Some Treats to Make You Come in From the Heat and Rest a While!

Here's a link to the story of how a wildlife film maker in Bristol, England, made use of his time during the COVID lockdown, and the discoveries he was able to make in his own yard. Grab your bowl of popcorn and click here to enjoy! The sounds are almost as good as the photography.

After you've enjoyed that visual feast, you might hop over to Sam Drogge's "Eye Candy" page on flickr. His bee pictures allow you to get up close and personal with many of our native bees.

And if you haven't already heard of Carol Leonardi Clark - as a Texas Master Naturalist, a very active member of the Native Plant Society of Texas, as a Monarch Steward working tirelessly as chairperson to Bring Back the Monarchs to Texas, as a math coach, or as an amazing photographer - well, let me hurry up and make the introduction! As you can tell from the few of her many "hats" mentioned here, she's an incredible advocate for the natural world, especially here in Texas, and an all around top-notch human. Check out her blog, Carol's World.

No photos with this post but go on, have a look, and keep coming by for more of what's buzzing!

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A Plant with Purple Leaves

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 botanical monik

Ho-hum to Habitat: My Path to Native Bees - Resources

San Antonio's Festival of Flowers will resume this Saturday, June 3, 2023, after a break of three years. I've been given the opportunity to share how I garden, as well as a general overview of our native bees. A link to a Google doc containing my handout (the info dense slides from my presentation) follows this list of resources. Note that if you didn't attend, some of the handout pages may not make complete sense. Hyperlinks to more resources: https://www.wildbeestexas.com/ https://w3.biosci.utexas.edu/jha/research/native-bee-communities https://www.wildflower.org/collections/collection.php?collection=TX_central https://www.pollinator.org/pollinator.org/assets/generalFiles/BeginnerBeeFieldGuide_11March2022_LowRez.pdf https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/wildlife_diversity/nongame/native-pollinators/bumblebee-id.phtml https://www.pollinatorphotos.com/ https://www.homegrownnationalpark.org/ https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yOIlJFjzgAlhc5nfTXkqrVutPxWHLwfQ/vie

Bloom Day 03.09

Yellow bulbine, Asian ground orchids, and a Pat Austin rose are three of the shows currently appearing in my garden. But, what I'm really excited to tell you about are these irises... My husband and I rescued these last year after I noticed a familiar crown shape off to the side of the road. I joked then that being moved from blazing sun and neglect in a former pasture to a place of honor in well amended soil and constant attention in my garden would probably kill them. Instead, they've quadrupled in size and rewarded us with the most interesting blooms. Many of them have petals that are exactly one half purple and one half white. I've started calling it Night and Day, both for the change in their growing conditions and for their unique coloring. Another interesting iris blooming right now is one that develops absolutely NO stem. It's hard to capture in a picture, but here's my best effort. The blooms are silvery white with a small amount of purple deep inside. I

Playin' Outside

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