Paperwhite Narcissus doing their annual bloom. I inherited these from the previous home owner and the flowers just do their thing without any help from me.

Cherry laurels in bloom. Not sure what the other plant with white flowers is, foliage has a distinctive and somewhat unpleasant fragrance when crushed. Not really spring yet, but things are moving that direction.

The unknown shrub is a viburnum. I know that leaf but can't seem to pick it out. Judd has that off smell but those are not the right flowers. Thanks for the pics. 10-12 weeks before things start showing color in my neck of the woods.

[mention]bjbebs[/mention] thanks. Our lot is full of escapees from previous cultivation. Abundance of Ligustrum, which I understand is a privet, wisteria, Elaeagnus. Could be it is an imported type from Asia gone feral.

We do have some native viburnum, Viburnum rufidulum, Rusty Blackhaw, my favorite. also Viburnum dentatum, southern arrowwood.

Daffodil "Goblet" with a few sprigs of nandina.

Looks like they survived the cold snap.

Yuccas and daffodils can survive practically anything. We have them up here in Z6.

The plant in the picture is an agave.
Known under several different names two of which are sotol and desert spoon.
An alcoholic drink is made from it called Sotol.
Not to be confused with tequila which has a whole different flavor.
The only yucca I have is a mountain yucca which is maybe ten feet tall or more.
Bought it as a baby and the jury is still out as to whether it survived.
I sure hope so because it has forked out and gave me not one but two sets of flowers this year.

I counted 4 lizards in the photo.
I haven't seen the green ones around in some time now.
One of them opend its mouth at me.

I got three green anoles, may have to check again. Green anoles are having a tough time here on the coast with the invasive Brown Anoles, originally from the Caribbean. Maybe the big freeze hurt the imports more than the natives. Plant looks like Dasylirion texanum, but I just play (and often lose) around with botany.

One of my favorite genres of books is frontier juvenile captives and their experiences with the natives. Sotol was super useful for the “extra” native Texans.

https://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/ethn ... sotol.html

The lattice fencing hides the yard waste heap/compost area. This is my early, early pollinator area. It will look much better when it fills in. There's Vermillionaire cuphea, May Night salvia, bacopa for the bees, and Rockin' Playin' the Blues salvia. Then a pot of nasturtium, basket of calibrachoa, basket of nasturtium, and a basket of Tumbling Tom tomato. And sweet peas in a cage.

Trying two new salvias this year...Vibe Ignition Purple and Heatwave Sparkle.


Honey Bells cuphea:.

Nice colours on the salvias. I'll watch for them up here.
Last year I bought a cuphea with a Honey Bells tag in it but no, a mislabel. Haven't seen that plant here yet.

[mention]SpookyShoe[/mention] Did the Cuphea winter over for you or are these new?

MissS wrote: ↑Sat Mar 06, 2021 3:13 pm @SpookyShoe Did the Cuphea winter over for you or are these new?

You have no concept of what my house looked like during the Ice Age we had here, lol. The Vermillionaire and the Honey Bells were brought inside. The bacopa pot was brought inside. My two pots of dwarf tropical hibiscus came inside as did all of my pots of plumeria. All of my nuns orchid pots came inside....etc., etc. If it was going to die from the cold and it was not too heavy for me and my husband to pick up it came inside the house. I had stuff in the bathtubs.

I had already planted some pots of nasturtium and I had planted the sweet peas but those were lost. Luckily, I was able to replace those quickly. I lost every salvia and pentas that were in the ground. I lost my shrimp plants and my ixoras. Plus much more.

I'm so sorry for all of your losses. I bet that the salvia would have come back from the roots, once in awhile they will for me up here. I know what it's like to bring the jungle into the house too and it sure is a lot of work. I'm glad that you managed to keep so many out of harms way. It sure saved you a lot of money and grief.

Pretty crazy how so many around here brought in so many plants not in any way designed to spend so many hours so very far below freezing. When you go down in cold temperatures a full zone or two that certainly hurts. Even native species like Yaupon holly defoliated to some degree. I did save some landscape plants by digging them up and bringing them into shelter. One gets constrained by time and space at some point and not everything can be saved. My wife was like “should we cover this?” Yes, if it were going to be 10 degrees warmer and below freezing for half the night and not for days. People across our road covered their ginger, they got the same outcome we did that didn’t cover ours. Dead is dead.

I’ve spent $200-300 or more, not in anyway capturing labor, on new stuff so far and not close to done. Plants that have been established for decades got whacked by this freeze. Pretty crazy 12 months of Covid19, several hurricane near misses and massive rain and windstorms and then this grind civilization to a halt electricity interruption and destructive freeze. Being a little shell-shocked is understandable. We spent the day fighting back, pruning off dead foliage, digging up dead plants, caring for the plants that are still alive.

Yes you all took a beating. Covering plants only works if it's for a evening or two not for days at a time. When it's that cold, you bring things in or they are gone. I have always been envious because you don't have to replace your plants every year as we do up here. It's expensive to buy all of these specialty plants each and every year. We have to set a good chunk of change aside if we want to grow flowers. It sure has been a crazy year and I can only wonder what this year is going to bring us all. I do hope that it's a bet gentler on us than last year.

Finally dried out here in the Ohio valley. Ran the tiller thru for the 1st time this year. Onions should arrive soon.

Garden as of March 14th. Feeling pretty good.