Bat-faced cuphea (Cuphea llavea). I fell in love with this plant the first time I saw it. The name probably had something to do with it. If you look closely at the tiny flowers, you really will see a bat looking back at you. I had a hard time photographing these first flowers on my cuphea; it’s easier to see the “bat” in person.

My neighbor Linda gave me this volunteer from her garden after her cuphea seeded out last year. It’s a tender perennial in Austin (it’s native to Mexico), but Linda tells me it comes back reliably in her garden. Austin is mad about bats—a popular tourist attraction downtown is watching a large colony of Mexican free-tail bats erupt from under the Congress Avenue Bridge on summer evenings, our city’s hockey team is called the Ice Bats, and we have a large, rotating, purple bat sculpture downtown (keeping Austin weird!)—so this plant is a must-have for Austinites.

Here’s another look. Can you see the bat?

The sunny agave bed: bulbine, Parry’s agave (in green pot), rock penstemon (red flowers), white skullcap (foreground), and Whale’s Tongue agave.

Fall aster blooms heavily in autumn, but this newly planted aster is flowering a little now.

Gertrude Condon daylily

Best of Friends daylily