Kite and Pinata Festival at Springfield Botanical Gardens

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Last weekend the Springfield Botanical Gardens hosted a festival along with sister cities in Mexico and Japan – a Kite and Pinata Festival. It was well attended. There were people directing traffic into the garden when we got there, and we were pleased that we found a good parking place. There were already kites in the air! It was a sunny breezy day, perfect weather for the event.

There were food trucks and vendors. My daughter and I shared an anpan (a Japanese sweet roll filled with red bean paste)…tasty. I bought some Japanese earrings as well.

I noticed a new sculpture near the visitor center and took a picture of the butterfly part of it.

We walked around enough to notice the tulips were still blooming and couldn’t resist photographing them. I like the ones that are multi-colored. The ones with more than the usual petals seemed to be popular this year. I liked the yellow tulips with splashes of red/orange the best.

There was a dogwood in bloom. The wind made it challenging to photograph the blooms. I used the zoom; the light was so bright that the shutter speed was short enough to freeze the moving flowers!

There was a small stage where Mexican and Japanese themed performances were featured. The teenage girls performed well with mariachi band even in the wind…their colorful skirts attached to their wrists to keep them more controlled than the cowgirl dancers that kept loosing their hats.

Back at the visitor center, I checked their collection of hens and chicks. The colonies have survived the winter, and their colors are probably more vivid because of the cold.

We walked back to our car via the white garden and hosta garden.

I noticed the dragonfly mosaic is missing some pieces. I hope it will be repaired.

It was a great way to spend a Saturday morning. We opted to go to a restaurant for lunch because the wind, great for kites, was a bit gusty for eating outside.

Zooming – March 2024

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Lots of birds in the Zooming slide show this month – from the Whooping Crane Festival in south Texas as well as Josey Ranch (Carrollton TX), the Springfield Botanical Gardens (Springfield MO) and Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge (near Sherman TX). I find myself picking images that show bird behavior rather than portraits.

There are spring flowers in this collection as well…more of those coming in April!

Enjoy the March 2024 slide show!

Our yard/yard work – March 2024

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There is a lot going on in our yard this month. The bulbs I planted last year have thrived. The crocus bloomed first followed by the hyacinths and daffodils. The hyacinths don’t seem to bloom as well here as they did years ago in Maryland.

The forsythia bush in the corner of our yard is blooming profusely. I cut some to bring inside…and took some macro pictures of the flowers there. After the bush finishes blooming, I will trim it back significantly. I planted pawpaw seeds under it and I am hoping they come up…start my grove of pawpaw trees with the forsythia’s protection from the hottest parts of the summer days.

The fragrant sumac is blooming. I bought the young plant last spring after the bloom time so this is my first season to observe the small flowers.

The lambs’ ear is returning. The clumps that get more sun did not die back like the largest clump on the north side of the house. There are two in a sunny place that might merge over the summer.

The small hens and chicks are pretty with additional color forming on the tips of their leaves over the winter. There are still two chicks. I’ll be moving more rocks away from them so it will be easier for them to spread.

The vinca under one of our cedars is blooming. It seems to be well contained. I don’t want more of it!

I’ve planted more pollinator/butterfly garden seeds in two places: enlarging the existing wildflower garden and a sunny area under a pine tree where I cleared away most of the pine needles (it is sunnier there because I cut some low branches).

I’m not sure if the bulbs I planted from my parents’ garden are going to survive. They had to be planted in the winter…not the optimal time. Hopefully they will become established over this summer although I doubt they will bloom.

The mound where a pine tree used to be (it fell and had to be removed) is going to fill out nicely with irises and I planted a tiny oak there (I cut it from my flower bed last fall and put it in a vase to enjoy the fall color….it grew a root and put out green leaves! It will take years before it gets big enough to impact the bed but could eventually dominate the back yard!). The beautyberry that is there has not leafed out yet.

The hostas are beginning to emerge…in dense clumps. I decided to divide two clumps…since I have a shady place that I’d like to convert from grass.

I planted divided clumps (roots plus a furled leave or two) at the pine needle and flower bed boundaries with grass. I covered the grass with extra pine needles (from under the tree where I planted pollinator/butterfly garden seeds) and clippings from some bushes). I was thrilled when the hosta leaves unfurled within a day or two after they were planted!

There is still a lot to do in the yard. I get a little done every day I am at home and it’s dry…over 60 degrees.

