March 25, 2024

Look What’s Coming Up!

It’s sure an eyeful out there right now, everything parading their new spring duds! In my backyard, here’s a drought-defiant duo: purple bearded iris going for color wheel fun against native golden groundsel. This section of my backyard’s island bed gets morning sun and a flick of late afternoon intensity.

And here at Austin PBS, we’re counting down to CTG’s new spring programs starting April 6! (Check your local listings or watch online at PBS.org and the PBS app.) Coming up April 6: Create a Native Plant Garden, featuring Drake White of The Nectar Bar, San Antonio’s first all-native plant nursery. (Some of these talented folks popped over from Studio A where they were prepping OverHeard with Evan Smith, but they’re often on the CTG crew.)

It’s too late to plant spring wildflowers (see why we seed out in fall), but those timely fall rains sure came in handy to bring us a spring to remember.

Any crack in the concrete cheers the nightmare Austin commute when gutsy bluebonnets and stiff greenthread (Thelesperma filifolium) jump over their parkway between a school and the access road.


Seems like every curbside–the hotter the better–invites a second look, especially when burgundy, pink, and white bluebonnets sneak in. Next week, Daphne explains if they’ll be back again next year.

Here’s something to watch for! I met this cutie last weekend when I started tidying up container plants for an upcoming refresh. It’s an eight-spotted forester moth and only about 1-½” wide. On that cloudy, cool day, it hunkered down in a blankie of winter-browned Tradescantia, so I apologized for disturbing it and saved that pot for this weekend. Their host plant is Virginia creeper (and I have lots), so the larvae may be tucking into plant pots to pupate. Since then, it’s headed out to meet and greet a partner.

A few Texas mountain laurels are still blooming, but the big attraction now are clusters of red mountain laurel bugs. In entomologist Wizzie Brown’s Urban IPM blog “These insects have piercing-sucking mouthparts that they use to feed on plant juices. While the feeding can cause damage to the leaves- often disfiguring new growth- they do not seem to harm the tree overall.” She also identifies the voracious genista caterpillars, so keep an eye out for those, too. They can quickly defoliate a young mountain laurel.

Thanks for stopping by! See you next week, Linda

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