The list of gems in my garden are numerous today.

Swamp Hibiscus, also more elegantly called the Texas Star:Mexican Flame Vine:Wild petunia (Ruellia humilis) growing everywhere there is little shade and moisture  in my yard. What a pretty little native. Just love those free native flowers, showing up all by themselves.

Caged sunshine – a jewel none-the-less. The top of the garden is open, but we won’t tell it. 🙂 Soon the songbirds will find it and pilfer all the fat sunflower seeds from it’s heart.

A baby praying mantis. A definite treasure here in the veggie patch, diligently keeping parasitic bugs under control.

An Esparenza bloom (Yellow Bells). A true and trusted, drought tolerant mass bloomer, no matter how blistering it gets….all summer long.

Tropical water lilies.

A tufted titmouse and cardinal sharing a convenient perch while enjoying the cool, gentle  splashes from the sprinkler.

The jewels of the pond:

Firewheel (Gaillardia pulchella) , another lovely little native blooming all willy nilly on my land. 🙂

Another cardinal (perhaps the same one) having found a new perch in the back yard:

A mockingbird, without whom the garden would be a silent place, lacking its crystal clear cheerful song all year long.

Tropical night bloomers. What a color!The jewels of the sky, a female hummingbird.A majestic stand of towering spires of Canna in the bog.

And the old garden mainstay –  Echinacea, blooming a cheerful pink:There is so much more. We are forecast to get some more rain today, and my trees and plants are probably thrilled.

Get the Mexican Flame vine. They went bonkers for mine!

It was such a feeding frenzy, these Queen butterflies didn’t even care about my camera lens being shoved in their faces. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Who is waiting patiently for breakfast this morning?? Why a funnel weaver spider of course! Funnel web spiders are reclusive not-so-little arachnids, that build tunnel webs which connect to their spider burrows. When an insect steps on the web the spider can feel the vibration down the tunnel and will rush out to welcome its dinner with a good jot of venom. Yum!

What’s left of the dragonfly larvae is just the shell. They usually crawl out of the water at night and attach themselves to a sturdy surface and break out of their old exoskeleton. It takes several hours for their wings to dry. It’s a vulnerable time for them. It’s sometimes still hard to believe that these creatures turn into the jewels of the pond skies. 🙂