How to Attract Fireflies: Easy Summer Gardening Tips
Restore your yard’s habitat to attract fireflies. Use these summer gardening tips: leave leaf litter, mow less often, and turn off outdoor lights at night.
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Doodling Around
Every now and then a small, ordinary critter carries you straight back to childhood. For me, nothing does it faster than a doodlebug. Long before I knew the name “ant lion” or understood anything about entomology and insect life cycles, I knew the joy of crouching in the sand, piddling with a pine needle, and…
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How to Avoid Periwinkle Blight
Periwinkles have long been one of our most dependable summer bedding plants, brightening East Texas landscapes with months of cheerful color. For generations, gardeners counted on them the way we counted on bachelor buttons and zinnias. Because they evolved in a hot, dry climate, they thrived in heat, tolerated drought, and bloomed without complaint from…
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What is responsible for killing your landscape plants and trees?
A large tree and a beautiful rose were gone in my landscape over the years. The tree was an October Glory Maple (Acer Rubrum). The rose bush was the Knockout Rose (Rosa Cultivar). Let me first describe for you the symptoms of the maple tree that I never noticed. In the early summer, the Maple…
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Vines Are Fine
In this new day of earth friendly gardening vining or climbing plants certainly have a role to play. Flowering vines can bring us a vibrant wall of color during the blooming seasons. Whether it’s tumbling over a fence or creeping up over a pergola or arch they can add shade and a feeling of privacy,…
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The Hungry Caterpillar —Butterflies Are Caterpillars First
Every beautiful butterfly was once a caterpillar, and caterpillars have to eat. This may surprise you, but the average caterpillar has a very restrictive diet, feeding on only a few plants, and some caterpillars can only eat one type of plant. We call these host plants. And without them, there would be no butterflies. So, what…
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Look, it’s a Ladybug! (Or Is It?)
I was looking at one of my citrus trees a few days ago and was so excited to see something I had not seen in quite a while – a ladybug! Then I noticed it didn’t quite look like what I think of as a ladybug. It was orange in color and had a lot…
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The Monarch Butterfly and Butterfly Weed
All across this country we are seeing fewer and fewer of the beautiful Eastern Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus). The same is happening with the Western Monarch. Both the World Wildlife Foundation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service list them as being close to being an Endangered Species. Here in East Texas we especially notice…
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Dawn Stover to Speak on Monarch Butterflies June 12
East Texans who have dreamed of attracting flocks of fluttering butterflies to their backyard or helping save the iconic monarch will have a prime opportunity to learn how this week. As part of their “Nature in the Garden Series,” the Smith County Master Gardeners and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service are hosting a free public…
