These flowers were in the yard when we moved in–along with bunchs of other native wildflowers such as blue-eyed grass, evening primrose, and the Texax dandelion (which isn’t a dandelion, but a rather large, pretty yellow flower). I added bluebonnets and paintbrush, which are also native to the area. But this little pinkish flower has remained a mystery. I don’t know its name, and so far I haven’t seen it elsewhere. It grows well in partial shade to almost full sun. It doesn’t need much water and it blooms about now every spring. I’ve dug up some of the plants and moved them around to various areas that needed coverage. I enjoy the blooms a lot. If anyone has any idea what they are called, let me know!

(The grass-like fronds are the leaves that belong to the flower. The stalks/leaves look vaguely like bermuda grass in that the fronds are flat and before it flowers, it kind of waves in the wind like an over grown wild bermuda grass.)

Update: A blog reader sent me an email identifying the flowers as Moss Phlox! I think she’s right. I had seen phlox in gardening sections before, but none that looked quite like mine–I didn’t realize there were many different kinds and colors, all with slight variations. Maybe we have this one solved!!

Rain Barrel Update
We finally got about a quarter of an inch of rain–and guess what that equals??? ONE full rain barrel! It didn’t quite make it to the overflow into the second barrel, so the second one only got about an inch or two of water from roof runoff. What does this mean? I’ve got 70 gallons of water for my garden! Of course…the garden got rain too so I won’t actually *need* the water for two or three days, but it’s there!

I got a new type of leaker hose to try out. It’s supposed to work better with very low pressure water (water coming out due to gravity certainly counts). We’ll see how it goes!

Read of the Week comes from GalleyCat this week. Bob Miller–of the publishing world–has moved to Harper Collins to start a new unit. Apparently he is going to attempt a few new things in publishing–no advances, but split profits with authors; no returns from bookstores (an idea that should have been implemented, at least in part, long ago. At the very least a better return policy would be nice, one where it isn’t so easy for booksellers to return a book one week and re-order it the very next); do more with online and ebooks.

There’s some interesting ideas, including some info about Stephen King–apparently he has already embraced the idea of forgoing a large advance in favor of a larger split of the profits. Hopefully Galleycat will follow up on how some of these ideas turn out.