Skullcap, daisies & first pomegranate
June 07, 2012 Purple skullcap (Scutellaria wrightii) has never looked better in my garden. Its shrubby little form manages to cascade over the retaining wall a bit, and it’s been blooming nonstop for months. And while she’s not quite ready to celebrate her diamond jubilee, the ‘Queen Victoria’ agave (Agave ...
Plumbing pipe fountain adds life to stock-tank pond
June 05, 2012 A big shout-out and thank you to my handy husband, who created this plumbing-pipe-and-spigot fountain for me for Mother’s Day. I’d come home from a visit to my friend Cat’s garden in love with the look after seeing one that she and her husband made for their ...
Early summer purples and a copper dragonfly
June 04, 2012 Whew, after all my posts about the cool, mountain gardens of Asheville, it’s time to get back to the hot, humid reality of home. We actually enjoyed a cool front last weekend that brought temps down to the low 90s and kept humidity low. I broke my ...
Tarantula in the garden
May 26, 2012 Look at this: a tarantula in my garden! I’ve never seen one here before, and this hairy fellow had made it all the way up from the lower garden (where I assume he came in from the greenbelt) to the top of the hillside gravel path, near ...
Garden Designers Roundtable: Our Home Gardens
May 21, 2012 Regular readers know that I often post about my own garden projects and my garden’s evolution. Heck, when I started blogging 6 years ago, that was the whole point. Today I have a good excuse for posting home-garden pics because it’s this month’s topic for Garden Designers ...
Screech owlet makes an appearance
May 09, 2012 One of the owlets has been boldly perching at the entry hole of its box to watch us. It won’t be long until he flies the nest, I think. All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited ...
Curbside garden beds in late spring
May 06, 2012 The Salvia greggii and Jerusalem sage that I planted in my neighbor’s streetside garden, to tie in with my own, are blooming and attracting bees and butterflies. So is the Verbena bonariensis. There’s always a butterfly on it (until I scare them away by leaning in for ...
A rainbow of xeric potted plants
May 05, 2012 Agave ‘Royal Spine,’ misshapen ball cactus, Agave desmettiana ‘Variegata,’ and Dyckia fosteriana (I think). Tough plants for tough summer days ahead. All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited ...
Heartleaf skullcap at the end of spring
May 04, 2012 The heartleaf skullcap (Scutellaria ovata) is blooming! Heartleaf skullcap looks like this en masse—and once you plant it, you’ll soon have it en masse. It pops up in winter, grows steadily through the spring, blooming in late April or early May, and then dying back to disappear ...
Wary, wild-eyed screech owl chicks
May 03, 2012 Around 3 pm this afternoon, we noticed one of the screech owlets staring out at us from inside the box. He or she is not yet brave enough to perch on the door rim and look out, but this is the second time I’ve seen them gazing ...
May Day flowers, wildlife, & owl nightlife
May 01, 2012 Happy May Day to you! In celebration, a few pictures of earthly delights from the garden, starting with the first lovely datura flower of the season. Mmm, heady scent! Jerusalem sage (Phlomis fruticosa) in full buttery bloom. This was actually taken a couple of weeks ago, but ...
Manfreda and yucca in bloom, plus plants to trial
April 22, 2012 The xeric garden is eye-poppingly bold in bloom this week. The native wildflower winecup (Callirhoe involucrata) is sprawling through the agave bed with her stained chalices held up for refills. Purple skullcap (Scutellaria wrightii), native to the Hill Country, also thrives amid the spiky plants. Topping out ...
Whoo’s there? Another screech owl!
April 21, 2012 While sitting on the patio around noon today I spotted a shape in a tree over the back fence that looked like an animal. I squinted and realized it was a second screech owl having a siesta—the male of what I now hope is a nesting pair, ...
Sleepy, grumpy screech owl
April 17, 2012 I looked out my kitchen window at noon today and saw one very sleepy screech owl nodding off in the owl box we’ve hung in one of our live oaks. She was resting her chin on the lip of the entrance hole, which is quite a bold ...
Yellow striped jungle for Foliage Follow Up
April 16, 2012 For the love of everything variegated, what was I thinking?! It’s a spiky riot of stripey foliage. Just look at this xeric combo of ‘Bright Edge’ yucca (foreground, with the bloom spike), ‘Oriental Limelight’ atemisia, Agave americana ‘Marginata’ and Mexican feathergrass (in blue pots), and ‘Alphonse Karr’ ...
Spike it! Bloom spires in my garden
April 12, 2012 The garden is certainly not vertically challenged this spring. Many of my woody lilies are in bloom, stretching skyward with skinny bloom spikes topped with tubular, triangular, or cascading flowers. This tiny aloe used to live on my kitchen windowsill, where it bloomed regularly. It seems to ...
