GARDENISTA

Well HELLO Zone 9A!

2012-01-25T11:36:00.000-06:00

I don't know about you, but with the new hardiness zone map issued recently, I am apparently a half-zone warmer than previously extrapolated.

Seriously, I'd been feeling the shift all along but thought it was mostly a lack of hormones.....

What about you? Are your extreme minimum temperatures higher than previously projected? This could mean some expensive errors at the nursery for ahem!, caff!, some of us. (And no, Virginia, the new projections are not reflective of global climate disruption. They are rather the results of better computer models based upon more specific information made available since the last zone maps released in 1990.)

I wanted to be amongst the first...

2012-01-23T11:02:00.000-06:00

to wish you good fortune in the Chinese Year of the Dragon...

If the weather here in Texas continues on in its dragonesque tendencies, we'll all face challenges in managing our plants, much less our expectations. That said, the milder days have brought some relief we ought to enjoy while we can!

Change in scenery

2011-12-02T07:45:00.001-06:00

A house across the street from us sold last February or so. We'd heard the plan was to remodel, but as of Thanksgiving, no work had gotten underway. Then we got a letter from the new owners (apologizing in advance for noise, traffic,) that treated the project like very small potatoes - stating as no variances were needed they were sure their make over to a more livable home would be little to no trouble for the neighbors.

After reading the letter we relaxed, figuring they would be doing most of the work inside the existing structure. Soon after the letter arrived a porta potty was set up. The very next day a side deck was wrenched off and hauled away. An iron gate and vintage looking light fixture all disappeared at some point in the process. Surely to be re-used, we thought but then.....

We were shocked (and sure, a little entertained as well) when over the course of the next three days, a crew of two or three along with a front loader demolished the structure entirely.

So far no construction barrier has been erected. I suppose any fencing would get too much in the way of loading up the bits and pieces of house into the series of delivered dumpsters.

That means the locals have had plenty of time to gawk close up at the new view....

Oh Deer(e) me.

Not sure if this is an example of life imitating art or what.

Here's a little something that could use your help to grow....

2011-12-01T07:45:00.000-06:00

Fall Color in Texas?

2011-11-12T09:12:00.000-06:00

There are those folk who move to Texas and then spend a fair amount of their time here complaining about the ways things are.

I get the impulse. Complaining isn't just ragging about a problem, it is also a form of reverse bragging. When I talk about the tough situations I am dealing with here, or things I am doing without, I am not so much calling into question my original decision to live here as I am inviting you to admire me for my strength of character.

Fact of the matter, you live in one place you have to worry about hurricanes. Or earthquakes. You live in some other place you don't do anything but read about other people's hurricanes and/or earthquakes (though hopefully not both in one place).

One of the major complaints about living in Texas for gardening types, once you get past the season of Death Star Dominance running May through mid September or so, is that there is not a lot of "Fall Color".

The Central Texas tree line is dominated by so many oak and juniper trees with their green all winter status that even though creeper vines, sumac and cedar elm trees do their best to give us a few pops of yellow and orange and occasionally red? We simply do not get a brilliant display of leaves in Fall colors the way other parts of the country enjoy.

As a native who moved away and then returned, I've seen in other places what others are saying they are missing here every Autumn. But.

I would propose to you that there IS indeed some Fall Color in Texas. I will offer to you there is a color I have named specifically for this time of year when cooling temperatures can (though they aren't this year!) bring rain, and all the plants seem to breathe a little easier for having survived another August/September.

The predominant fall color in my yard is.....Gratitude GREEN. And I am grateful for every bit of it after the heat we had and the drought we are still having.

Other than that? We Texans can simply aim our eyebeams downwards a bit and thoroughly enjoy the riotous Autumn blooms of Salvia and Cosmos, remaining reddening peppers, yellowing Meyer lemons......

Another way we Texans cope is by taking color provision into our own hands. Keeping in mind the likelihood our drought/water issues are here to stay, we have created some extra xeric color for year 'round.

