Thyrallis and Firecracker Fern – Both love the heat and do not need a lot of water. It does not get much better than that.
Thyrallis gets very large. If we have a really hard freeze, the shrub will die to the ground, but will come back in the spring. It is beautiful, but I am not sure how it benefits wildlife. I have never seen a butterfly or a bee land on it.
Firecracker fern attracts hummingbirds, butterflies and bees. Love this plant. It is beautiful too.
This is the second flush of fruit from this tree. I think it is 3 or 4 years old. We started it from a cutting.
The first photo is of a mature fig. The second one of some immature figs on the tree.
The first two pictures are from August. The light purple picture is what the fruit looked like in May. This is the first year we have had these. We bought them in March and they did not have any leaves. We had faith and sure enough, they leafed out and even produced fruit this year. I hear the mockingbirds will take all of these, but they are edible.
We finally put in a rain catching system. This is our first barrel and it is 500 gallons. It is located up the hill from the vegetable garden, so we do not even need a pump. It rained recently and was full in about an hour! Woohoo!
We bought our frog friends a lily pad. They were skeptical at first, but now they love it. Why did we wait so long to buy one? Oh, that’s right. We looked earlier in the year and they were $80. We found one the other day for $20, and we had a half off coupon.
