Spring Wildflowers - Indian Blankets

These are also called Firewheels and it is the state wildflower of Oklahoma. Below are the most common color variations seen, but they can also be found in combinations of cream, peach, coral, red and white. There is even one variety that is a pure, vivid red. They bloom mid spring, close to when the bluebonnets come to an end. This is a very easy flower to grow in a meadow as long as the seed has contact with soil. It prefers full sun to partial shade.

Spring Wildflowers - Ohio Spiderwort

Also known as Blue Jacket, this flower blooms from March to August. There are several different varieties of Spiderwort that are native to Texas, but this is the only one I have seen on our property. Another common one in Texas is called the Western Spiderwort which is more of a hot pink color. Spiderwort prefers moist meadows, prairies, and thickets and is particularly attractive to native bees! It also prefers some shade, which is where I find most of them.

Spring Wildflowers - Bluebonnets

This will be the first post in a series focusing on the different wildflowers we have growing on our property. Nothing excites me more for spring than seeing the flowers start coming alive and painting their pops of color throughout the meadow. Makes me pause and enjoy the beauty every time I drive by and encourages me to walk around and check on what has emerged each day.

Of course I am going to start with the state flower of Texas, the iconic bluebonnet. There are actually 6 species of the bluebonnet, but all are encompassed together and designated the state flower. They start to bloom around mid-March (mine certainly are!) until mid-May. There is a myth that it is illegal to pick the flowers in Texas, but this is completely false. There is no law prohibiting somebody from picking these flowers! But I like to enjoy them in the field and let them go to seed so that I can enjoy them year after year. These beauties need full sun in well drained, gravelly soil.

All pictures were taken by me on our property:

Top view:

Picnic, anybody?

Groveling for Gravel

Between all the heavy rains last year and this year, the gravel on the front walk had pretty much washed away. This left us walking on sand, essentially. Which meant it constantly tracked into the house. I hate sand. So I've been begging Justin to fix it and he finally did! After picking up 2 yards of gravel with the trailer, he used the tractor to unload it and fix my walkway. We also did part of the driveway. We still need to get a lot more to fix the driveway completely, but for now I can at least walk from my car to the front door on rocks (and track pebbles into the house instead!)

 

I used a big push broom to help spread it out and make it even.

 

Checking it out:

 

Every little boy's dream. A big pile of gravel to play in with trucks. He was VERY upset when I later spread this out over the driveway.

Creek or River?

Talking about all this rain, we had 6 inches of rain in 2 days last week. During a break in the rain, I was able to trudge down to the creek and take some pictures of the aftermath. There's a bench under the tree to the left that you can normally sit on!

 

Rain Puddles!

It seems like this year has just been rainstorm after rainstorm. I'll take rain over snow though, so I can't complain too much. So at the end of one rainy day when it wasn't too cold outside, I let the kids go run around in the puddles and get wet and dirty. They went straight to the bath afterwards but they had a blast.