A season for surprises

I would never pretend to know the names of most of the plants growing here. My inability to recall which plant is what extends even to perennials I've personally planted here over the past several decades.  In my defense, there are a lot of plant possibilities to consider for the varying microclimates that can occur on even a mid-sized suburban plot, especially as you get a little further away from the center of town.  In these hills just south and west of Austin, there exists every planting and growing situation you can imagine.

Coming into the game a blank slate, as I began to try gardening here I had a very steep learning curve.  Figuring out what might work versus what was out of the question required a methodical approach.  I used nothing of the sort, wandering through each nursery and big box store willy-nilly, drawn to whatever looked best that day.  I read every identification and "requirements" tag and once purchased, completely ignored most of them.

If something was pretty I got one.  Sometimes more than one.  I bought a lot of plants that died.  A whole lot.  Was it any wonder I needed to forget?  Time passed and I grew more philosophical about my losses.  A few plant names I'd somehow always known and eventually I learned a few more. It got to the point where I could remember what to call Verbena without having to scrape too hard.

Some plants, small trees especially, have always been here and I either mis-identified them (you are shocked - I know!) or I simply never took the time to learn their name.  These little roughleaf dogwoods out back were persistently referred to for years as "you know, those bushes out back that aren't altheas".

So it was no surprise really, or at least it should not have been, when my daughter mentioned she thought the fruit on the small tree in front of where she parks is really pretty this year.  "Fruit?" I asked.  "What fruit?  Fruit where? What small tree!?".  So she took me out to see.

She is right.  The fruit on this small tree IS really pretty this year.  More remarkably, this is the first time any of us ever noticed ANY fruit on this tree. I'd never really looked closely at it, not once. All this time I'd idly assumed it was just another yaupon growing up under the live oaks.

Not even close.  This is a slightly sun starved specimen of Diospyros texana, the Texas persimmon.  I never noticed any flowers on this little tree (Next year! Next year I'll pay attention!) but the fruit are hard to ignore.

Can you imagine I had this beauty right under my nose all this time and never noticed it before?  Me neither.

Perhaps I garden too much with my head down and focus kept narrowed.  Clearly I need to look up and around more often and pay better attention to more than just the task at hand.