New Orleans Botantical Garden: Flower Portraits

 Here are a few of my favorite closeup pictures from my trip to the New Orleans Botanical Garden.
Tapping on the first picture will let you see an enlarged version.

These flowers came already in a bouquet

Hummers love these wild cannas

This was my favorite view - looking down a long trumpet flower

White from red was pretty amazing

Mysterious orchid

Painted with a tiny brush

Plumbago - works as a shrub, hedge or vines up a trellis - and
the blue is a great counterpoint to most other colors

Nasturtium is a winter/early spring flower here

Roses were coming into full bloom

Don't know this flower but loved the composition it made

The heat was making the tulips blow which is when I love them best

Iris were just getting started

Family portrait

What a lovely fringe

The beginning of a very big fern

Happy feet - these feel like little dancers to me

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All ready for hummers - which are passing through now

I think of these as summer flowers even down here

Happy blues

And summer is on its way

This blog will come out a few days after Spring officially starts.  Hope spring has arrived where you live. We are back in the 80's and feel like summer is already here.

Spring is Springing Out All Over

Spring always starts slowly, but in the south, it soon starts stumbling over its own feet in it's rush to get every living thing moving.  The first sign of spring was way back in late January, when the swamp maples bloomed.  Their tiny red blooms are barely noticeable until they fall on the ground.  But now the swamp maples are a blaze of red color, as their seed pods are ripening and all of them area beautiful shade of bright red.

Swamp maples seed pods

Several days ago, I heard a rustling at my window.  This lovely Polyphemus moth was at the window, trying to get out. I opened the window and then it decided that it was happy there.  So I took its picture before pushing it out to resume its short life.  Today there were several species of butterflies fluttering around, but I didn't try to photograph them until it was so hot, they would barely settle, before flying off again. But there are at least two species of sulfur butterflies as well as a couple of other species I don't know. 

Yesterday, I went to Crooked River and rode my bike around while birding.  I also went out of the park and through a neighborhood where I found many signs of spring. 

Plum tree?

Saucer magnolias

And the robins are leaving.  Today I was only able to count six where I  usually count 50 -200.  I caught this guy sprucing up before his trip north while at Crooked River State Park.

I'm keeping a patch list while I'm here, so decided to check out part of it this morning. The first thing to catch my eye was this glorious Caroline jasmine, just at the edge of my "yard".  It was attracting bees and butterflies, but all were way too high for me to photograph them.

Carolina jasmine

A closer view

 Then everywhere I went, I saw more spring activity.  Tree buds were busting out all over.  Many also had blooms.

Baby leaves

Leaves and blooms

More buds bursting out

And we may have had the first of our spring warblers visit. The only thing I can match this terrible picture to is a young female northern parula, because it looks like its throat will be yellow.  Hopefully Judy Bell, Bruce, or another birder can help me out here.  The turkey vultures have been moving through for the last ten days or so and we are also seeing some black vultures, which I hadn't seen all winter. And two mockingbirds seemed to be courting.

On my walk this morning, I also found this redbud tree.

Redbud blooms

Bladderwort have been blooming for several days in one of the bar ditches along the auto tour road.  I went down this afternoon to capture it.

Swollen bladderwort, Utricularia inflata, flower

I had to stop to take a picture of these strange little flowers.  They have  a unique kind of star-haped leaf cluster and the leaves are a little like succulent leaves.

Butterworts

And these little buds were on a scrawny sub-shrub, only about eighteen inches high.

If you know what that last two plants are, please let me know. I'll try to research them while I'm not so busy - that's when I'm waiting for customers in the Visitor Center.

So, what's new in your neighborhood?

Spring

It's definitely spring here in Galveston, Texas, even though we are having cooler than normal weather. The roses are growing like crazy and blooming more and more.  The Mexican butterfly weed has leafed out and then been devoured by thirty-some catapillers. All the deciduous shrubs are leafing out. The Mexician honeysuckle is in almost full bloom.  The grass is needing mowing at least every ten days. And Natalie and I have a strong compulsion to play in the dirt.

Part of the pansy bed

These begonias bloom all year round

Each day is a new adventure in the garden with new blooms appearing,new shoots coming up out of bare ground, and new butterflies appearing. Anticipation is building as we wait for the first ruby-throated hummingbirds. I have a feeder just outside the window where I work on my computer  so I'll be sure to see them.  Natalie did some rearranging of the dog fences she has up and now we have a way into a section of the garden that was almost inaccessible.  So I'm working on getting it weeded and dug out a Confederate Rose that volunteered to grow to about twelve feet over last summer - that starting from a seed - and which then shaded a lot of the vegetable area.

Mexican sage - this was blooming in the winter and is starting back up

The Kalanchoes are in full bloom

Mexican Honeysuckle is almost fully open and ready for hummers

One of the few petunias to survive - snails ate the rest almost immedately

I think this is a non-native, tropical sage - but it grows like mad here - both sun and light shade

 I have been weeding the front yard (weeds are seldom dormant here) and transplanting and planting more cilantro and parsley.  (Our first batch of cilantro went to seed while we were in Big Bend and the seven big beautiful parsley plants are usually just inch high stems, thanks to an unknown, and very sneaky predator. We even covered some with screen but they were eaten down overnight anyway. So a couple of new ones are in pots and I'm going to transplant the others into pots and see if I can hide them where they will be able to produce leaves.

Snapdragons Natalie grew from seed and I transplanted

The fruit trees are almost through blooming and are putting out leaves

 Our baby zinnias, tomatoes, and basil are mostly sullking but hopefully putting them outside in full sun will get them going. On cool, nights - under 50 degrees - we still carry then back inside.

Some of our seedlings

I couldn't resits this little Cherokee tomato and also bought a new Earthbox for it. 

 We only had one day with about five minutes of frost. So our fall crops are still alive and are thinking about making another crop for us.

We have lots of tomatoes in the tomato jungle - but all are still green

Last year's eggplants are blooming again

A lot of what I've been doing is digging out stuff, cutting back, and weeding, weeding, weeding.

 I just had to take a little break from reports on Big Bend Hiking.  But I've finally finished editing the pictures from the most beautiful (and hardest) hike of all I did. But we'll go back to Big Bend at least one more time.

I'm also spending a lot of time at doctors.  Currently I'm up to six: A chiropractor, a family doctor, an orthopedic surgeon, a pain specialist, and a nerve specialist, and a gastroenterologist. But it is all just for general checkups and to try to figure out and fix what ails my shoulder.  It doesn't stop my paddling so it's not that bad. But I don't like being poked and I'm getting way too much of all that, including blood work this morning.