Just More Complaining, Plus Photos

I will not be giving an update on the vegetable garden today. I went out there with such high hopes, expecting to find bright green leaves and flowers and fruit weighing down the vines after the wonderful inch of rain. Instead, I found mosquitoes. Really? I have to put up with stinging scorpions, poisonous spiders, poisonous snakes, poisonous lizards, killer molds, infectious soil fungi, pollution, drought, and ethically retarded politicians. Now I have to deal with mosquitoes too? So unfair.

Plus, the rain is over already. 



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I didn’t even get around to pulling out my purple rain boots. Since it was so hot, we just splashed around in flip-flops.  

I looked around for any signs that the rain helped us out. Some of the native plants responded cautiously.  

The Texas Ranger (Leucophyllum frutescens) was willing to put out a few of its brilliant purple flowers, but not the full display, perhaps sensing that that the rainstorm was already coming to an end.

I initially thought these bright green seedlings were baby mesquites, since the trees drop hundreds of these long, tan pods full of seeds.

However, it turns out that mesquite seeds need to be digested by animals before they can germinate.

It's more likely that the little green plantlets are actually from the seeds of a Baja Red Fairy Duster (Calliandra californica).  

The seed pods of this unusual plant pop open and the seeds fly out in all directions, with the result that I now have six of them after only planting one. It's a favorite of bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.

I tried to get some shots of one my little hummingbird friends, but they were blurry as usual. I like to think he was going after the mosquitoes. They do eat a lot of bugs in flight, as well as snatching them from leaves and spiderwebs.   

Of course my two guardians followed me closely, ever alert to danger (or snacks).

So that's it. Of course we still have August, which is the traditional month for rain, so I will try to remain optimistic.

Katrina