Cosmos and Wildflowers

A few weeks ago, my good friend, Cheryl, dug up some "Cosmos" from her garden and gave them to me to plant in my wild hill country landscape, part of which created Mo's Garden.  Mo was one of my best dogs that I had to put to sleep in late August 09...broke my heart.  I miss him terribly.  In Mo's honor, I planted a wildflower garden, direct sowing a handful of wildflower seeds and a few of Cheryl's Cosmos.  The wildflowers have not yet germinated, but the Cosmos are growing beautifully.  The rest of that hillside is pretty bare (or at least I thought so).

Cheryl gave me more Cosmos translants, so today I added some color to the hillside.

I think I've mentioned that I live on a hill of rock.  That was made very clear to me today.  As I was digging holes to transplant the Cosmos, I actually broke my small garden pitchfork.  Can you believe this?

The hillside was also covered in stickerburrs.  It was awful.  This is what my shoes looked like when I finished transplanting.  I had to pick off every single one of these burrs before I could step foot in my garden.  Not a fun task. 

To be honest, I'm not sure what "Cosmos" are...I mean what type of wildflower are they.  Well, I unearthed my Wildflowers of Texas handbook to find out.  It looks to me (not being a horticulturist) that they could be either a kind of Thelesperma (Theleserma filifolium), a member of the Aster family,  or a Coreopsis (Coreopsis basalis), also a member of the Aster family.  I've come to the conclusion that whatever type of wildflower they are, I think they are beautiful and I'm very happy to have them as part of my wild landscape.

It was very interesting what else I discovered today.  Although it is late fall/early winter and at first glance there doesn't appear to be anything blooming, when I got down on the ground and really looked, I was amazed at what I found:

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This is a Powderpuff (Mimosa strigillosa)

I actually found some basil growing out there...it really is basil!

The rest of these wildflowers I could not find in my book so therefore, I can't tell you what they are...sorry!  But if anyone knows and cares to enlighten me, please do so.  I'm all ears!

These are everywhere...they look almost like some type of orchid

I guess you never know what you're going to see until you really look.