Rabbit attack?

Hello, everyone. It's been a little busy around the place and I forgot to post.

I went out to check on plants yesterday and was shocked to see this:

My alpine iris plant has been eaten down to a nubbin! And several rain lily plants are either gone altogether or chomped to a little thing like this! 

DH says he saw a rabbit in the yard a couple of days ago, which darted out under the fence. (Smart rabbit.) Maybe this explains a number of disappearances lately.

What can be used to repel rabbits? Especially since a lot of the grass they used to have for munching on has gone dormant or died because there's been no rain.

Fall gardening season is here

Hello,  everyone. It's fall, and the heat of summer is starting to moderate. The warm weather garden plants, after struggling earlier, are in their prime.

These five beauties are not the first, but there are enough to make a nice picture.

I like to cut them in 1/4" slices, salt them and drain them for a while, then saute them gently until there are little golden-brown speckles on both sides. Wonderful flavor! 

San Antonio Missions historic sites (edited to remove fox photo as that was already posted)

Hello,  everyone.  I was out of town for a few days, but now have returned home. I saw some interesting things on this road trip.

Mission S. Francisco de Espada, near the Loop 1604 south portion, was the first of the mission churches we visited.

The mission front garden (there is a community of believers that come to pray and someone looks after the landscaping near the church building) was surprisingly colorful for August. In addition to the sunflowers in bloom, they had some beautyberry shrubs with berries. (The purple things) I didn't know beautyberry would grow so far south! I think San Antonio is in about zone 8b in the USDA growing zones map. Now I wonder if beautyberry would consent to grow in 9b, about 7 F degrees warmer on the winter cold days, I guess.

The front of the church. The reddish flowers on the left are poinciana, which is gorgeous in bloom but a freeze will at least knock it to the ground. They might be growing it on hope, and expecting the plants to return from the roots if the temp gets down to slightly below freezing.

A couple of memories from Madrid on our way home

Hello, everyone.  After our rest in Córdoba,  we took the train back to Madrid for our flight home.

We saw a living wall near the train station. That is a lot of plants! I guess they are each potted separately, so nothing sags. 

The favorite bakery, on Puerta del Sol

I had to cut the morning snack photo into halves.

The cake was approved by DH. I had the toasted croissant with butter.

We got rain!

Hello, everyone. It's surprising how busy we can be with nothing on the calendar. I'm hip-deep on a big quilt right now, and the on ramp has several more projects incoming.

But it was very exciting recently when we got a slug of rain. Probably we got around 8 inches over a couple of days.

This street was temporarily blocked due to urban street flooding. They say it was 30 inches deep for a little while. It all drained nicely, it just fell too fast for the pipes and built up for a little while. 

We're grateful for the rain. Everything was dried out to crispy brown at some parks, and our yard was also. 

We grow'em big in Texas

Hello, everyone.  

I walked out onto the porch to check on the basil plant that was recently dug up and put into a pot--it had volunteered in the vegetable garden where there isn't room for it--and saw a dragonfly.

This is about 5 inches long, the biggest dragonfly I have ever seen.

We just looked at each other and went on with our respective days.

Government Canyon State Natural Area walk

 Hello, everyone.

We took a little "training road trip" this weekend, to San Antonio. (A drive of a couple of hundred miles for a weekend visit is completely normal in Texas. We're all so spread out across our large state.) "What is there in San Antonio" I hear some of my readers wondering. Well, besides the famous Alamo historical memorial, and the usual shopping, restaurants, etc. to be found in a large city, there are Government Canyon and REI. Well, one of the REI coop retail locations, anyway. They sell various hiking supplies and equipment. Sometime mail order over the internet just won't do and we need to see the things up close and personal, to assess size and so on.

Government Canyon is a state park, conveniently located at the edge of the city in Helotes, a town which is being enveloped by the San Antonio metro area. It has two parts, a dog friendly area called the Front Range and a no pets allowed area called the Back Country which is most of the park.

A map of the park. This is much more complete than the paper maps at the headquarters, those really only covered the Front Range area.

This is a tree alongside the trail we walked. I have no idea what kind of tree it is. Those brown things are seed pods (empty now) from last year.

I was not expecting to see Spanish Moss in San Antonio. Yet there are some trees covered in it here!

View from the Overlook, which looks down onto the site of the dinosaur footprints, and also onto a really pretty view.

We walked 7 miles (11 km), per our Strava, in almost 3 hours. It was a wonderful walk in great weather, and we also met very nice people there. (Out of respect for their privacy, I won't say anything more about them on the public internet.) 

If you are in San Antonio over a weekend, you really should visit this park. 

I planted out some potted perennials

Hello, everyone.  I know it's been a whole week since the last post. It's been busy around here, as we're preparing to depart on pilgrimage once again. This time we'll walk the Via de la Plata, the walk that fell in 2020 when borders were snapped closed.

Today, though, a small photo from the yard: a start of my Oenothera speciosa, aka "those gorgeous pink primroses" is settling into a spot by the pergola. 

I have loved these pink flowers since we lived in San Antonio. There they often sprouted in the cracks in asphalt parking areas.

We've had some weather lately. (edited for spelling)

Hello, everyone.  

As mentioned,  there has been weather in the area lately.  Repeated storms, in fact, the most recent of which shredded the stacked flowerpot for the second time in a week.

There was a lot of lightning with that one, and a lot of thunder, and gusts of strong wind. We couldn't see a thing through the window screens and we weren't going to open the door into that mess just to look at it.

Potential energy, until it falls this is about the smallest hanging dead limb we saw while walking.

One of the magnificent older trees at the high school was just chewed up by the wind. 

This is the base of a big live oak tree that toppled. You can see the roots that were pulled out of the ground. Nearby there is a large pile of branches, foliage, and trunk sections. 

Many, many people have had their fences blown down. And we saw a number of roofs that were damaged. Interestingly,  none of the rooftop solar panels on various houses appears to be damaged, even if the asphalt shingles on the same house are torn loose and needing replacement. 

Behold the stack-a-plant. 3 fifths of it, anyway. This is twice in a week that storm winds tore it apart and required complete replanting. Wow.