Ahhhh.....The Garden Sighs With Relief

How wonderful it was to hear the rain coming down on the garden last night.  This morning brought happy scenes to view.  The Perennial Peanut and Pink Guara have both  weathered drought conditions well and have bloomed in spite of being dry.  Even drought tolerant plants appreciate a little rain though and I think they looked just a little lovelier with the moisture. 

A native groundcover that is starting to spread beneath the oak is Ruellia caroliniensis.  More blooms greeted me this morning after the rain than in the last month.  This is the first year for them in my garden.  They seemed to go dormant after December until about February.  Since this was a mild winter, I'm wondering how they'll do long term.  I was very happy to see them reappear and to find some seedlings along with the original plants. There is a lot of bare ground left for them to cover.

Coming around a curve in the path, I noticed that the Pinecone Gingers are looking better with some hydration.  All the gingers have been suffering in the drought but they have held on and I'm hoping for lots of blooms once the rains begin.  The ground orchid, Epidendrum ibaguense, is stretching toward the sun in its mostly shady location.  It has grown more stems and I think I might move a few sprigs to a little sunnier spot. 


I am so thankful for this rain event as it has renewed and refreshed a garden that was getting quite crispy around the edges.  

Covering Ground

The ground covers around My Garden Path have really filled in this year.  I love having less area to weed and water.  My favorite ground covers are very drought tolerant and have done well with no supplemental watering.

Portulaca is an annual that reseeds and shows up each spring in the sunny area of the garden.  It spreads all summer and blooms non-stop.  My daughter had some reseed in her garden that came up a different color than she had originally planted.  I can't tell if that has happened here because I have every color of the rainbow planted.

The perennial peanut at the top of the picture is not showing off its cute yellow flowers.  They are there but the camera didn't pick them up for some reason.  This ground cover is very drought tolerant and grows very thick like a lawn.  So far, the grandkids run on it and play and it holds up just fine.  It does go brown in winter after a frost but it greens right back up as soon as the weather begins to warm.

Speaking of cute flowers, these fuzzy cattails belong to the dwarf chenille I have planted where the shady area begins.  It does not hold up to foot traffic but it stayed green through the winter and it is quite drought tolerant now that it is established.  

Sunshine mimosa is another pink fuzzy flower that the grandkids love to "pet."  The leaves curl closed when touched giving this ground cover the nickname "sensitive plant."  It disappears in winter and comes back when the rain and warm weather return.  

Well, maybe I can have it all in a ground cover.  This dwarf mondo grass is cold hardy, drought tolerant and holds up to foot traffic.  It doesn't like the full-on afternoon sun though.  It much prefers partial to full shade.  

Ground covers are really appreciated around the Path especially in those areas where oak tree roots make it hard to plant anything with deep roots.  They provide erosion control for the sloping backyard and they give some delineation to the jungle of plants they surround.  

Do you like to use low growing ground covers in your garden?  If so, what are some of your favorites?

What I Like in My Garden Right Now

There's not much to like right now, but here and there a little green can be found.  The overall look of the garden is that of ugly brown sticks but if I squint my eyes just right I can focus on the occasional green plant in a vast sea of dead leaves.

The boggy area, which has been bone-dry this entire year, still has green stalks of umbrella sedge, Cyperus involucratus sprouting up five or six feet in height.  The dry conditions may be why it hasn't spread as much I would have liked or maybe I'm just impatient.  At any rate, it is living and it is green.

The stalks of the black berry lilies, Belamcanda chinensis, provide great 'winter interest,' which is a term I am using much too frequently these days.  Their leaves are still green and there are new fans popping up around the original plants.  The background fortnight lilies, Dietes iridioides, have finally become happy in their home against the fence and even put up a bloom once in a while.

 Tea olive, Osmanthus fragrans, is a bit scraggly as a shrub but the sweetly scented, inconspicuous flowers are why two of them live in my garden.  I wasn't able to squint hard enough to keep all that brown perennial peanut, Arachis glabrata, from getting into the picture. 

I read somewhere that winter rye grass can be sown over the peanut in winter. The front lawn gets the annual rye grass treatment each November so the peanut area will be included next year to see how it looks.

Coonties, Zamia pumila, keep it green by the front door along with jasmine minima, Trachelospermum asiaticum, and  one of my most cold hardy bromeliads, Neoregelia spectabilis.

The impossibly green rye grass makes a great backdrop for the rabbit's foot fern, Davallia fejeensis, and more of that bromeliad, N. spectabilis.  I did a really good job cropping this picture.  You don't have any idea of the carnage surrounding this scene.  But, I'm talking about what I like in my garden right now.

This little bird is definitely something I like in my garden. 

( Goldfinch?)