Flowers in the Garden

I really enjoy taking pictures of the wild plants and flowers in my garden. I think in part because they are so useful. They attract bees and other pollinators, they require no water or effort on my part, and they look lovely, too. With the colors and shapes, I really need to get it in gear one day and just print a few, for something pretty and inexpensive to put on the walls!

Here's a few that have bloomed in the last couple of months.

Hairyseed Bahia

Mesquite and underneath

As I'm looking to make my little corner of the world a small - really small - food forest, I'm looking at legumes of all kinds. I'm also trying to make this as compatible with the local wildlife as I can, so we can all live together a bit more peacefully. The poor rattlers are left out in the cold, for now, kept out of the backyard, but when the kids are grown and gone, I think they can come back in and visit if they like. 

Today I'm focusing on the velvet and honey mesquite trees, or specifically, what I can grow near my mesquite trees.

The native mesquite is the big tree on the left there

Mysteries solved #2 - the Not-Mesquite

My mystery 'not-mesquite': Desert Bird of Paradise

I have a lot of mesquite seedlings pop up and sometimes I just leave them alone and grow a new tree. Only one of them this time around is not a mesquite. It had leaves that seemed like a mesquite

See, mesquite-ish

Pipevine

Name - Southwestern Pipevine
Kid Friendly? - Not for yards with very small children: toxic
Garden friendly? -Yes. Home for caterpillar babies of the pipevine swallowtail (caterpillars are much more interesting to me when I remember that they are baby butterflies, so sue me.)