Yard Work – January 2024

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Normally I don’t do much yard work in January but I was away from home for the last mowing of leaves in November so that was my project for the first warmish day after I was back in Missouri; I mowed the areas with thick leaves when the high temperature for the day was less than 50 degrees Fahrenheit. After that I began to worry that there wasn’t going to be a day warm enough to plant some of the bulbs my sister dug up for me from my parents’ yard.

Then it happened. It was in the forties again, but the sun was bright. Before I started my project, I walked around my yard to assess the plants in the flowerbeds. There must have been an early hard freeze because all the crape myrtles have leaves on the stems – no time for them to turn and fall. The same thing might have happened to the rose bushes too. Next spring there might be a lot of dead twigs to cut out of those plants. On the bright side, there were several plants – including the hens and chicks – that appear to be handling the temperatures very well.

I used the wagon to carry the pots of spider lily bulbs around to the front of the house. They were going to become a ‘ruff’ around the base of our two red maples. I had put mulch around the base last spring, so it was relatively easy to dig a rig near the outer edge of the mulch and then plant the bulbs. It only took one pot for each tree; I still have one pot of those bulbs to plant at my daughters.

I hope I get another warmish day to plant the iris rhizomes and a rock rose….but first I need to decide where I am going to plant them!

Springfield Botanical Gardens – October 2023

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A quick walk around the Springfield Botanical Gardens on a sunny fall day – full of photographic opportunities.

I always like the hens and chicks near the Botanical Center. I like the green and red/pink colors…the texture of the plants growing close together. I wondered which plants were the ‘hens.’

There were a few trees in fall color, but most were still green.

The hosta garden waterfall was sunny…and the begonia beside it added a pop of color.

Sometimes the veins of leaves remind me of Zentangle patterns.

There was a female Monarch Butterly on some butterfly weed still blooming in the butterfly garden. It was a larger insect…one that would be migrating south to Mexico.

I saw a black swallowtail in the butterfly garden as well but it flew away before I could photograph it. There were bees and skippers everywhere there were blooming plants – but these photos were taken in the Master Gardeners area.

I took several pictures of hibiscus – probably close to the end of the season for them. This magenta one appealed to me because of the color, the freshness of the petals, and the angle of the flower from my vantage point. Even the shadow of the central part of the flower in the midday sun is appealing.

While many of the flowers are fading fast, there were some that seemed to be in full bloom – the last hoorah of a productive growing season.

Yard Work – July 2023

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July has been a busy month yard work. The hotter weather and failure of a zone in our sprinkler system (which we didn’t notice immediately) resulted in less mowing…but other jobs more than made up for time savings.

My irises did not have a lot of blooms last spring, so I checked one of the beds and discovered that it was so clogged with rhizomes that they were no longer covered with soil. I dug up a huge mass…broke the rhizomes apart and planted them in the mound of dirt where the pine tree used to be. That meant extra watering of the mound. I also transplanted some lambs ear to the mound. The location is sunnier that the previous place the irises were and I am hoping for more blooms next spring. The downside is – I won’t see them from my office window. I also have more iris beds that I haven’t checked yet.

I also decided to round the corners of my back yard so that it would be easier to mow. I dug up lambs ear that had come up in the yard for two corners that already did not have much grass and put landscaping fabric down in a third. After the grass dies under the landscaping cloth, I’ll transplant iris rhizomes to that corner.

A local farmers market had hens and chicks (small so I guess they were chicks). I bought 2…cleared away rock and landscaping cloth in my front flowerbed and hope they will create a new texture for the bed. They might even grow on the top of the rocks!

My wildflower garden is doing well for the first year. I am watering it frequently along with the miniature pumpkin plant that I planted nearby. So far – there are 5 miniature pumpkins on the vine!

Our most robust pine has become my place for larger items I pull from other beds. The pine needles and opportunistic plants growing there add to the contrasts.

Overall – a good month for the yard. I am slowly but surely making the adjustments I want!

Springfield Botanical Gardens – May 2023

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After my sister and I left the Japanese Stroll Garden, we drove the short distance to the Springfield Botanical Gardens botanical center parking lot.

I enjoyed the rain garden and beds near the building…particularly the different kinds of Hens and Chicks plants they had. Maybe I will eventually have some of these in the rock bed near my front porch.

We walked down to the hosta garden and back. I noticed the signs warning about ticks/Lyme disease for the first time (my daughter insists they have been around the garden previously); I guess Lyme disease is a problem in Missouri as it was in Maryland even though I don’t notice the over population of deer (and deer ticks) being as high as in Maryland.

Next time I go to the gardens, I will look more at the butterfly garden and daylilies!