Our Missouri Yard – August 2023
/The Crape Myrtles that died to the ground last winter are all out and blooming in our yard. We have 4 (plus 1 or 2 others that have come up from seeds away from the parent plant). They attract insects….and hummingbirds!
There is a stand of Virginia Creeper than I periodically pull off the brick walls…but let continue to drape across the rock of the front flowerbed between the Crape Myrtles.
The Japanese Maple in the corner near our front door is happier than it was last summer; we are a little above normal for rainfall this year whereas last summer we were painfully dry.
There are mushrooms that come up frequently in our front yard where a large tree was cut down several years before we bought the house. Based on the number of mushrooms…there must still be quite a lot of decomposition happening.
There are seed pods on our Kousa Dogwood; unlike last year when the tree struggled to maintain its leaves.
Some plants seem to be robust no matter what. I am encouraging Lamb’s Ear wherever it comes up. One place that has done well was a hole in the turf where a small lamb’s ear appeared last spring; I have been mowing around it and it appears very robust at this point. I dug up a plant that was not in acceptable place and replanted it to fill a corner between the fence and the house. It is growing…slowly.
In the back yard my small ‘meadow’ where I planted wildflower seeds last spring is doing well and the flowers are producing seeds for next year. The leafy green plant in the foreground is pokeweed; I like the way it provides a frame to the meadow.
We generally leave the wasp/hornets’ nests alone unless they are in a place where we might get stung. I found this one on our steppingstones between our patio and yard; it is probably an old nest that fell from wherever it was attached during recent storms.
There was a mushroom that was growing in some mulch that I thought was a flower at first because the cap had split to look like petals. I took a picture from above and below.
There is always something to see in our yard!
