WAITING FOR THE MONSOON

 Every gardener in this part of the Sonoran desert is waiting for the monsoon to arrive. The summer monsoon is one reason why this part of the Sonoran desert is an arborescent desert. A desert with many small trees and larger cactus who benefit from both the summer and winter rains. 

 

These plants too are waiting. When the rains come the saguaro will take up huge amounts of water the ribs expanding to accommodate all it can drink. Other fish hook and mammillaria cactus will fill up and many of them will have a fall bloom. Other plants will bloom for a second time. Every opportunity is taken for reproduction. 

Monsoon season is typically anywhere between mid June and mid September. Among the gardening world there is much talk about the signs that the monsoon is imminent. One heard it is when the dew point stays above 50% for a certain number of days. She couldn't remember how many days. There has been more humidity recently and the AC fallout pipe shows evidence of that. Another said it was when the ants start to bring soil up out of the ground. They are certainly doing that.

 There was talk about hearing the cicadas and seeing more tarantula hawks and cicada killers. Are those tarantula holes I see on the ground. They are perfectly spherical and with no debris around them and appear over night. It would make sense that they need to exit the ground before the rains came.

When they first appear the ground around them is untouched so clearly they are exit holes. This one has been walked over multiple times so there is some disturbance. 

Another indication is when the mesquite pods begin to fall. It's happening everywhere. The ground has become very crunchy.

 

I'm not sure that the palo verde beetle looks like but someone believed their appearance was an indication of the coming rains.

And yet another said it was because her tortoise is moving around. For another it was the appearance of toads.

One gardener noticed a few buds on her Texas sage. Now there is one I am familiar with. There was always an argument in Texas as to whether the bloom predicted rain or came as a result of. For me it was the latter. But I can see why they might be starting to  bloom because every morning this week I have come back from my walk dripping. That is noticeable. The air has more moisture which is being pulled in by the increasing desert heat. When suddenly you notice changes surely that is an indication that something is brewing. For us desert dwellers lets hope it foretells the monsoon rains are shortly to arrive and we will all take in that distinctive smell of perichlor.

WE ARE NOT GOING TO WAIT

With only a modest sign of an end to our long, hot, dry summer, it is a surprise to find some of our fall bloomers still blooming more or less on time. The biggest surprise of all is the first-time blooming of my Lycoris aurea, the golden spider lily.

Five years ago I purchased 3 bulbs at an end of season sale.This is the first year that they have bloomed. The Lycoris family seem to be incredibly fickle when it comes to their willingness to bloom. I did a little research and it appears that a period of dry heat encourages blooms. We have had on 1/2" rain in three months and above normal temperatures through September.  It will be interesting to see if other gardeners share this same success this year.
The Lycoris radiata, red spider lily, while more of a consistent bloomer, had seven blooms this year. I think that is a record.

Of course the Oxblood lilies were not going to be left behind. In fact they were the first to bloom after a scant 1/2" rain. There must some other trigger too because they have had some water from irrigation this summer but there was no sign of life until a few days after the rain. Day length and possibly barometric pressure is my guess. g.
Unfortunately daytime highs were still in the triple digits so the blooms didn't last very long.

The Philippine violet is one plant that every southern garden should have. After winter dormancy, in which it dies back to the ground, it spends the whole summer putting on several feet of beautiful green growth, and begins flowering in October. The original plant has seeded in several places including at the foot of the dry-stone wall in the English garden. I know it is pointless trying to remove it so I will just let it stay. Flowering on this one is a little ahead of the other ones.

I have two that seeded along the edges of the patio in the sunken garden. They have been growing there for many years, disappearing over winter and returning to bloom in the fall.

I have had little success trying to move other seedlings although I have one more new seedling which I will try to move over winter.
This morning I watched an anole on the plant licking something from the leaves. I wonder if it was a small amount of water or even some substance exuded from the leaves.

Talking of which...  the amazingly fast growing candlestick plant, Senna alata, began growing in one of my vegetable beds at the beginning of August. It is about to bloom and the ants are busy helping it along. Ants always mean sweet stuff and the nectary glands on the edges of the petals exude sugar which the ants are busy farming. They do the same thing on peony flowers. No harm done in this case except for the fact that the ants are in this bed.

