Gulf Coast Greenie

My First Foliage Follow-up

I'm coming to the party a little late here. This is my first time to participate in Pam of Digging's Foliage Follow-up, and I'm even posting on the wrong day. But I'm definitely feeling "better late than never." I was having a very bad day today until I decided to take a look around the garden to check for progress among the leaves.

For Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day I posted, among other things, photos of two types of azaleas that have begun to bloom. The one other type we have in our garden, Formosa, hasn't started to bloom yet, but at least one of our Formosa plants is putting out new leaves already!

Our azaleas weren't damaged by this particularly rough winter, nor was our gardenia. It's putting out new leaves also.

Other plants experienced freeze for the first time and took it pretty hard. Many are just now letting me know they lived through it.

 

How subtle is the green of the new hydrangea leaf buds. They could easily be confused for flower buds, like those on our "Forest Pansy" redbud, which are starting to loosen up in this week's sunshine.

Elsewhere, agapanthuses are emerging from their dens:

And pineapple sage is proving its survival skills.

Old-timers more accustomed to spring returns, like spirea, refuse to be outdone by winter novices like sage.

Most delightful of all for me though was to see great use made of shed leaves from last season. A pair of Carolina wrens have been carefully selecting weathered leaves for their nest in our new birdhouse.

 
It's not a simple matter to get the leaves into the gourd, but they're dedicated workers; I expect great things from them.

While I was out this afternoon looking at foliage I also caught glimpses of these fairly infrequent visitors:

A downy woodpecker.

 
And tufted titmouse.

Thank you, Pam!

Valentine Bloom Day

This bloom day happily finds one of my Christmas plants still flowering:

We bought this Dendrobium C.K. Oka x canaliculatum just before Christmas to help make up for the fact that we had a tumbleweed instead of a Christmas tree because we had just moved back from New Mexico. I never expected its blooms to last past Valentine's.

In addition to the tumbleweed, I brought these corn husk flowers from out West. I found them at a fair trade market in El Paso called Mercado Mayapan.

They are still blooming too ( :

For Valentine's Day accents, I didn't travel very far. I found these prolifically blooming New Guinea impatiens at a nearby grocery store.

I don't buy plants at groceries very often, but every once in a while I come across great and unusual things there. I found this wonderful succulent at a different grocery last week. It, like the impatiens above, was completely alone in a sea of commonplace plants like pothos. I haven't identified it yet, so if you know it, please tell me. It's about the size of a large grapefruit.

Not very much is happening out in the garden yet, but there are some signs of spring. Two varieties of azalea have begun to bloom.

The strawberry plants have begun to bloom again since the last hard freeze, but I've also been enjoying the reddened leaves left by the cold. They're as bright as the fruit to come.

We've also been enjoying the cold weather standbys of pansies and snapdragons, though the latter have been slow to open their mouths fully.

On Valentine's Day, my husband and I were treated to more bright colors that weren't in flower form. We went kayaking in the bayou near our home and found these wonderful birds.

The roseate spoonbills seemed to have made friends with a snowy egret and tricolored heron. We'd never seen these species traveling together before, but after they left this perch, the four hunted together further upstream.

It had been cold and rainy for many days before this, so perhaps they were just goofy on sunshine like we were.

Happy Garden Blogger's Bloom Day!

An Early Tropical Valentine

 

After the last hard freeze, I found this leaf among the the many discarded by my crotons. The other leaves are all simple rather than split. It was a nice parting gift before their dormancy -- they are well established, I and covered them, so I think they'll come back.

Have a lovely Valentine's week!

More Birds of Aransas County, plus a Local Surprise

Last week, I shared with you a boat tour of Aransas Bay, but in that post, I didn't include all of the birds we saw that afternoon. Below are a few more shots.

If you looked at the video, you may have noticed these lovely pelicans:

I have never seen one do that with its pouch before!

We also saw some lovely ibises that moved a little too fast in the fog for my camera to capture them at their best:

On the same trip, elsewhere in Aransas and Calhoun counties, we saw many more amazing animals.

Further inland, we found this loggerhead shrike perched next to its favorite plant features: Thorns. Shrikes are known to impale their prey on them.

And a juvenile white-tailed hawk, the first I've seen:

We also saw many of the same birds we found in the Bosque del Apache at the end of last year, such as

sandhill cranes:

and snow geese:

When we got back to Clear Lake at the end of the weekend, we had a wonderful surprise too:

A flock of ibises right next to I-45! We usually have them in this area now, but I've never seen them taking advantage of improperly planned construction next to a major highway before. I'm glad poor drainage can at least create a habitat for the prey of some cool birds. (I don't want to embarrass the business next to this mini wetland, but it is new construction and the area didn't flood in previous years.) Is accidental habitat restoration inherently bad?