I’d Love To Find The Owner Of This Skin!

A few days ago when I was out at my clothesline I glanced over at the garden and saw a really long snake skin. My first thought was that it once belonged to a rat snake.

I brought the skin in the house and got my book and started counting scales and such. It’s not the easiest thing to do, identify a snake when the owner of the skin isn’t there any more. It would help if I could see colors, however, a bit of pattern is visible, even on the scales. This one is solid with no markings at all. By the way, did you know snakes have scales over their eyes? They need those scales because they don’t have eyelids. This skin was totally intact, ocular scales and all.

Keeled scales have a little ridge on the middle of them. The scales on this critter are smooth and not keeled. He has 17 rows of dorsal scales in the middle of the body, with 15 just in front of the vent. (The vent is a scale that looks different on his underside. It’s where the digestive system ends. And, I have no idea whether this is a boy or a girl snake. I’m just going with the all-inclusive “he”.) He has a divided anal plate, with the scales going from the plate to the end of the tail being divided. If all the scales from the anal plate to the tip of the tail are divided, it’s a non-poisonous snake.

This rascal was 44 1/2 inches long when he left this skin behind in my garden. What a gift for me to find! Oh, my very best guess, according to all my counting of scales and such, and I think I’m right, is that he is a tan racer. We do have them here and they will even crossbreed with the buttermilk racer.  I actually skinned one that crossed. The poor thing was dead in my street, with just a tiny indention on his small noggin. Other than the dent in his head and being dead, the skin was in perfect condition.

I happen to like snakes and I like them to be alive and living in the wild. They certainly serve a good purpose, eating things like rats which carry diseases.

I took a few photos. The skin showed up better in the grass so I laid it out there for a photo.

Then I set it up by my tea cups. It’s still there. I don’t know how long I’ll leave it as part of my decor. Folks just never know what they will see when they walk into my house. Don’t you think it looks nice there? I like the contrast between cultured and wild, myself.

The Little Snakes Are Awake

Things are blooming early this year. I’d say spring has sprung. More than just the flora, the fauna are awake, too.

Last week, I was getting weeds out of the garden and I found a little brown snake. He’s the one we were told was a ‘Ground Rattler’ when we were kids. I think everyone told us that so we wouldn’t pick them up. Like this:

He’s really a Rough Earth Snake and he probably wouldn’t bite if he could. Which he can’t. See how tiny his mouth is? He couldn’t get a human finger to fit between those tiny jaws if he wanted to, and I don’t think he does.

This fellow also can’t bite, but I do think he wanted to. He was so mad at me for picking him up he pee’d on my thumbnail. See?

I guess I wrecked the beginning of his day. He’s a Texas Brown Snake and he was trying to scrunch himself up so I wouldn’t see him when I was sweeping the walkway. Here he is trying to scrunch himself up in my hand. Too late, Dude (or Dude-ess, as the case may be). I see you!

It was easy to get lots of photos of him even after I put him down, because he was still trying to hide. Not the smartest of creatures. Or else, so angry he couldn’t think straight. I’m not sure how snakes think, but he was mad. Kept sticking his tongue out at me. Really, he was smelling something – probably his pee on my thumbnail. I think he’s pretty. See the black mark under his eye? That’s how I know, along with the black marks on his lips, that he is a Texas Brown Snake and not a Marsh Brown Snake.

See the big scale right behind his eye? A Marsh Brown Snake would have a vertical black line on that scale and not a dark spot below the eye. Also, he would have no markings on the scales by his lips. (If you are finding it hard to see these marks, click on the photo and it will enlarge it. Then click the Back Arrow to get back here.) Oh, and I didn’t just have all this scale marking info in my head. It’s in my great Field Guide to Texas Snakes, published by Texas Monthly.

I’m glad to see some snakes this year. Last year’s drought was rough on everything that doesn’t have a faucet in their house with a ready supply of water. We all need to watch for the Big Bad Boy Snakes. I’m sure they’re out, too, now. Oh! I hope there are some Louisiana Milk Snakes around. I used to have several of them before I moved a brick pile. They are so pretty.

