Garden Bloggers Bloom Day June 2010

The 'Blue River II' Hibiscus was the star of my first blog post on June 7, 2006. This year the ground warmed up slowly so there were no hibiscus flowers on June 7, 2010, but my Movealong plant came through for GBBD.
Four years ago I posted about two white 'Acoma' crepe myrtles that had been planted to soften a fence after 5 years of stressful living on a hot deck in terracotta containers. The left one looked like this in June 2006
And the right one looked so pitiful in 2006 that I wasn't sure it could ever turn from a scraggly shrub into a treeBut now they stand tall and in full bloom - so lovely that the recently murdered pink crepe on the other side of the fence barely impacts my garden
Back in 2006 I tried in vain to snap a photos of the hummingbirds on salvias - now the 'Provence' lavender brings them closer to the window
It's been a hot, buggy May & June, with enough rain for green grass and swarms of mosquitoes. Bird poop caterpillars (larvae of a Giant Swallowtail) reappeared on the Meyer's lemon - this one is full grown but there are new eggs for the next generation.
Does anyone know how to ID swallowtail butterflies? Is this adult Swallowtail on the Purple coneflowers the right kind to have laid the eggs on the lemon tree?
Still-blooming Burgundy oxalis and just-starting Blue Plumbago cuddle up with a tropical milkweed seedling that blew in from last year's plant. It's a little too close to the sidewalk but I'll let it stay here just in case Monarch butterflies show up.The cannas show buds just as daylily season winds down -
Flowers open daily on some the large daylilies but they'll run out of buds soon. Perovskia adds blue to Hemerocallis citrina, Hibiscus 'Blue River II' and 'Hot Lips' Salvia. I wonder if goldfinches can recognize the self-sown Sunflowers as the source of future treats. Can you see that bag of pecan caterpillars hanging to the lower left of the sunflower? How I wish for an archer to shoot an arrow through the webby stuff. Once the bag was opened wasps could have caterpillars as treats!
'Julia Child' made a few more butter-color roses under the white crepe myrtles. 'Belinda's Dream' made flowers, too- but they look way too ratty for photos.
In front a bluebonnet lurks in a patch of Blackfoot daisies, refusing to cry uncle to summer's heat.
In back an Orange Cosmos (maybe Cosmos sulphurea?) towers over a Texas Paintbrush in another patch of Blackfoot Daisies. Some of what grows in this garden came from a nursery or garden center. The plants that came from family and friends are called Passalong plants and those hauled from previous gardens could be called Movealong plants. But the cosmos falls in a different category. Last fall I saw enormous beds of these flowers in every stage of bud, bloom and gone-to-seed, growing outside of our favorite Korean Restaurant. A few seeds just happened to fall into my pocket and then I just happened to save them and just happened to plant them a few months ago. Can I call it a Snitchalong plant?

For the round-up of Garden Blogs see head Blogger-wrangler Carol at May Dreams Gardens.
To see the botanical name of every single thing I can find in bloom check the list at Annie's Addendum.

Some Purple Stars for Pam/Digging

Since this area was St. Augustine grass until a few months ago, these Echinacea ‘Purple Stars’ have only been in a couple of months and may look different as the plants mature. They were less than two dollars each at local nursery Red Barn, which in addition to larger plants, carries inexpensive starter perennials for those willing to nurse tiny plants up to border size.

Right now the Coneflowers are adding summer color to the front, and were chosen to blend with the many hot pink crepe myrtles blooming nearby. From this spot you can see one of our myrtles as well as several belonging to the neighbors next door and to the people across the street. [Instead of fighting the pink trees, I’m trying to work with them.] This Echinacea variety doesn’t look particularly purple to me, but they look tidier than the species. The blue flowers are a few small Platycodon ‘Miss Tilly’, more Red Barn bargains. I love balloon flowers, and have them all over the place. The pinky flower at right is a Cuphea, a tiny white, pink & lavender version of the Bat-face cuphea.