By Norman Winter | Horticulturist, Author, Speaker

If you’ve read this column the past few years, you know I put great importance on choosing plants for pollinators around the farm or ranch, home or office. When those plants pack untold beauty, even better. This column aims to put one plant on your must-have list for 2027: the Mexican flame vine.

Names like Mexican Flame and Orange Glow tell you right away that this flower is bold and riveting in color. Add a vine that draws hummingbirds and butterflies and blazes fiery orange, and you have an award-winning plant.

To be honest, I think everyone should grow it for its botanical name alone, Pseudogynoxys chenopodioides. Imagine the look on your neighbors’ faces when they ask, “What’s that gorgeous vine you are growing?” and you tell them.

The Mexican flame vine is a woody tropical vine. Most references say it is cold-hardy in zones 9 and higher, but I have seen many return just fine in zone 8. It is worth every penny even as an annual. As the name suggests, the vine is native to Mexico, and it isn’t picky about soil. I’ve grown it in acid soil fit for azaleas and in soils more reminiscent of the desert. It belongs to the aster, or daisy, family, and you’ll quickly notice the resemblance.

I realize we are at the beginning of fall, but if you start sourcing now or talking to your favorite garden center, you’ll be ready for spring. When you get yours, dig a hole about twice as wide as the root ball and plant at the same depth it was growing in the container. Set the vine next to a structure for support, like a trellis, arbor or pergola. You may have the perfect fence post that could use a Mexican flame vine.

It is a compact vine that reaches only about 10 feet tall, and it tolerates drought once established. You’ll need to do a little training to get it climbing. You’ll also like that pests rarely bother it.

The vine reblooms reliably, and if you need to cut it back a little, it will quickly send out new growth and another round of blooms. That blazing orange screams to be planted with complementary blue flowers. My first choice would be blue salvias like Unplugged So Blue or Rockin’ Playin’ the Blues. If you’re bold and want a native, consider the late-summer-blooming hardy ageratum, known botanically as Conoclinium coelestinum.

Once yours is growing, you’ll notice all sorts of butterflies feasting on the rich nectar. Red admirals, fritillaries, monarchs and yellow sulphurs of all sorts will visit regularly.

Vines give the landscape a vertical dimension, much like hanging a mirror or picture on a wall indoors. The Mexican flame vine will be one of the most dazzling additions to your garden. Start sourcing yours now so you’re ready for spring.

Follow me on Facebook @NormanWinterTheGardenGuy for more photos and garden inspiration.

By Ann Asher

Walk through a pasture, garden or wooded trail on a September morning, and the spiders seem to have taken over overnight. Large webs stretch between fence wires, across tall weeds and from one side of a path to the other. Covered with dew and caught in early sunlight, they show how many spiders have been working through the night.

Spiders are around all year, but many become more noticeable in late summer and early fall as they mature and build larger webs. The insects they eat are also plentiful, giving spiders plenty to feed on before cold weather arrives.

If you’ve ever walked face-first into a web, it can be hard to think of spiders as welcome neighbors. Most, however, are harmless to people and valuable in gardens, pastures and barns.

Spiders are predators that feed on insects and other small arthropods. Their prey can include flies, moths, beetles, grasshoppers, leafhoppers, aphids and caterpillars. Oklahoma State University Extension notes that their role in controlling insects far outweighs the limited risk from the few species capable of medically significant bites.

Builders and hunters

The webs most people notice in September usually belong to orb-weaving spiders. Their flat, circular webs have the familiar spokes and spirals of a storybook spider web. Orb-weavers set these traps where flying or jumping insects are likely to pass, including between plants, along fence lines and across openings in wooded areas.

One of the best-known orb-weavers in North Texas is the black-and-yellow garden spider. A mature female can be big enough to cause alarm, with long legs and bold yellow, black or orange markings. Her web may have a thick zigzag of silk down the center. Despite her size and looks, the garden spider is generally harmless to people.

These spiders can catch surprisingly large prey. Texas A&M AgriLife reports that large garden spiders often catch and eat grasshopper-sized insects. Their webs may be a nuisance across a walkway or gate, but the spiders provide natural insect control around gardens and fields.

Not every spider needs a web to catch a meal. Wolf spiders hunt on the ground, moving through grass, leaf litter and bare soil in search of prey. You’ll often see them after dark or around outdoor lights, where insects gather.

Their size and speed sometimes get them mistaken for more dangerous species, but wolf spiders aren’t considered a significant hazard to people.

Female wolf spiders care for their young in an unusual way. They carry a round egg sac attached beneath the abdomen. After the eggs hatch, the tiny spiderlings climb onto their mother’s back and ride there until they are ready to hunt on their own.

Jumping spiders are smaller, compact hunters that use excellent vision and quick movements to stalk insects. Look for them on fences, tree trunks, porch railings or plant leaves. Rather than building a web, they creep close and leap when the moment is right.

Crab spiders also hunt without webs. Often found on flowers, they use camouflage to wait for visiting insects. Some are white, yellow or green, letting them blend into petals and leaves. Web builders and active hunters alike help keep insects in check.

