Ilene,

The top one is scabiosa.

I am not sure about the second one....several things I can think of are "close" but not close enough, I think. It looks most like one of the cupheas to me, but I don't know that it is one.

Dawn

The seeds were marked "wild flowers". The pink flowers themselves are quite small.

I believe it is agalinus tenuifolia. In the same family, Dawn, scrophulariaceae. Commonly called Beach Gerardia. It is a host plant for the Buckeye butterflies. This plant is semiparasitic, in that it needs the roots of grasses (like castilleja) to support its growth.

Susan

Susan, that makes sense to me in that this plant has never actually stood up on its own. I put a tomato cage around it and that helped some but not a lot.

Will these attract Buckeye butterflies in NE Oklahoma? I Googled to see what they look like and they are very pretty. The larvae are kinda pretty, too, with those rust spots along their sides. I have not noticed any of those yet, but then I'm busy elsewhere most of the time.

I did find several lime green caterpillars in my iris bed the other day when I was pulling out all the nutgrass that has decided to make their home there. There were so many I began to wonder what the heck they would turn into. Of course I just went out there with my camera and I could not find even one. It's very muddy there. I have some moonflower struggling to grow near there but I don't know if the caterpillars were feeding on them or on the nutgrass. There's also some Wormwood planted there but it's struggling in the mud as well. -Ilene

Susan,

Great ID! I knew if it attracted butterflies, you'd know what it was.

Hard times here in southern OK--drought, hot, dry, no wildflowers blooming now at all, and the butterfly population seems even smaller than it was a month ago.

Dawn

Dawn, didn't you guys get the heavy rains we had recently? I thought all of Oklahoma experienced those heavy showers. Some of my "hens & chicks" actually got water logged and a few look like they're dying. I dug up the rest and put them in a pot.

Mari,

No, it does not rain here where we live. LOL

OK, it rains a little. Take yesterday for example, it rained three separate times, and at times the rain was so heavy you could actually see it fall. How much rain did we get? Two/one-hundredths of an inch--that is 0.02". Considering that our pan evaporation rate (the rate at which water evaporates from a pan, a measurement used by the NWS to show us approximately how fast we are "losing" water) is 1/10th to 1/4th inch a day, we NEVER get enough rain.

There were some very bad grassfires in counties around us this past week, some of which burned for hours, although our county didn't have any really bad ones this week. Everything here is incredibly, incredibly dry--dangerously so.

In a good year, we will get an average of almost 3" per month. Since moving here, we've had several years when our rainfall for the year has been in the 18" to 24" range, although, at least in theory, we average 38.46" per year, based on 30-year averages. We've in our tenth year here, and I think we've only met or exceeded the average rainfall in 2 of the 9 years so far.

I sit here and watch the radar every time rain starts falling and it is incredibly frustrating to watch rain falling everywhere but here, but it happens over and over again. It can rain in 76 out of 77 counties and that 1 county that doesn't get rain will be Love County. We are exactly in the middle of Love County, just a couple of miles west of I-35. Parts of Love County west of us (Orr, Leon, Burneyville and Courtney) got some heavy rains a week or so back but it missed us.

So far this year, this is our rainfall, and in parentheses, what our average rainfall for that month is:

JAN. 0.13" (average: 1.74")
FEB. 1.27" (average: 2.10")
MAR. 5.58" (average: 3.34")
APR. 2.33" (average: 3.40")
MAY 3.54" (average: 5.16")
JUN 2.39" (average: 4.25")
JUL 0.47" (average: 2.23")

TOTAL FOR 2008 SO FAR: 15.71", which is about 6.5" less than an average year through July. If you compare our actual rainfall per month to the monthly average, you'll see that we've only had one month where the average was met or exceeded, and that was in March.

At our house, though, we've had a little less than the "official" rainfall, roughly 14" this year, so our rainfall at our house is about 1/3 lower than average. Considering that we routinely experience drought in the summer here, even when average rainfall is received, getting anything less than "average" amounts is a disaster for us.

Dawn

Dawn, how I wish I could send you some of "my" rain. I have lost two pepper plants, my tomato plants are all turning brown from the ground up and they have not set on any new tomatoes. I'll be ripping them out as soon as what is on the vines finishes ripening.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato soup recipe

The second one looks like Linaria or Toadflax "baby snapdragons", a wildflower, or perhaps Mimulus "Monkey Flowers".

