Garden Blooms August 2016

Happy Monday! I've been a little absent from the blog lately because my youngest son had his wisdom teeth out last week. Needless to say, I've been very busy taking care of him. My last week consisted of changing out gauze pads, ice packs, pain pills, antibiotics, and mouth rinses. Fun. Fun. Fun. Oh, and ice cream...lots and lots of ice cream...for him, not me. Ha! He was pretty much completely back to normal after a few days, thank goodness. Glad that's over with and now we start back to school this week, so hopefully I can get back to blogging more regularly. 

I took some garden pics that I was going to include in my pergola cover post, but that post got to be so long, I decided to give these a post of their own. 

August is probably the hottest month in the Houston area, but thankfully there are some show stoppers that continue to bloom, despite the heat. 

First up, I'd like to talk about this beauty, Angelonia...

I have it in white (above) and purple (below)

My goodness, this one deserves a gold star. I totally forgot I even had them out front and because of that, they went without water for probably weeks and we didn't have a lick of rain during that time either. But they still continued to bloom, bless their hearts. ;) 

Below are three white Angelonia plants in front of some miniature Bottle Brush bushes. You should see when the red Bottle Brush is in bloom behind the white Angelonia. It's so pretty! Gotta love something that can take the heat (and drought, apparently) and still thrive and bloom. 

Below you get a glimpse of another white Angelonia beside some orange and yellow Lantana. 

Here are some purple Vincas I planted in a pot on the patio. As you can see, some purple Gomphrena decided to make a reappearance in this pot as well. I haven't had Gomphrena in this pot for a long time, but I guess there were some seeds in there somewhere. 

I think they look really pretty together. 

It was really bright and sunny when I snapped this pic, but you can see the Moss Rose on the coffee table is still doing fine. 

The Vincas are a little stressed, but the Star Pentas are doing fine.

Just look at this pretty pink Penta...

Blue Plumbago always does well. This is two bushes planted close together and it blooms all summer long...

The yellow Esparanza had a slow start, but is blooming non stop now. 

More Lantana and white Angelonia... 

Of course, I had to include one of my Crepe Myrtle trees...

Now here's where the prettiness stops. At the beginning of the season, I bought three Turk's Cap plants. They are supposed to be great bloomers and are native to our area, so I had high hopes. 

Well, just look at them now...

Suspect #1

Suspect #2

Suspect#3

Oh my. None of them did very well and do you see how scraggly they are? I hate when a plant gets all tall and lanky and doesn't fill in like that. I decided to pull them up and replace them with some Angelonia.  

Here's another example of how two plants side by side can turn out very differently. Below you see two Lantana plants and they couldn't be more different...

The one on the left was in between blooming cycles when I took this pic.

They're different varieties and apparently the purple one on the right wasn't happy living here. This is just to remind you that gardening is an ongoing process. Sometimes things don't fit in with your landscape, get too big, or not big enough, don't bloom, or you're just not happy with them. If I'm not happy with a plant or flower, I always pull it up and start over. No sense in continuing to be dismayed every time you look at something.

That Lantana above also got replaced with some Angelonia. Houston Garden Center had them for $1, so I bought 15 and planted them all around my backyard. I'll try to share pics soon.


I have a couple of posts in the works like a blueberry muffin recipe with my mom's special kolache topping, and how we added a backup camera to my son's car for about $40. It's so neat!

What's blooming in your area? Are you still getting hot summer weather?

~Lisa