What the deer can't resist

Looking out of the kitchen window a week or two ago (the days seem to be flying by this year!) I watched a deer browsing near one of my garden beds, eating violets or something else in the lawn.

As I watched the deer nosed into my raised bed, seemingly eyeing my solitary remaining purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea). I waited, knuckles close to the window ready to knock if it looked as if it would bite the last bloom.

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Looking halfway good

Sorry for the late post today, but it's been a long week. I noticed this flower the other day before it was fully opened, and it looks even more interesting today:

A crazy new coneflower cultivar, ready to take the gardening world by storm, right?

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Coneflower Aster Yellows Update

Three of my coneflower plants produced flowers that were quite strange. When I posted about this earlier this year, I was informed in the comments that this was probably due to a viral-like disease called aster yellows. After researching a little bit, I sadly agreed that's what is going on with my plants.

Since I haven't been able to remove them yet -- the only solution to this condition -- I thought I'd post some photos of how they've progressed.

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Strange

I mentioned one of my unusual coneflower plants a week or two ago when I took a look at the echinacea in my garden. Since then a few more goofy examples have started blooming.

Right now I  have three separate plants that are non-typical coneflowers. I'm not sure what's going on. Is it a disease of some sort, or just a mutation?

Edit: as noted in the comments, this is evidence of "aster yellows",  a viral-like disease caused by a phytoplasma. More info here.

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Briefly bees, coneflowers delight

Cicada season is winding down, Japanese beetle season is starting up, and the heat and humidity of this last day of spring have me completely uninspired. The garden just seems like a long list of chores right now, and I don't want to be out in it. Thankfully I read a post on pollinators over at Great Stems, a cool garden blog by Austin wildlife gardener Meredith -- her photos of bees, birds, and pollinating insects gave me the little kick in the pants I needed to get the camera out into the garden.

As usual once I was out there and looking closely enough, I found plenty of camera-worthy subjects. I decided though to just post a few photos of bees and coneflowers. I'm keeping it simple today.

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Not really "purple"

I've grown echinacea purpea or "purple coneflowers" for years. They're beautiful, bee magnets, bulletproof in the heat, feed the birds -- just a perfect native garden flower. I've always grown the traditional purple varieties like 'Magnus', but a couple of years ago I added a couple of 'White Swan', which (not surprisingly) have white flowers. "Purple" coneflowers are now available in almost any color you want. Last year I added a few new varieties, and although I lost two of them over the winter (the reports on some of the new types seem to indicate they're not as reliably cold-hardy as older varieties), they're starting to bloom now and they're wonderful!

I'll need to put out some plant tags so I can remember which plants are which, but I think this one is 'Big Sky Twilight'. It's sort of a dusky pinkish orange. Kind of pale but really nice.

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Not digging

I've been so focused on digging lately: digging up weedy beds, planting in the refreshed beds, wondering what animal has been digging up my pots and beds. Today no posts about digging.

You won't even see any soil today. Just images of what's growing above it.

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New coneflowers get planted

I've decided what to do with the new coneflowers I bought the other day: they're going in my coneflower bed. (That certainly took a lot of careful planning and consideration, didn't it?)

The first three are going in a part that's overgrown by plumbago, so there's some prep work to be done -- it's not just "dig a hole and stick the new plants in".

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New Plants!

Today I had to make a trip to a local material supply/nursery to pick up another load of compost, so I thought I'd make the rounds of the other two garden centers that are near it and see what sort of new coneflowers they have (talking about them the other day got me interested).

This is Mexican Petunia. I'll talk about it later in this post.

All three nurseries are very close to each other on the same road, just a few minutes from my house. When I got to the first one it had just opened, but it was already extremely hot and humid. Not a fun day to be shopping for plants, so just the diehard gardeners would be out.

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Gotta love the coneflowers!

One of the first flowering plants I added to my garden was Purple Coneflower, echinacea purpea. Not that I knew anything about it when I chose it, but I just liked the look of it.

It was a good choice because besides having great looking flowers, the plants are sturdy, fairly drought tolerant, have very long-lasting flowers, bloom for a very long time, attract butterflies, bees, and other pollinators, reseed, and feed the birds in the winter.

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