The two to watch for

Most spiders you meet outdoors aren’t dangerous, but North Texas is home to black widows and brown recluse spiders. Both generally prefer protected, undisturbed places rather than open webs across a garden path.

Black widows often build irregular webs in sheltered spots, including woodpiles, storage areas, outdoor furniture, meter boxes and unused containers. Brown recluses prefer dark, quiet places such as boxes, sheds, lumber stacks and the spaces beneath stored items. They don’t usually build the large, circular webs you see in open vegetation.

Neither species goes looking for people. Bites often happen when a spider gets trapped against the skin or disturbed while someone moves stored materials. Wear gloves when handling firewood, boards, boxes or debris, and shake out shoes and clothing that have been stored in a shed or garage before you put them on.

Correct identification matters. People often mistake wolf spiders, grass spiders and other harmless species for brown recluses. A dark marking on a spider’s back isn’t enough for a reliable ID. If you think a medically important spider is around, contact your county Extension office or a qualified pest professional.

Let them work

Outdoors, spiders rarely need controlling. Sweeping a web away from a doorway or busy path is usually enough. The spider may rebuild nearby or move somewhere quieter. Broad insecticide treatments can kill spiders along with many beneficial insects and are often unnecessary in gardens or open landscapes. Oklahoma State University recommends leaving most garden spiders alone because they help suppress pests.

Spiders are also part of the food chain. Birds, reptiles, small mammals and other arthropods eat them, and their presence reflects the steady trade between predators and prey in even a small patch of grass.

The web across your trail may be an inconvenience, but it also means an effective hunter is at work. By morning, that web may hold the remains of moths, flies or grasshoppers that might otherwise have moved into your garden, barn or pasture.

Late summer belongs to the spiders. Their webs catch the dew, mark the paths of insects and reveal a part of the outdoors most of us overlook. Most aren’t waiting to harm anyone. They are doing the work they’ve done all season, one strand at a time.

By Ann Asher

Hummingbirds may be tiny, but they rarely go unnoticed as they dart between flowers, hover at a feeder or chase another hummingbird away from whatever they have decided belongs to them.

By September, the hummingbirds visiting North Texas backyards are starting an impressive seasonal change. Fall migration is underway, and for many ruby-throated hummingbirds, Texas is an important stop on the long trip south.

Ruby-throated hummingbirds are the most familiar hummingbird across eastern Texas. By early fall, they are leaving their breeding grounds across the eastern United States and southern Canada and heading for wintering areas in Mexico and Central America. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department notes that large numbers pass through Texas during fall migration, concentrating along the Gulf Coast before continuing south.

For North Texans, that can mean more activity around feeders in September, not less. Some birds may have spent the summer nearby, while others showing up in the yard may have already traveled hundreds of miles.

Migration follows a natural order, too. Adult males generally leave first, followed later by females and young birds. So if you’ve watched a brilliant red-throated male all summer, you may suddenly notice he’s gone while other hummingbirds keep visiting the feeder. Cornell Lab researchers note that males can disappear weeks before females during fall migration.

The size of the traveler makes the trip remarkable. Ruby-throated hummingbirds generally weigh only a few grams. Before migrating, they feed heavily and can greatly increase their body weight as they build the fat reserves the trip requires. Some eventually make a nonstop flight across the Gulf of Mexico, while others follow the coastline around it.

That makes a North Texas flower bed or backyard feeder more than a convenient place to grab a meal. During migration, it can be one of many refueling stops along the way.

Keep the feeders up

One of the most persistent hummingbird myths says you should take feeders down in the fall so the birds will know it’s time to migrate.

There’s no need. Leaving a feeder up won’t convince a healthy hummingbird to skip migration. Seasonal changes, including shorter days, help trigger migratory behavior. A feeder gives a bird another food source while it prepares to leave or keeps moving south. Audubon recommends leaving feeders up as long as hummingbirds keep using them, because late migrants may still pass through after the summer residents have gone.

The bigger concern during a North Texas September is keeping the feeder fresh.

Warm weather can spoil sugar water fast. Audubon recommends cleaning feeders every day or two in hot weather and about every three days in milder conditions. Clean any feeder that shows mold or other contamination right away.

You don’t need to buy red nectar, either. A basic mix of one part plain white sugar to four parts water works well. Avoid honey, artificial sweeteners and food coloring. The red parts of the feeder are enough to attract birds.

Natural food matters just as much. Hummingbirds don’t live on nectar alone. They also eat small insects and spiders for protein.

Flowering plants offer nectar and a chance to find those tiny insects. Native plants and flowers with tubular blooms are particularly useful, and hummingbirds are commonly drawn to red, orange and pink flowers.

If you want to help fall migrants, September probably isn’t the time to deadhead every bloom and clean out every wild corner of the yard. Late-blooming flowers can provide valuable food while hummingbirds are feeding heavily.

Then, sometimes seemingly overnight, the feeder goes quiet. The bird that guarded it all summer disappears. The buzzing and chattering stop, and another North Texas summer feels a little closer to over.

There’s still no reason to rush to take the feeder down. Keep it clean, keep it filled and give the stragglers a little more time. The next hummingbird at your kitchen window may have started its trip hundreds of miles north of Texas and still have a long way to go.