Well, y’all be careful, and enjoy nature.

My Yard During the Drought

It’s been forever since I’ve written about the plants in my yard. We’ve been in a drought, but most of the vegetation in my yard is still alive. The only thing we’ve lost, really, is some St. Augustine grass. Unless it’s been watered, everyone I know has lost St. Augustine grass. Normally, we get enough rain for it, but when we don’t, it dies, and we haven’t seen “normal” very often the past few years. Our weather has been crazy.

From my studio windows I can see two trees at the edge of the woods that look like they have died and one that may be dying. The two that look dead may only be dormant. I’ve learned that some of the trees are going dormant because of the lack of rain; I guess we’ll know next spring what we have left around here. The third tree has severe hurricane damage, and what is left doesn’t look so great having just a few leaves.

The only ornamental plant in my yard that I have watered is one azalea bush. And I’m not real good at remembering to water it, so it’s been stressed pretty often. Poor thing would have droopy leaves before I’d notice it was in trouble. If plants could talk, this thing could give me a holler and it would definitely get better care!

Just a few feet from the azalea is a lipstick plant. It should have bloomed months ago, but it didn’t. It was staying alive, so I left it alone. Water isn’t free, and even in Southeast Texas where we have lots of it we could end up rationing, so I’ve tried to be careful all year. Well, this fall we’ve had a little bit of rain here and there, and now the lipstick plant must think it’s spring. It has shot up taller than I am and it’s blooming.

What is really weird is our mock orange shrub. Part of it looks like it normally does in November with leaves turning a sort of yellowish brownish, and getting ready to drop. Part of it looks like it’s dead from lack of water, part of it has small new leaves, and part of it is blooming. I have never ever seen mock orange bloom in the fall! Technically, it’s not one plant, but several all growing in a clump. The clump all gets the same light, water, temperature, and wind exposure and everything. Yeah, that’s weird.

Then I have these other plants. Like the Canna lilies that are supposed to be miniature that grow by my front porch. I planted them there because the lady who gave them to me said they wouldn’t get any taller than they were in her yard, which is how tall they were in her mother in law’s yard. I thought, “How cute! They are about two and a half feet tall and they will look great next to the porch by the sidewalk.”  How about seven feet tall next to the porch by the sidewalk? With great big leaves? I have to cut some of them down every now and then just so we can walk past them without brushing up against them. That’s a good way to get a lizard on you.

Another plant that I have to cut back so we can get in and out of our house is the Turk’s cap. I go out there every few days, and whack it back and it just grows and grows. It’s been great for hummingbirds. They love the bright red blooms.  The butterflies like it, too.

And, oh, the Amaryllis! I have some pink ones and some white ones that have been growing like crazy. The red ones have been run over by the white ones. Back in the spring, before it got so hot outside that a person couldn’t even think out there, I fixed a border around the Amaryllis. (I’m still working on the front of it. I ran into a bunch of rocks in the ground.) I also mulched so my husband wouldn’t have to try to weed eat and mow around them and between them and the house. Either they like the mulch, or they saw the brick border as a challenge. It looks to me like they have made a run for the border! The white ones have grown taller than I am.  A few days ago I dug up some white ones and pink ones and gave them away. I need to do some more of that. My daughter in law said I need a whip and a chair to tame the Cannas, the Turk’s cap and the Amaryllis plants. She said she loves how things in my yard grow. She said it’s like they all just say, “I am Plant!” very forcefully. And then they grow! Really big!

One more thing about the yard and the drought. Mosquitoes. It seems like every time we get a sprinkling of rain, which is about all we are getting, the mosquito population explodes. I can’t even go outside to pick up black walnuts without three or four mosquitoes at once landing on me. What I wonder is where are the mosquito hawks? Well, that’s what we call dragonflies. Those guys can eat a ton of mosquitoes! They can eat 100 of them in 30 minutes. I haven’t seen any in a few months. I wonder if when it was dry and there weren’t many mosquitoes, the mosquito hawks all went someplace else? I hope this next cold front knocks out a bunch of mosquitoes. I sure have a lot of work to do out there!

