The first rock rose (pavonia) blossom appeared this morning. More cheerful pink! Pavonia is a great plant for central Texas. It’s tough enough to withstand our heat and scant rainfall, and it blooms all summer long. The flowers open in the morning and close in the afternoon, so it’s best to plant it where you can enjoy it early in the day. It doesn’t mind a little afternoon shade, but I have one in full sun too. Pavonia is a short-lived perennial, but it reseeds freely (not invasively). So after a couple of years, when your mother plant has begun to decline, just replace it with one of the volunteers you’re bound to find growing nearby. I cut mine back by 1/2 or 1/3 in mid-summer to keep it in bounds, and to the ground after the first freeze.

The Whale’s Tongue agave that I planted last summer is looking good. I love its cool blue color surrounded by warm-colored bulbine and rock penstemon.

A close-up of its toothy leaves.

Next to it grows a clump of bulbine, a tender succulent that survived last winter with only a little freeze damage.

Another agave, a Parry’s agave, grows in a pot nearby, along with red rock penstemon.

Here is a close-up of the rock penstemon. This is its first year in the garden. I used to grow a rock penstemon in a container filled with cactus-mix soil (not regular potting soil), along with Mexican feathergrass, cigar plant, and manfreda maculosa. It was a great combination that I’d copied from Barton Springs Nursery. But one year the penstemon didn’t come back. Last year I found three 1-gallon plants at BSN and decided to try them in the ground. The bed is slightly raised for drainage, and I mulched with decomposed granite because these plants do not like wet feet. So far, so good.

I still have the Manfreda maculosa, also known as Texas tuberose, in the same container, where it’s been growing very slowly for at least 9 years. The freckled little plant is sending up a flower stalk now, which it does about every other year.

Toward the back of that bed, stepping stones lead past two Indigo Spires salvias, just starting to bloom, to a bench—rarely used, I’m afraid, because I just can’t sit still in the garden without finding something to pull up or cut back.

Pink skullcap, a low-growing plant that makes a good groundcover for sunny, dry areas, is blooming too.

The faded flowers of The Fairy rose still look pretty.

Purple coneflowers crowd cheerfully under the vitex and along the fence.

This is one of my favorite flowers—the humble purple coneflower.

Another one.

My son planted this lion’s tail last spring in a raised bed that, belonging to my kids, doesn’t get much attention. The plant is looking great—more like a lion’s mane, to my eye, than a lion’s tail. It is native to Africa, appropriately enough.

Here is a wider shot of this flowerbed. You can see blackfoot daisy, the lion’s tail, zexmenia, and blue mealy sage.

Seed whorls from the Duchess of Albany clematis. The clematis is resting now, but I find these seed heads to be nearly as interesting as its dark-pink flowers.

In the back garden, the bicolor iris has been blooming for several weeks. Here is a close-up of a flower. Native to South Africa, these irises get very large (4-5′ tall and wide), and their flowers are somewhat insignificant though they do appear all summer. They are becoming overused here in Austin—even builders are relying on them—but they do provide a nice upright, rounded, evergreen form. Drought-tolerant too.

The salvia guaranitica is in full flower, glowing indigo against its chartreuse leaves.

Under the salvia, heartleaf skullcap (Scutellaria ovata) fills out the lower level. This native Texas plant has fuzzy, oily leaves and blue flower stalks. It dies to the ground in mid-summer but comes up again in late winter, its pretty, frosty-looking leaves providing an early spring groundcover. It gets a bit rangy right after it blooms. For that reason, and because it seeds out so aggressively, I cut it back right after it blooms, before the seeds have set.

Here is a look at its foliage, which is quite pretty.