Grack'd

The grackles are feasting on oak-leaf rollers and on loquats, although the bluejays fight with them over the fruits. So long as the oak flowers are raining down (and so long as the grackles are raining down, too, in their inimitable and messy way), there's no point in hauling out the screen pavilion. There will probably soon be some pecan flowers as well. In the meantime, through the window-glass, the following are enjoyed: fennel, bachelor buttons, red poppies, passion flowers, thunbergia, the second kind of allium, Drummond phlox of a kind that seems to produce larger flowers, black-eyed Susans, Dutch tulips, pink cyclamen, asclepias, geraniums, and nasturtiums in pots, a couple more Ice Follies, some Thalia, and mystery bulbs, some doubled, and, last, but not least, a bright-red amaryllis in a pot from three years ago. Anemones and ranunculus are frying and fading. There's still one purple iris. Oddest of all are some red bluebonnets. How they got here is unknown. The plants had not appeared in the fall. I lately read that asclepias has a very long taproot and spends the first three or four years developing that before ever there are flowers. Ours in pots just appeared once creatures, probably neighbor cats, had eaten the parsley in those pots. The parsley came from the South Austin farmers' market in El Gallo's parking lot, where we've been finding great asparagus and nonpareil peas. I've broken down and ordered hyacinth bean seeds through the mail. Usually we have volunteers or else find some seeds in town, or both. This year the baby plants were frozen or consumed or something.