This guy (gopher tortoise) came to the garden yesterday afternoon, it did some weeding before heading out. Pretty indiscriminate eater. 4 o'clock seedlings, Lactuca, smartweed, even Croton capitatus, And that's supposed to be toxic! #turtles

First ripe pawpaw of the season! Native plants.

Bucket of kitteh. Happy caturday! #caturday

Yesterday's pics of Maypop (Passiflora incarnata) and associated butterfly (Gulf fritillary). #nativeplants #butterflies

I think this Snake-cotton (Froelichia floridana) is magnificent! #nativeplants

That one looks like a bird pepper I have planted in the garden which has returned after multiple winters outside. I had a ghost pepper that I kept going for 5 years. It got like 5 ft tall; I'd have to cut it back to fit in the door.

Aralia spinosa flowers and pollinators #nativeplants

Juvenile gopher tortoise in my driveway.

I keep some poke around too.

You don't have deer? Are you in the middle of a hunting camp? Yumm!

I think a better option would be to do something about the white tailed deer. Maybe a fence?

So cute! Toad in a pocket.

Commelina erecta, a locally native dayflower. #nativeplants

Bee visiting bean flower.

vireo on nest in American holly. #birds #nativeplants

Apologies. I meant sand bean (Strophostyles helvola) You gotta pick them small.

Butterfly peas are pretty and perennial. And Snout bean, (Rhynchosia minima).

Let's hear it for the soil seed bank! Fat hen, lambsquarter, Chenopodium, whatever you want to call it, is a wonderful plant to have in the garden. I collect the tips of the plant, cook as greens. I add them to my ramen, and sometimes my omelets. And make damn sure that it sets seed each year!

At my house, they tear up my poppies.

I spotted this buckeye butterfly laying eggs on plantain (Plantago aristata) a few days ago. #butterflies #nativeplants

So that's where Gilbert Shelton got it.

Echinacea flowers. #nativeplants

Before it sends up a bloom stalk, all of it. The root tastes like a tater, the leaves, like most greens.

Butterfly weed in bloom in the meadow. One year, I gathered up several of these and had a monarch farm in the vegetable garden. Unfortunately voles ate all the asclepias! As the deer eat them too, I've put up a fence. #nativeplants

Those oriental ones? Not so much. You want the somniferum.

Squash lady beetle! 2 or 3 times larger than a ladybug, and eating the plant! The homeowner tried to tell me this was a ladybug, I was like, "Ladybugs eat aphids, this bug is twice the size of a ladybug and is eating the squash plant!" #bugs

I have that exact same pic!

Gifts from the soil seed bank. Clitoria mariana, a locally native butterfly pea. #nativeplants I dunno if you can make tea from the flowers.

Did someone say butterfly pea? From a previous year. While I'm seeing vines, too early for flowers. Because they're locally native, they're incredibly underappreciated here. I've seen people yank them out.

Tubers in salad spinner. I had a hard time getting them to grow due to the vole situation. Eventually, the stachys outgrew the vole depredations, and suddenly I have an abundance of them. Good when added whole to soups, when cut up, they turn mushy immediately.