My "Gardeners' Dozen" for Waterwise Pollinator Gardens

If you attended Festival of Flowers in San Antonio this year (2026), I promised you access to the slides in my presentation. They, along with bonus slides at the end, are posted here if you follow this link.

Thanks to the San Antonio Water System for its sponsorship and engagement, and thank you for participating!

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"Native Pollinators of Texas" Handout for Festival of Flowers 2025

Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Diptera, and Lepidoptera are all insect orders with pollinators. Do you have a better appreciation for beetles or flies after attending the presentation? https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uAmJrufSb9SDnfV5rSCfPf3gx3Gf-Fue/view?usp=sharing Recommended references : Caterpillars in the Field and Garden by Allen, Brock & Glassberg Common Insects of Texas by Abbott & Abbott Bees, Wasps, and Ants (the Indispensable Role of Hymenoptera in Gardens) by Grissell The Bees in Your Backyard by Wilson & Carril Wasps (a Guide for Eastern North America) by Heather Holm Please note: All information presented is not reflected in the PDF because I really dislike it when the speaker (in this case, me) simply reads the slides.

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...

"Plastics"

1967 brought us "The Graduate" and the movie quote voted #42 (out of 100) by the American Film Institute. "Plastics" is also a line that's been running through my head a lot lately when I've been playin' outside. In spite of my love of rocks, wood, and other things organic, I've noticed a number of plastic items have become workhorses in our little garden. This is my plastic "Trifecta": the greenhouse, rain tank, and some GrowBoxes. Probably best known to anyone reading this blog is the big green rain collection tank. Made of polypropylene and piped with PVC, it's undeniably a big plastic statement. Of course the lovely rock, mortar and wood cisterns we've seen at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center or in the James David garden would be preferred for their aesthetic appeal. But our big plastic tank is doing its job well and would be much easier to pack up and move if needed. What's more important - avoiding something made ...

Playin' Outside

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