Armadillos, Dogs and Garden & Yard Mishaps

Yesterday morning when I opened the back door I saw my neighbor’s two dogs in my yard. That’s really unusual. I told my husband so he could go tell the neighbor so he could put them back in their pen before he left for work.  My husband thought maybe the dogs took care of the armadillo problem while they were out.

Oh, the armadillo problem. I thought if we put some concrete block things around the garden, the armadillo that has been tearing things up would just sort of nose around the edges and not bother to climb over. HA! I did a bit of reading on Texas A&M’s horticulture site and found out those critters can climb fences! The fellow who wrote the article said they were tearing up his yard and he thought they looked like possum on the half shell. He found out his neighbors didn’t appreciate the gunshots they heard in the night while he gathered his main stew ingredient. I decided if the armadillo doesn’t go away soon (had this problem off and on over the years) I’ll just put up a little electric fence outfit and that will keep him out.

So, yesterday afternoon our neighbor whose dogs were out knocked on our back door. He was holding a pair of tennis shoes in one hand, a single tennis shoe and a single garden glove in the other. “Are any of these yours?” he asked. I looked at the glove because we have some that are similar, but none of it was ours. I said something about his dogs bringing treasure home to him last night and he said he didn’t know who to return all this stuff to.

Then he noticed our garden and told me it was looking good. I told him how my cat ate the tops off my pepper and eggplant seedlings before I even got them ready to go outside and the armadillo has been tearing up the rest. It’s a wonder I have anything left. He said he put some mulch out in a flower bed and the next day there was a big hole and mulch piled up next to it. He said he was going to kill that armadillo and make chicharrones. (I knew I was familiar with that word but couldn’t place it. My son’s girlfriend said it’s fried pork skins. Oh, yeah. I’ve been eating that all my life.) My husband had come outside by this time and we told him that sounded good to us. And if I hear a gunshot from my neighbor’s house, I’ll head over there the next day and see if I can try his armadillo dish.

Had a couple of mishaps yesterday. I read in a magazine that an inexpensive bird bath can be rigged up with a 14″ round wire plant support and a 14″ plastic tray that goes under a potted plant. You know those plant supports that have three legs and a circle for the plant to stick out of? All you do, according the the article, is put the three support legs in the ground and put the tray on the top. I got these things and tried it. I’m glad I only bought enough to do one. When I put the water in the tray it fell through to the ground. So much for that. I just set the tray on the ground with some water in it. I do wonder sometimes if the folks who talk about all these great ideas in magazine articles ever actually try any of them before they tell millions of people to do these great things. Maybe they had a bigger lip on the tray and a stiffer tray than I had but mine didn’t work. I still want two bird baths – one for the front yard and one for the back.

Now, this mishap…oh, boy. We have expanded our garden this year and I decided if we move one more plant (it’s a Texas Star) we can take in another 10′ x 4′ area of what is now yard. I decided where to move the plant and it was only about 20 feet away. Yesterday after my husband got off work I asked him if he wanted to move the Texas Star and he said sure, so we did. Our garden is in our back yard. We put the Texas Star in the front yard.

Later, when I was thinking about some bricks I have stacked near the garden and the next project I have planned that I will use some of them for, I thought about the plant we moved and how I wanted to put that plant close to where those bricks are. Uh, oh. I had my husband put the Texas Star where I wanted to put the butterfly weed! (The only thing worse than being confused and knowing you are confused, is being confused and not finding out till later.) You know, this isn’t like saying, “Oh, honey, I think I might like that chair better over here. Can we try this spot?” He had to dig holes in the ground to move that thing. You guys reading this might suggest that next time I move it myself. My answer to you is that we have not had any decent amount of rain since I don’t know when. My yard is hard as a brick. I could put the shovel to the ground and jump up and down on it and it might break the grass but I don’t think it will break the ground. I haven’t told my husband yet.

Final note on the armadillo – My garden looks undisturbed this morning! There is only one freshly dug hole under the bird feeder. I wonder if there were two armadillos and the dogs got rid of one of them?