Ilene,

And, we'd gladly accept that rain if there was a way to get it from y'all to us! In return, I wish I could send you some nice dry soil and sunshine.

I'm sorry you're losing your plants. We were in that position last year, through June, when our rain abruptly stopped, and the garden improved pretty rapidly after that.

This morning there were big storms in West Texas and I told DH they were going to go south of us and miss us, but he was sure they'd come here. On the radar, they seemed to be moving due east, towards us, but they actually went way, way south...down around Hillsboro, south of D-FW. So, another day of no rain.

I watered the containers this morning....watering them twice a day now, but with temps this high and low humidity, the tomatoes in them are about to give up. I'll be yanking them out soon and replacing them with fall tomatoes. The in-the-ground tomatoes are hanging in there pretty well, but the heat/dryness can take them down in just a couple of weeks once the hard-core heat arrives. When you start out near 80 degrees in the morning, the plants just don't get much of a break.

The garden continues to produce surprisingly well. Parts of it are getting a little weedy (for me--because it is usually weed-free) because, by the time I harvest tomatoes, beans, cukes, okra, peppers, etc., it is too hot to stay out and pull weeds. Seems like I am in the garden or in the kitchen most of every day. With the freezers about full, I guess I'll start canning and dehydrating more stuff. I think I raised enough onions for all of southern OK--next year, I'll plant more potatoes and less onions.

That looks like a yummy tomato soup recipe, and I definitely have the tomatoes!

Mr. Deer--the same one who was devouring the garden before the fence improvements--is getting so hungry he's coming to the yard in the middle of the day and emptying the bird feeder and vacuuming up whatever hen scratch he can find on the ground. He doesn't even run when I walk outside, but just stands and stares at me like he is wishing I'd go away. Meanwhile, I am standing and staring at him and wishing he'd go away. It's like a game of chicken. Yesterday, I won--he finally turned, jumped the barbed-wire fence and slowly ambled back across the neighbor's pasture and headed towards their house up an old oil well road that runs from their place to ours. I feel bad for him, but it is way too early to start buying deer corn.

At the fire station, I saw a really, really skinny rabbit sitting by a fire truck that's parked behind the station. I felt bad for him....all the forage in the pastures is really dry, so it can't have much nutrition in it. I am afraid it is going to be a long, hard summer and fall for the wild things.

Dawn

Sorry, I forgot to mention about the tomato soup recipe. I made some yesterday and we had it today with grilled cheese sandwiches.

The only thing I did differently was I left out the cloves and doubled the sugar. Even DH, who casts a suspicious eye at simply EVERYTHING that departs from something he is used to having, said it was good. No artificial coloring, so mine was a little less red and kinda brownish. I used yellow tomatoes mostly, which might be why.

Oh and I want to mention that I have found my all-time favorite yellow tomato! Actually it's more of an apricot color. The tomato is beefsteak size but the blossom end has only a small "scar" and this tomato is not "all core" like some of the beefsteaks I have had. The inside is really dense and there are not as many seeds. I've got a picture:

It's Kellogg's Breakfast tomato and it is the yummiest yellow tomato I've ever had.

Sweet Annie, I Googled on the plant names you suggested and found pictures but they don't match what I have, quite. I haven't been able to find a picture of Beach Gerardia, but the description sounds much like what I have. The stems are very long but they are weak and will not stand erect, so they kinda all bunch up on the ground. It's some kind of wild flower as that's what the package said, but it didn't list what kind of wild flowers they were. Next year if I plant it I will companion it with something that will help to hold it up.

Ilene,

This is the best photo I could find of the Agalinus tenuifolia. Do you think that's what you have. After looking at several photos, I'm not positive.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Photo of Beach Gerardia

Nope, Dawn, I don't think that's it. Here's a closer picture of the flowers:

The color in this last picture is a more true color. It's pink and white, with a little yellow center. There's no fragrance.

Howdy,
The flowers look similar to violets or violas. Maybe they are related. Taking a look at their genus might be a place to start.
BTG