It’s hard to beat Antennaria for a ground cover in dry areas. Antennaria, also known as Pussy Toes, has flowers which resemble cats’ paws. This native plant is very drought tolerant and makes a beautiful ground cover around pavers and rocks. The species shown is Antennaria microphylla with its wonderfully silvery grey mat forming leaves….
Tag: wyoming
Wyoming Winter Sunrise
We are almost to the shortest day of the year. This is the time of year I can truthfully say I am always up before sunrise. At this time of the year, the days feel shorter than anywhere else I have lived. I got to wondering just how much shorter.. the amount of daylight on…
Musgrave Speaks at Wyoming Lego League
The First Lego League Wyoming state competition kicked off tonight with a talk from Story Musgrave. Mr. Musgrave has led a very interesting life. Thirty some years with NASA, more flight time in a Northrop T38 than anyone else on the planet, and six space flights. He oversaw the maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope…
An Uncommonly Warm Autumn
We finally registered a hard frost in the town of Casper, Wyoming. Now, the folks out on the prairie got their killing frost way back in September- much more the norm for central Wyoming. Our average first frost date is somewhere around the end of August to the first week in September, so you can…
Landscape Planning in the Long Winter Evenings
We are having a wonderful, warm, windless autumn here in central Wyoming, but the days are getting noticeably shorter and winter isn’t far away. My mind is already turning to plans for next spring’s landscaping efforts. My planning always includes looking for resources of native plants, drought tolerant plants and ground covers suitable for my…
Wyoming’s Native Crataegus Tree
Cratageus is a very adaptable Wyoming native tree suitable for a variety of uses. It can be pruned into a hedge, left to grow into a multi-stemmed clump 15 – 25 feet tall, and I wonder if it couldn’t be groomed into a single stemmed ornamental tree. The University of Wyoming Cooperative Extension named Cratageus…
Eriogonum umbellatum: An amazing native ground cover
Also known as Sulfur flower and Buckwheat, Eriogonum umbellatum is one of my favorite native plants of Wyoming. It consists of a ground cover of small ovate leaves 4 inches high and topped with flower stems 8-10 inches tall. In my gardens it has grown to cover a 24 inch circular patch. In Wyoming we…
Wyoming Rain Showers
According to the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS – just say it a few times to an island beat, and you’ll be able to remember it), it rained 0.17 of an inch last night. I’m thankful for any rain that lets me go another day without watering my yard.
Oh Yeah, I Forgot About That Plant
Up until last summer I spent a lot of the spring, summer, and fall hiking, driving and photographing native plants in my area. In the fall I went back to places I marked on my maps and collected seed for propagating promising natives for my own use. But the last two years I have been…
A Very Wet Spring
Just coming out of what has to be one of the wettest springs in Central Wyoming history. You can see precip data at the Water Resource Data System (WRDS.) All the numbers for the lower North Platte are close to, or over, 100%. The North Platte is still full bank to bank, and if…
Wyoming Life 