It's time for the Japanese anemones to bloom with their never-quite-perfect flowers.

Large arching branches of the bush clover, Lespediza will soon be covered with pretty pea blooms.

So the fall season is not all lost just as long as we don't go straight into winter. I know some gardeners in the North did so this week.

ANTS UP TO NO GOOD

I worked outside this morning from sun up until 10am. Finally it was time to go in for a late breakfast. As I walked towards the back door I realized I was not the only one going in for breakfast. A trail of ants was heading from the potted plant I had just watered, right to the house and in through a small hole in the foundation. Yes, they would definitely find it dry in the wall space of the house. Like it or not many of us have colonies of ants living in our wall spaces.
So one again breakfast was delayed as I swept them all away and hosed down the area. Can I have my breakfast now please?
I have lots of ant stories the biggest and best one being the one from St Louis, which I will save until later because there was more ant news from the garden this morning.

Root aphids

If you have ever noticed small piles of sand and soil around the base of a plant it probably means one thing. The ants are farming root aphids down there. They particularly like several of my native plant species including blackfoot daisies, purple skullcaps and Gulf coast penstemon. The latter is one of their favorites. The sudden wilting and demise of these plants is often the result of root aphids even when ants are not present. They love the dry conditions and the last two months have been just that. Pull out the plant and you will likely find clusters of white root aphids.

Ants have a symbiotic relationship with the aphid. The aphid has a special gland called a trophobiotic organ which stores the honeydew that the ants use for food. So is it just chance that the ants find the aphids? Not on your life. They save eggs over the winter and in the spring carry them to the host plant. They truly are little farmers. And when one plant is dead they can move those aphids to another plant.

For the last couple of weeks I have been watching little piles of chopped mulch appearing around the base of the spider zinnias which were growing in one of my vegetable beds. Every day I hosed the root down hoping to deter both pests, to no avail. The demise of the plant continued. Was it aphids or was it something else. I examined the plant carefully when I pulled it out. One or two root aphids but nothing that would kill a plant. It turns out the ants had been stripping the outer layers of the plant at the soil line resulting in death. I remember this happening last year to the same plants.

Eggplant for dinner last night? Forget that idea. Ants have made holes in the eggplant. They are all over my beautiful eggplant plants, the one plant that has survived the brutal summer and was about to start giving me fruits.

Ants are pretty smart when it comes to farming. One of the greatest examples of this is the leaf cutter ant. Among the hierarchy in the colony, they gather, transport, chop and cultivate fungus on the leaves. They feed this fungus to their young. Each ant in the colony has a specific roll. From cutting the leaves and bringing them to the nest where smaller ants will cut the pieces even smaller  before they a chewed to create a medium for growing the fungus. There are leaf cutter ants in Texas but so far I have not seen them. By all accounts they can strip the leaves from a tree.
We saw an wonderful display of leaf cutters at the Montreal Botanic Garden. There in a giant indoor case the ants were cutting the leaves and moving them along the branches to the nests.

Leaf cutter ants at Montreal Botanic Garden

Chopped leaves ready to be used in the nesting boxes to grow fungus

 And so to the story of the St Louis ants. Occasionally when I would be in the living room I would get a faint whiff of a skunky smell. The room had large windows and double French doors leading out onto a low deck with overhead. Determined to source the smell, that no one else could smell, I got down on my hands and knees and sniffed the carpet. Then I spotted a tiny ant disappearing into a hole in the corner of the door. I went down into the basement ( unfinished) and found the spot directly underneath the door. There is a large beam on top of the poured basement supporting the floor above and insulated along the length of the plate. I pulled back the insulation and a vision of horror met my eyes. A colony of ants all the way along. They had found a nice cozy place to spend the St Louis winters as well as the steamy summers. Of course, as was always the case when something like this happened, and that included the house being struck by lightening,  David was away, so I was the one who had to deal with the spraying and the carnage. Well, I was a homemaker after all!
I won't even get onto the subject of fire ants.