Even the big box in Austin Texas is giving the nod to some natives, but they still keep selling what works in Delaware. You can order buffalo grass sod from them. I feel like putting a gun to the pot of the forsythia and shooting it before it is planted on a a Central Texas caliche hillside. We have been approaching developers that are building subdivisions and recommending leaving as much of the native ground undisturbed and introducing native grasses and giving the new owners a recommended plant list and a copy of Sally Wasowski's Gardening with Native Plants. We also got him to undersize his roads.We have had .success with this one developer. Water is a huge issue in Texas. I just wish he hadn't planted that 5 acre leaky lake on the very top of the hill and filled it and drained the water table in this area. All the neighbors wells are dry. His straw is bigger and deeper. The deeds actually limit what they are allowed to put under lawn. One success at a time. Our success here was helped along by a huge legal success where we forced another absentee landowner to clean up a natural spring that his subdivision had totally fouled with over application of fertilizer and clearing of the native grasses so they could put down their suburban ireland look on an uplands above a glorious water hole and waterfall. We succeeded in him stopping his battle because he finally came down from Connecticut to see what all the hubub was about and meet the neighbors and found out why they would never stop fighting. He did change the planting of that subdivision also back to the native and cleaned up the water hole and removed their retention pond out of the recharge zone. I have always had tall grass. The only time we whack it back is if we here about a grass fire somewhere nearby. It is all native bluestems, sedges, dropseed, indiangrass, etc. It was there before we built and I am too lazy to do anything about it. I do have a growing garden within the native framework and I am not a purist about everything having to be native but it has to live and survive and not become invasive in the native framework. Now if I could only get rid of the bermuda an KR bluestem in my front pasture, I would be happy as a clam.

Another pretty one and a great colour too, certainly looks more like a watermelon colour. What a shame the flowers don't last very long do they have a long flowering season like the other Hibiscus

Wow you guys all sure have a lot of naughty but mostly cute critters just making themselves at home eating up your gardens! We had some deer when we first moved here but they mostly stay out of the yard now. They didn't like our dog. I remember when we lived in Wyoming and several large mule deer would make the rounds of all the houses in the neighborhood every evening like clockwork. They were not afraid of anyone. They would even climb up the stairs to one neighbor's two story deck to eat out of the planters they had up there lol. PattyW, speaking of botflies, we had a baby squirrel rescue one time that our cat (yes, cat) was nursing and raising alongside her kittens. The squirrel turned out to have a botfly in its tummy. Apparently its quite common for squirrels around here to get them. I had to pull that thing out and it was soooo gross lol. I could show you some really yucky pictures....LOL!! BenT, the frogs don't seem to eat the poisonous caterpillars or grasshoppers. I wish they would eat the grasshoppers they get huge here and eat up everything especially my hibiscus! Even the dumb chickens won't eat grasshoppers :/ ~Sjn

I think I see them all: boots and scary tools to tweedia. Nice, Jay. I know this rain is ever frustrating, but what you're showing looks great!