Well, I’m looking at hungry house finches, sparrows and doves, and have had a red-bellied woodpecker trying to drill holes (banging on the table is more like it!) on the wooden platform so I guess it’s time to take their breakfast out to them. Then I guess I’ll see what I’m going to do in the yard today.

Birds, Yard and Garden

Last time I wrote I was hoping I’d be able to move my arms and back after all the yard work I’d done. I was able and got a lot done last week. I worked outside six days in a row, followed by a day of rest on Sunday. I’ve worked out there a little this week and still have plenty to do. I want to get as much done as I can before I hear our weather man say the temperature will be 80 by 8:00 and 90 by noon!

A minute ago I watched a pair of cardinals on my feeder. I guess they just got married. (God marries the animals. My mom told me so when I was three years old.) I think when he feeds sunflower seeds to her, that is how they get married. I expect to see the young ‘uns on the feeder in a few weeks. They are always funny. They look like eight-year-old boys whose hair is never combed.

I have at least one blue jay (I can’t tell one from another so I don’t know if it’s the same bird each time or not.) who comes up to the feeder and picks up a peanut, puts it down, picks up a different peanut, puts it down…he does this several times before taking one and flying away. I don’t know if he is testing the weight to see which one is best, or if he’s trying to carry more than one and can’t fit them in his beak. I bet he’s testing weight. I think blue jays are too smart to keep doing the same dumb thing over and over and expecting different results. (Unlike some humans.)

I found out that the goldfinch that I thought was a straggler was part of a different bunch of birds. The ones we had this winter left, but about two weeks later a whole bunch more showed up. Now they are turning yellow. I had two of them on my window while ago. The seed had run out and they were looking inside the house. The only time birds ever cling to my screen or perch on my windowsill and look inside is when I’ve let the seed run out.

The other evening I saw three indigo buntings in my next door neighbor’s yard. I’d sure like to see a lot of those. I saw two or three last year, but we used to see them in flocks of 20-something.

I’m waiting for an orchard oriole. I forgot I was supposed to take the bee guards off the hummingbird feeder so they can drink from it. I learned that from a friend who says the orioles like her hummingbird feeder (the kind with the pretend flowers) better than her oriole feeder, but you have to take the guards off. I took them off yesterday.

The azaleas have finally bloomed! They were several weeks late. The man at the nursery where I got my milkweed the other day told us they had an Azalea Trail Tour in Houston at the usual time for seeing them loaded with blooms, but there wasn’t a bloom to be seen. I imagine that was a bust. I watched a swallowtail butterfly yesterday who was taking his own tour of my azalea flowers. I hope the swallowtails find the parsley I planted for them.

Lat year we thought my husband’s Texas Star was dead, but it has a bit of new growth on it this year. It always dies back and new shoots come up from the ground each year. There was no new growth last year. Weird. We still think the freeze got the lipstick plant and it may have wiped out my Lantana. I’ll give it a little more time just to make sure before I yank those out and put something else in their places. Also, a rosebush that I was ready to toss down the hill and into the woods must have heard me say I was going to do that. It’s looking great now. I’m glad because it’s a Seven Sister’s Rose and it’s pretty neat.

My beans are coming up. Something is munching on the leaves. I wonder if turtles eat bean plants? Oh, but it’s not time for turtles to be in the yard yet. They come up here in the spring to lay eggs but it’s too early. I think if it was a rabbit they would just gnaw them down to nubs. The leaves look like they’ve had a bite taken out here and bite out there. I need to put a small fence around my garden.

My cat – who at times like this reminds me of what a cute little black and white rug he’d make – has eaten most of my pepper plants. He got a few bites of the peanut plants, too. I put the peanut plants outside. I’m still working on getting the ground ready; we’ve been moving some bricks so the garden can be expanded.

Well, the work goes on. I sure have a lot of plans for my yard and I’m glad it’s staying cool longer than usual so I can get these things done.

Birds and Garden News

Here’s a little report on the goings on in my yard. The weather was beautiful today and I was able to go outside and get a few things done. Between the rake and the shovel – and the stooping and pulling – I ought to be on my way to becoming buff. Of course, it will take more than one day of hard work to get the chores done and to get myself in shape. I hope I can still move my back and arms tomorrow.

Got my Kentucky Wonder pole beans planted. I still have some mighty healthy weeds to remove so I can get the rest of the garden in. The herbs are doing great. The marjoram survived the winter along with dill, parsley, coriander, rosemary, spearmint and garlic chives. The green onions are looking good. Tomorrow I hope to deal with the weeds so I can get the vegetables and peanuts planted pretty soon. Peanuts are a new adventure for me. I do hope to get the other two parsley plants that I just bought in the ground tomorrow. Can’t have too much parsley if I hope to have swallowtail butterflies again this year. Something I still need is milkweed for the monarchs. I was told their numbers are down due to weather and loss of habitat, so I sure want to be able to feed any monarch caterpillars that may show up.

I saw a gold finch today at my feeder. I guess he’s a straggler. The rest of them left 2 or 3 weeks ago. My buff-bellied hummingbird left the second week of March. We hope he comes back next winter. I won’t let my husband mow the part of the yard that I call our “meadow” until after the wildflowers bloom, but there are a few things that come up that we don’t want growing out there. So, today I was pulling them and I saw the first ruby-throated hummingbird for this year. Well, the first one for my yard. I have a friend who had her first – two in one day! – on March 15. We put a hummingbird feeder out near the back of the yard hoping for a visit from the orchard oriole. He was in the woods behind our house last year, so we hope to entice him to come a bit closer. Anyway, that’s where I saw the hummingbird. It may be my imagination but he looked pretty worn out and hungry to me. I need to get some food in the other two feeders tomorrow so I’ll be ready for the rest of them.

I sure hope I can move my back and arms tomorrow.

Yard, Gardening and Bird Adventures

Well, here’s a bit of an update on the yard, gardening activities and birds. You know a while back we had a pretty deep freeze for this part of the country and a bit of snow, too. Right now the only green on the lawn is clover (love it!) and weeds (got work to do there). The grass is still brown. My freesias are blooming but they are surrounded by brown fern, so they could be looking better. I managed to get some of the damage out of the flower bed but I didn’t quite make it over that far.

My husband’s used to be really tall cactus that we cut damage off of after the freeze flopped over a couple days ago. Well, part of it flopped over. The part that is still standing is just as dead as the part that fell though. I told him the Portulaca seedlings I have going will look really nice in place of that cactus.

We’re not sure about the satsuma tree. It has no buds on it at all. Neither does my father in law’s.

The other day I transplanted – up to bigger containers – 32 tomato plants. I put them deeper in the soil than what they were growing so they can develop more roots. I want to plant them the week after Easter and I want some good roots going first. Our average last frost date here is March 15th but I don’t trust it this year, so I’m giving it a couple more weeks just to be safe.

Gotta’ tell you the other day when I went out to the garden shed to transplant the tomatoes I put my hand up inside of some brown paper that my dill is wrapped in. It’s hanging to dry and when I did that, I thought it’s probably getting a bit late in the winter to be doing that – putting my hand where I can’t see what might be there – so I better not do that again. Might be a wasp in there before too long. Then I looked over at the window and saw a snake skin looped over a fishing rod that is stored horizontally above the window. I don’t reckon I will put my hand where I can’t see – probably ever again. Oh, it looks like it might be a baby rat snake’s skin. It looked pretty cool just like it was so I didn’t want to take it down and count scales and all that to try to identify it.

I have bell pepper seedlings and eggplant seedlings to put in bigger containers in a day or two. And, the coolest thing! A friend gave me some peanuts to plant. It was a little kit thing with a pot and the planting medium and the peanuts. I have a sprout! I can hardly wait to see how this little adventure goes. I’ve never grown my own peanuts. (I can see my grandpa smiling. He grew up on a peanut farm in Mississippi.)

I ran across an old email the other day where I was telling a friend about some baby hummingbirds on our Lantana. That was in June of 2006. Sure would be cool to see that again. Right now the goldfinches are on their way to their summer home. I haven’t see one in a couple days. Yesterday five of them were spotted at a feeder down the street but only two of them were there today. I haven’t seen the little buff-bellied hummingbird today, but I was gone most of the morning. I only saw him once or twice yesterday. I’ve learned that blue jays have a really pretty sound they make. It sounds downright melodious. I thought they only squawked, so this is a neat discovery. I wonder if it’s their spring song, to attract a mate? Oh, I’ve started putting crushed shells from boiled eggs out on the feeder so the birds can get some calcium. They need it so their eggs will have good strong shells.

Well, that’s my report for this time. And it’s time that I get outside in this sunshine and get the rest of the weeds out of the flower bed so the freesias can shine. I hope things are going well in your garden and yard.

Plants, Hummingbird, and Frozen Pipes

The South froze. Leaves on some plants that stay green all year are dark green and drooping. One of our cactus plants looks OK, another looks iffy, and the third…Well, yesterday it was about 8 ft. tall, and today it’s about 7 ft. tall. The paddles are all flopped over. We may have lost the satsuma tree, but won’t know for sure till this is over. We tried to insulate the bottom of the trunk. We piled up dirt, leaves, newspaper, more dirt, more leaves and wrapped the whole tree in a blanket but it still might not make it. It’s a young tree with a thin trunk. The county ag man told us to put dirt if we had it, and leaves if not,  around it and make sure it covers the graft near the bottom of the trunk. He also said that some fruit trees aren’t going to make it through these temps in the 20s. He looked really funny when I told him that other than that tree, and bringing in a few potted plants, whatever makes it makes it, and whatever doesn’t, just won’t. We’ll see how that works out.

The Buff-bellied hummingbird is still here. His food was frozen this morning so I fixed up some more for him. It was about time to change it anyway. In winter, it should be changed about every six days. Since we will hit 20 F. again tonight I’ll have to bring the feeder in when it gets dark and put it back out at daybreak tomorrow so he will have some breakfast that he can drink. Instead of one cup of water and 1/4 cup of sugar, I’m using one cup of water and 1/3 cup of sugar and then about a spoon more of sugar. I want him to have extra calories to help him keep warm. I sure wonder where he’s sleeping at night? My husband wanted to let him in the house yesterday evening, but couldn’t figure out how to manage that. Plus, we’d have to hide him from the cat. We start thinking crazy in the South when it gets cold, don’t we?

Some of our pipes froze, but later thawed out. However, my neighbor was outside working on some things in his yard and he came over and told me I had a busted pipe while ago. We looked and it’s broken just above the ground. It’s at the outside edge of the house, so it won’t be hard to fix. Don’t know what will happen when we turn the water back on though because there is another pipe that was still frozen when my neighbor turned the water off for me. Husband will be home from work early today. Hope he’s ready to go to the hardware store.

We have a couple more nights of this. The weather man says it will be up around 60 degrees next week. We never get a chance to adjust to the weather before it changes again. Another thing the weather man said is that this is not the last of the really cold weather we can expect this year. A friend of mine says even Al Gore is shivering right now. That makes me smile.

Not the Usual Cat and Bird Sightings

It’s been an interesting week for wildlife around here. A big cat and an unusual bird were both sighted in the same week.

Day before yesterday my son looked down the street and saw a couple critters in my aunt’s yard. She lives across the street a couple houses or so down from us and next to the woods. The critter that was being followed is unidentified but the second one… My son thought he was looking at a cat but then realized it was too big to be a house cat so it must be a dog. No. Not a dog. Didn’t look like a dog. Sure is a big cat! He said it had a funny way of moving it’s tail and it disappeared behind my aunt’s car before he could tell what it was for sure. He went online and looked at videos of bob cats and it seems that is what he saw.

We have seen tracks over the years and when my son was a teenager, he and I made plaster casts of deer tracks and bob cat tracks. Apparently, the bob cat was trailing the deer. Bob cats will mark territory by scratching trees just like house cats do when they tear up the furniture. This sighting makes me want to go look for scratch marks. And all this happened the same day I learned that a chicken tractor doesn’t have to be big; it can be small enough for just a couple of hens.  I think I want to build one. For several years I’ve thought it would be cool to have my own chickens. I think bob cats like chickens.

Over the weekend I got reports of a humming bird at a feeder down the street and it wasn’t a Ruby-throated. The neighbors (who are also my parents) didn’t think it was a Rufous either. I had given up on having a Rufous and took my feeders down long ago but when I heard about this bird I put them both back out. It took a few days, but today he showed up at the feeder by the kitchen window. I quickly eliminated the usual suspects. When I got the binoculars I could plainly see a pinkish-orange bill. We have a bird here that is rarely seen in these parts! Three of us (my dad, our friend who is really good at this and I) have come to the same conclusion. We have a Buff-bellied hummingbird.  My dad has a better camera than I do so he plans to come down here and get some photos. The lighting isn’t working out at his house. If they turn out I’ll see if we can figure out how to put them on here so you can see them.

When I told my friend I also saw a Wilson’s warbler the other day at the edge of my yard by the woods, she said I really ought to sign up for ebird so I can report what I see. She said it’s free to do and not complicated. I’ll have to look into that.

So, one thing leads to another, and sometimes we’re led to some fun things, right? Look for cat scratches and sign up for ebird. I guess if I do build a little chicken tractor for my little garden I might have a bob cat in my own yard. That could be a problem.

My Yard a Week After Snow

A week ago today we had huge snowflakes falling in our yard. The temperature was somewhere around 28 or 30 degrees F last week. Since then it went up to the mid-70s and back down to the low 30s. Today’s temps have pretty much hung around 40-50 degrees, I think.

I worked outside this afternoon, cutting things in my front yard that were done in by last week’s snow and cold. The Turk’s cap and four o’clocks were casualties. The fern is all brown and the elephant ears are just plain icky. I’m still working on those. Everything will come back next spring.

We had some yucca at the corner of the house until one of them bloomed. They die after they bloom but I didn’t expect the whole group of them to crater. I’m not sure why that happened. Now we have this open space…hmm. We could plant more yucca from the backyard or we could put something else there.

Our Lantana didn’t look right this year. The ends of some of the branches seemed to be malformed and the blooms weren’t normal. I think it may be a virus. I read someplace that some bright person thought it would be a good idea to turn a virus loose on Lantana where they are considered a nuisance. The ones in my yard were not a nuisance, thank you! I found a few branch tips that were protected from snow and I plan to take them to the County Agriculture office and see what they think is the problem. I hope these bushes will be OK.

I ripped out all the potato vine that I could find. This plant seed was given to us a couple years ago. It makes a huge vine with heart-shaped leaves and has seed pods look like potatoes hanging on the vine. The way it came back this year had me wondering. It seemed like it had quite a bit of gusto for a plant that is easy to control. I have since found out that is because it’s not easy to control! I think I won’t let that one grow next year but will plant moon flowers and morning glories instead.

My husband wants to plant another fruit tree. He has a satsuma and wants to add a peach tree. I don’t want to give up any more garden space to a tree, but it would be nice to have peaches off our own tree, so we are looking for a good place to put it. I thought I could move one of the lantanas (if they survive whatever is making them look funny) but that spot is not protected from the north wind. However, at the corner of the house where the yucca was might be just the perfect place. Away from wind and squirrels, too.

A few days after the snow I wandered out back to see how things looked. My banana tree is a mess. It ought to come back. I’ve never tried to grow one but I’ve been told they are hard to kill. That’s the kind of plant I need. They aren’t a true tree either, but are technically an herb. That sounds weird when I think of what most herbs look like.

My husband’s lipstick plant was so pretty with bright green leaves and red flowers and snow falling on it. It’s not so pretty now; just sticks with dead leaves and flowers hanging on. In most places in the US, the lipstick plant is a houseplant. It’s a type of hibiscus and we grow those outside here in Southeast Texas. We should have protected it but forgot. I was so excited about snow I forgot to do anything for the plants in the ground, but I did bring the ones in pots inside. Oh, the pansies are loving this cold weather! And my buttercrunch lettuce looks great.

I really hope to get the peach tree site chosen soon and get one planted. Also, I want to rearrange my front yard. I think it will be a much bigger job than just moving furniture!