After a lovely, surprising and unusual three day rain event, all of Central Texas has greened up beautifully. We received 3 inches of life giving sky juice, and the grassy fields have turned green again. The summer wildflowers are blooming,……

providing plenty of nectar for the local bee and butterfly population. This gives the critters feeding on such insects much to grin about. When it rains it seems everyone wins out in one way or another.

Here’s a spiny lizard waiting for a tasty treat to buzz by. He was so intent on sunning himself he didn’t really care that I was puttering in the garden right beside him or even rushing back with a camera to take a few closeups.

The birds are enjoying the increase in insect populations too! Especially grateful is the newly fledged cardinal family that seems to find my back porch a welcome reprieve from the blazing sun and a handy trap for tasty, traveling beetles.

Isn’t this young cardinal fledgling just adorable!?Papa cardinal staying watchfully close to his brood.

The rivers are even flowing with a slight bit more gusto. Mind you we are still in severe drought and our lakes are only 36% full, but its always nice to see some of that wet stuff fall from the sky. And mercifully the daytime temperature only reached into the upper 80’s as opposed to the normal high 90’s we usually get in July. A short but wonderful reprieve.

Not to miss out on this good opportunity, the Texas Sage plants have bloomed again. They were covered in bees and my hive is doing great thanks to them.

Once the blooms fade they drop from the bush and shower the ground with soft pink petals. It looked like it had rained pink blooms overnight.There were even puddles of blooms in the rocks.

Texas sure keeps things interesting around here!

There were all kinds of celebrations happening in my yard on Independence Day.

The day started out with the blazing, hot sun bringing with it a slew of activity:

Butterflies were stocking up on energy for the party later on,……

Spiders were positioning themselves for optimum location. This little Lynx spider was greedily taking over the entire Zinnia just waiting for snacks to land in it’s lap.

Spectators for the nights festivities were not limited to insects:

Leopard frogs too were getting ready for the exciting events, crowding in on comfy lily pads…

Some were a little more shy than others, preferring to view the fun from a more secluded spot.

And some even resorted to a failed attempt at camouflage!

Some seemed to be so rushed to get to where ever they were going:

While others took a more relaxed road to the local drinking hole:

But once the fireworks began everything else was forgotten and all were transfixed! They started off with deep, rich displays of color over the pond…. with pretty pinks and yellows …

More vibrant explosions of color followed, accompanied by many ‘oooohs’ and ‘aaahs’.

The traditional red burst of color were my personal favorites, of which thankfully there were many!

While other colors were very different indeed, but just as lovely all the same.

We all partied hard that day, which led to the inevitable consequences the very next morning. Some of us weren’t feeling too great, choosing to stay hydrated and sedentary for most of the day – in recovery mode as it were:While others simply felt like their world had turned upside down. Others went all out and literally lost their skin! Holy cow! Yes that is a 4 and half foot long snake skin:

And some felt like they literally hit the wall – or screen door in this case:

But thankfully most of us recovered and it was business as usual the following Monday. Sigh….I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th! And thank you to all who have served this country to make this day possible.

Lemon cucumbers and mammoth sunflowers growing together. The local Titmice are just so happy with my selection! I see them out there picking at the seeds now that the flowers are bearing good seeds. Better get out there and save some for next year, before they are all gone!

Having a pond right outside your bedroom door affords itself to tons of nighttime pond watching. This year has been a little slow in the nocturnal water lily department, since it took a nasty bite when we had a late freeze. But this did not stop the Gulf Coast toads and leopard frogs from showing up!

Now this guy is BIG! Scared me half to death last night trying to put the toad screens into the pond filters so they wouldn’t drown in the filter. I had a hard time grabbing him and throwing him back out into the pond. He fought me all the way.  But I got him tossed him back into the pond. He climbed right up next to me onto a rock to which he clung like it was his last chance at air!Here’s Dick’s hand next to this fella. And when he’s stretched out swimming away – he’s even bigger. I sure wonder where he came from. I did not see him here last year. He’s certainly seen some younger days!

Here’s a younger fella – doing his nighttime love song routine….Ahhh- young love…

I will be posting some more nocturnal adventures pretty soon, since there is so much stuff going on out there at night.

When I first moved to Texas I spent most of my gardening time building perennial beds and borders. Having never tried my hand at veggie gardening but wanting badly to do so, I started small with some container grown peppers and tomatoes. That went so well that in fall of last year I was ready for a real garden. Dick and I spent many an hour discussing location and shape and finally came up with a shape that we both liked. I didn’t want it to be a regular square foot garden. I wanted it to fit into the place with curves but yet still be functional. It also had to have some kind of roof to provide light dappled shade since the sun gets very intense here in Central Texas.

Veggie garden roof being built

We had to build raised beds since all we have here is caliche limestone soil and rock. More rock than anything else really, and nothing much will grow in that. I did spend some time pickaxing out the stones about a foot down, so that moisture could move downward unimpeded in case we got a heavy drenching rain. I wanted to use a stone to border to match the limestone fascia of the house. Dick spent a lot of time cutting the stones and making them fit together. We filled the gardens with soil and compost we bought form the Natural Gardener. Then Dick fenced the entire thing in to keep deer and rabbits out. For the posts he used cedar –  you just can’t beat the weather and bug resistance of that glorious wood.

Tomato and pepper plants are in and growing and I have my lemon cucumbers are happily blooming already. We placed the garden pretty close to the house and the all important water collection system. I use only this water for the garden as it isn’t as hard as the city water and there is no chlorine in it either.

The project is almost done. We still have to stain the wood. I can’t believe the tomatoes plants have gotten so big.

I planted some huge sunflowers in there – just for fun. I had no idea they would climb out of the roof at over 8 feet tall!

Some of them are really pretty!

Although yellow is still a stunner!

I am in awe of Dick’s handiwork skills. He spent a lot of time coming up with this amazing pergola design. Nothing seems to challenge him, and if it does, he usually finds some awesome solution. He listened closely to what I wanted, even though I thought it could never be done and built something that is better than I could have imagined! Thank you Dick!!

A view of the top of the veggie garden from the pond.

I sure hope Kokopelli’s fertility powers extend all the way to the veg garden for extra productivity.