There are a couple of groups on Facebook where I lurk and occasionally dip my opinion into the fray. They're places where people with knowledge of unbelievable scope can be observed, deftly identifying this obscure native plant or that scraggly left-behind orphan found in the backyard of a newly purchased home. One such backyard orphan recently was posted in need of identification. If it were a native plant, two people on "Texas Flora" would've named it within minutes. Even the taxonomy of those impossible grasses is typically put to rest in seconds. Not so with this poor guy. At first I was fairly certain it was one of the purple leafed basils, maybe 'African Blue'. It's fairly impossible to find it still thriving in a Texas January, but two plants in my yard are still hanging in there. They even look like they'll come back if we don't have a deep freeze before spring. BTW, this basil has one heck of a...
If you're particularly interested in rainwater harvesting, see these posts: "900 and Counting" on 4/28/08, "First Crop" on 4/10/08, "Ongoing Saga of the Rain Tank" on 3/2/08, and "The Debate" on 2/7/08. Vermiculture was covered 8/12/08. Pond construction was covered in "The Heart of Our Garden" on January 22, 2008.