What is happening in May? With all of this rain and mild weather everything is blooming in May. Sitting outside and listening to the bees and birds, seeing butterflies flitting about, watching lizards and their babies scurrying around. You can really see God everywhere you look. Blessed.

Just when the Climbing blush rose and Anacacho Orchid tree have finished blooming, the Texas Pride of Barbados starts it’s lovely show. It only blooms about 3 weeks in May and if we are lucky, again in June…not nearly as long as it’s orange cousin…but it is more cold hardy and we need that here in the hill country. Cute little purple heart plant underneath with dainty little flowers makes me smile.

Bee balm came back this year like a champ. Hummers love this plant.

Lemon mint stole the show this year. I’ve scattered lemon mint seed in the past, but this year I think every seed I scattered took root. I think the rain washed it into other locations too. This is an inexpensive seed compared to bluebonnet seeds. Plus ten points for that!

Rock rose

Gregg’s Mistflower – a butterfly magnet

Yarrow. A good friend bought this plant so I bought one too. lol. It did not disappoint. Wow.

Rue – all parts of this plant are poisonous. Such a pretty blue gray color and tough as nails. Black swallow tail butterfly lays it’s eggs on this one and it can take it. Propagates easily from seed. This one is a volunteer.

Here are the tiny seedlings in 4 inch pots towards the end of March. I gave one to a friend and planted the other. Tiny but they are tough and were so easy to grow.

May is also when the Crawford lettuce seeds are finally fully formed and ready to put up until it is time to plant again in the fall/winter. Here is what the seed heads look like. I just cut off the ends and shove them into brown paper bags. Been doing this for the last 4ish years. Works great!
Note: The top two pics are ready to collect. The bottom two are what they look like while forming. The lettuce shoots up a tall stalk, flowers, then forms seeds that look similar to a small dandelion head. Bonus is that the bees love the flowers. Go pollinators!