaves sprouting from the bulbs. They are everywhere. It took nearly the entire day, but I got the space cleared - roughly. It still needs mulch, but it is a joy to see the promise of flowers to come.  Look at all these daffodils! But that isn't all. There are clumps of tulips scattered about this garden as well as a group of irises in the center. It'll be fun to find out what I have in my new garden. And I won't have long to wait for the daffodils :-)

Well here's what I have now that I've discarded the coneflower stalks. I left enough leaves to protect the plants from what will certainly be more cold weather. The leaves will soon be replaced with mulch making the garden look much neater. Last fall I pulled up some of the coneflowers on the east edge of this garden to plant several herbs and flowers from my old garden. There are two large clumps of thyme, a lovely blue-green lavendar plant, a yarrow with a terra-cotta flower, some moonbeam coreopsis, oregano, two large purple-flowered East Friesland sage, Russian sage, and a couple of others. They all seem to have survived the winter under the leaves and old coneflowers. Yeah!

The long-awaited spring arrived just a couple of weeks early. It may stay only a few days, but I was glad to see it and my neighbors. I know it's just the beginning and the cold is bound to return at least once, but what a great feeling. The birds were boisterous, the bugs were moving, and I'm was working in the yard. It was a tantalizing taste of heaven for this garden girl. Happy digging for all :-)

Common Dittany - that's what it was and here's how I found it

In a previous post I included this image of a plant I saw on my trip to Mount Nebo State Park in Arkansas. It was a small plant with these delicate little lavender flowers that I thought might be a nice native plant addition to my garden. I didn't recognize it from my plant studies in college, so I've been keeping an eye out as I research native plants on various websites. Well, I finally found it while cross referencing the wildflowers available at Missouri Wildflower Nursery in Jefferson City. Here's a link to the plant profile on the USDA plants site http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=CUOR. I found another even better description on this site http://www.missouriplants.com/Blueopp/Cunila_origanoides_page.html. This plant has an added benefit of producing frost flowers in the fall. That would be interesting!

I've added links to the Missouri Wildflower Nursery, USDA's plant profile search, and the Missouri Plants site to my links list. These seem to be the sites I've used the most in my recent research. I've had literally hours of fun browsing these sites.