September 06, 2010A heads-up for those who don’t like pictures of spiders: just skip the first 3 images to see a water snake and the inspiration for this post. I dragged invited my DH and teenage son along to the Wildflower Center yesterday afternoon, in 95-degree heat, to stroll the …

September 03, 2010 ‘Black Pearl’ ornamental pepper (Capsicum annuum) is intriguing in all its stages. Papery, dainty, purple flowers appear before the black pearl-shaped fruit… …which gives the plant its name. The black peppers eventually ripen to red… …and wrinkle up like prunes. The whole cycle is attractive and interesting …

September 01, 2010 Awful August ends, and I always feel like dancing a celebratory jig. But in central Texas we know that summer doesn’t truly release its hot, sticky grip until about mid-October. No matter. The arrival of September brings psychological relief, and that’s better than nothing. Certain plants help …

August 31, 2010 Flowers have a youthful beauty, but agaves and other succulents are like living sculpture. I find them fascinating and irresistibly touchable, despite those fierce thorns. This is ‘Whale’s Tongue’ agave (A. ovatifolia), a giant, blue-green rose of a plant. Its serrated leaves are defended by thorns that …

August 30, 2010 Like the school bus in August, bright yellow usually indicates that summer is winding down and autumn is on the way. Around here, the hot yellows of Mexican mint marigold and copper canyon daisy will soon join summer’s sunny hymenoxys and black-eyed Susans. I’m not afraid of …

August 26, 2010 Since I wrote about inviting wildlife into the garden for Tuesday’s Garden Designers Roundtable, I’ve been looking more carefully to see who is visiting my garden. Lurking among the orange narrowleaf zinnias (Zinnia angustifolia), a tiny spider waits for lunch. At the stock-tank pond, a scruffy (perhaps …

August 24, 2010 Just in from a morning stroll through my garden, and what delights I witnessed. A tiny, blurry-winged hummingbird making the rounds from Mexican oregano to flame-leaf acanthus to Turk’s cap to Agastache. Honeybees spelunking for pollen. A leggy, spotted fawn tucked into a stand of bamboo muhly …

August 22, 2010 At the Great Outdoors last week, I spotted this shriveled, dying agave holding up a 12-foot flower spike covered in bulbils, tiny clones of the mother plant. Most agaves bloom only once, after many years, and then die. Some, like this one, produce bulbils, which eventually fall …

August 21, 2010 For a nursery located within spitting distance of downtown, on South Congress Avenue, The Great Outdoors is surprisingly large, which befits a place featuring a nearly life-size topiary elephant as its mascot and another on its sign. From the street you glimpse a colorful mural, a screen …

August 18, 2010 Hello, my name is Pam… I spotted this T-shirt at the Great Outdoors Nursery‘s gift shop. Perfect, eh? No, I didn’t buy it. I saved my money for plants I shouldn’t have bought at this time of year. (Come on, autumn!) I also took a lot of …

August 16, 2010 It’s August. It’s Austin. It’s incredibly hot and humid. Flowers for Bloom Day were pretty scarce, but foliage is, as always, carrying the garden through the toughest months. My faves for Foliage Follow-Up this month are visually cooling, with variegated or glaucous leaves. But really, anything that …

August 15, 2010 This Bloom Day post may fool those who skim the pictures without reading the text. You could be led to think that quite a lot is blooming in my garden right now, when really it’s just a few agastaches, some ornamental grasses, and a few tiny, scattered …

August 14, 2010 I spotted this cicada while taking out the trash. We’ve had to raccoon-proof our trash bin with a bungee cord get-up, and the cicada was astraddle it like John Travolta on the mechanical bull. You’ve seen Urban Cowboy, right? Getting my shot I spooked him, and he …

August 12, 2010 It’s a little hoot outside today. I think I’ll stay in. All material © 2006-2010 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited …