Snow on the Prarie

Snow on the Prairie

I started this post a while back.  I was reminded of it when I was returning from a visit to a friend. The highway I take has land that hasn't been developed with houses. They are scarce these days.
The fields on both sides of this highway and the major highway into Fort Worth, were full of white clouds.  I knew what they were. Bet very few of the travelers noticed or cared. Their loss. These are beautiful works of nature. 
                                                             

We were returning from a flea market in East Texas and saw field after field of white wildflowers.
Hubby pulled off the highway and let me take a few pictures.

Don't forget to click on picture for larger view.

The first thing I noticed?  Even though at a distance the flowers look white, they are actually the palest of green.  Not a true blossom to my eyes.

The name? Snow on the Prarie. Lovely name for rolling hills of white.

I can't say that I ever noticed the fields of "white" before. Now, I watch for them.  I also saw fields of white in Oklahoma last week.

Perhaps the drought has something to do with them being so prolific this year?

 "The 'Amen!' of Nature is always a flower."
-  Oliver Wendell Holmes.   

 "The nature of This Flower is to bloom."   
-  Alice Walker. 

Hawks, pigeons and songbirds

The older generation thought nothing of getting up at five every morning — and the younger generation doesn’t think much of it either. ~John J. Welsh

Just before dawn I have the world all to myself. ~Terri Guillemets

 The last two mornings, out in the garden at daylight, I have stopped and wondered why the morning is so quiet.  It is almost eerie.  This morning, at around 8AM, I saw a flutter of small birds in one of the many tangles of weeds and bushes. They were small, probably sparrows.  On the high line wire near the road, there were 3 small birds perched and one probable dove.
No birds singing or twittering or feeding at the feeders.  I watched for them yesterday and they never came.

This is the time of year when hawks begin migrating through.  You can always count on their appearance in the fall and winter. There are some hawks that seem to be around all year as well.
The quiet is due to the neighbor who still has racing pigeons.  He was racing them (25 years or so) before the neighborhood grew up around us.  He still shoots at the hawks. (no comment) The hawks are just looking for an easy meal and word has gotten around  that they are served up year round if you wait til they come out from their house.
 I like hawks. They are beautiful birds.  I don't blame them for looking for an easy meal. They work very hard for most.  I have closed the blinds in the kitchen window when one has knocked down a bird in my back yard.  No reason to shoo them off as the bird is dead.  I let them eat and then I clean up the feathers.
As callous as this sounds, this is nature at its real.  A lot of nature is not pretty.
I have had the rare thrill of catching on my camera (cannot say on film these days) a Cooper's Hawk perched on an arbor in my garden. Pretty darned bold.  It was still a treat to stand for many minutes and just watch it.

The moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn’t, matters not a jot. The possibility is always there. ~Monica Baldwin

  I have a "carpe diem" mug and, truthfully, at six in the morning the words do not make me want to seize the day. They make me want to slap a dead poet. ~Joanne Sherman

GARDEN CHANGES THIS FALL

I started this plan in August. Since then mornings have been cooler. Still no rain. More dying things.  Cooler mornings perk my brain to plan, plan and dream of next spring. Jotting ideas, and anticipating lots of work.

 THE GARDENS HAVE TO BE RESTRUCTURED/DESIGNED.

PLAN TO GET RID OF 4 AT LEAST.   
FIGURE OUT THE PATH ARRANGEMENT.  HARD TO VISUALIZE .
WHETHER TO LEAVE ARBOR WHERE IT IS.
     MAYBE MOVE IT TO SMALLER AREA AND ELIMINATE THAT PART OF PATH?
   
FINISH PUTTING TOGETHER THE WINDOW GREEN HOUSE OR GET RID OF.

START MOVING GRAVEL.  GOOD JOB FOR COLD NASTY DAYS THIS WINTER.  HARD TO NOT GATHER OR RAKE GRAVEL NOW THAT I KNOW I WILL DO LATER.
DEAL WITH WASH OUT AREAS WHERE THE WHITE BUCKET IS.  A GOOD COLD WEATHER JOB.

Summer phlox have never liked my soil. They always started dying from base up and looked so bad.
I have one that I cut back to 3" and it is greening up with watering.

The bed with the tall phlox was supposed to be the specimine bed, filled with blooms spring, summer and fall.
Never happened......................

I am toying with the idea of lasagna garden areas. 

Yep, those windows are the mini greenhouse I started last winter.  We took 2 trips in the Spring and the rabbits were looking for new, tender leaves.  I opened out the hinged windows and blocked the little buggers.  It is still there and so are the rabbits.  They are looking for anything green to eat.  They have not touched the salvias, nor the hyacinth bean vines nor the summer phlox (which are all dead now). 

This is my planned "dividing line".  The arbor is still pretty stable and don't want to move it. So, the area where the pots are will be the cut off point. The smallish grass near the arbor is dead now.  Need to think of what goes there after adding soil amendments.  The big grass is a ravenna grass.  Oddly, it is listed as a noxious plant as it has been "escaping" in Washington state.  It is too big to dig out and fills the space still.  Still mostly green. We will have to wait and see.

Had good ideas for this bed, maybe next year?

I may or may not move this birdhouse pole.

Need to move mailbox as this bed has to be taken out completely.

I have hopes of reworking soil, in this previous coneflower bed.  It is still fenced and maybe the rabbits won't dig under fence in an attempt to get at what greens remain.

End of summer zinnias

I visited my sister-in-law last week and enjoyed the colors and color changes of the tall zinnia survivors of a long hot summer.
Oklahoma got more rain than we got here in north Texas and she still has tomatoes and blooming things.

Some would say the garden was bedraggled and untended. I say there is color everywhere!  What joy to take pictures of blooms!  My gardens are burned up except for surprising regeneration here and there.

There were enough zinnias to pick and make lovely arrangements to enjoy the entire time I spent with my sister-in-law.  We ate, talked, napped and ate and talked and I took pictures of the changing blooms.
It was fascinating to watch the smallish center of the flowers begin to grow darker and larger.  If they hadn't been in the kitchen, we would have missed the hourly changes.

My daughter had given me an older iphone and I tested the camera.  I am not in love with the thing as a rule, but it has a surprisingly good camera.

End of summer rescued from garden

Don't forget to click on picture for larger.

Interesting marigold blossoms

These flowers are an example of how seed heads develop.The 2 pink ones have petals compacted tightly and the brownish scattered blossom is some time later will look like this.

 

More last blooms.