This triangular bed, aside from being a dramatic shape that grabs attention for all its angularity, provides pops of color we especially appreciate in the Fall and Winter months, when the rest of the garden action is a bit more subdued. The mulch for the bed has been created from shards of our own broken plates, a couple of retired coffee mugs, and any gaps were then filled in using thrift store plates and saucers.

Part art, part family china history lesson.

Occasionally I rearrange the colors. That can be predictably tedious. Usually I simply try to recreate a somewhat uniform covering after pulling a weed, say, or after disruption from insects or armadillos or both, without being too tied to any particular design. The mosaic will tolerate being carefully stepped upon in an emergency, but mostly I try to keep my clodhoppers off and out of this bed as I do in any other.

The shards are laid out on and gently pressed into a bed of gravel so they allow water to percolate through and can be raked up and out of the way if the need arises. The broken plate mulch mosaic does not fade in the sun (though it can get dusty!) nor does it require any particular temperature ranges or supplemental water for support. I'll admit, I'm quite smitten.

So. Fall Color? Yup. We've got that covered.

One final note today. I realized as I pulled the following photo out to post, that I will have little room to criticize a certain political candidate who experienced a 53 second long "human moment" as part of a televised national debate recently.

What IS this????

I must have planted this vine, or at least scattered seeds for it at some point last Spring or early last Summer. That much I vaguely recall. The vine has climbed up out on top of a bank of leggy tropical salvia surrounding it on a slope in the front beds. The 2-3 inch wide, delicate ghostly white blooms appear, one at a time, suspended above the salvia tops opening during the morning hours.

I have no idea what the name of this is unfortunately, can't remember to save my life. Will it be back next year on its own or if I should try to be harvesting seeds....? No clue.

Help a gal out if you know what this is? It would be mighty neighborly of you.

Landscaping for free

2011-11-11T09:23:00.000-06:00

Some people pay to have their property worked over.

They have crews show up with mowers and blowers and trimmers.....

No mowing or blowing here but plenty of trimming going on. Unfortunately it is of the unscheduled, unsupervised, unplanned variety.

This Hibiscus has been taken back to its main stems. I should have known better!

Check out my latest "landscaper" at work:

How many leaves and flowers do you suppose it takes to fill that buck's belly?

He certainly didn't move on because he was full. His meandering down the street was prompted by my getting too close. This buck has plenty of other yards to pilfer from sans photographers or frustrated gardeners either one. To which I say "Yessir! Move right along Bambi! Nothing good left to eat around here!".

Reporting in

2011-11-05T16:55:00.000-05:00

I have been working through an especially long laundry list of garden to-dos around here.

This is partly a result of the heat and drought keeping me holed up indoors for weeks at a time all summer long, and partly due to the already dicey situation created by last year's long term ankle injury.

By the time I got around to the weeding/soil turning in our two most active garden beds, working to overcome the months of neglect was its own punishment.

Bermuda grass and nut sedge were predictably well established with a network of root systems that were at once tenaciously dominating the top 6-8 inches of soil and at the same time doing their usual "I am SO fragile I will break off before you can dig me out or pull me up!" routine.

I worked and worked and rested and then worked some more. I wrestled out tip bag after tip bag filled to the brim. For all that I must actively ignore a gnawing doubt. It is quite likely all my efforts merely took the pointiest part off that weedy iceberg.

Hopefully next weeding session will find me grateful for what I could get out rather than cursing how much was left behind. I am fully aware whatever I don't get today will be back to spurt up and stick out green tongues to taunt.

I was at least well supervised at all times.

And I did get a last bit of produce out from between the weeds.

Trimming up the Poke Salat "trees" brought them back to the form I appreciate while reminding me to be quietly grateful for how resilient they are.

And I have a fairly clear idea of where next year's bluebonnet patch will establish itself.

I cleared a small patch for a packet of mixed wildflower seeds we got as a promotional "gift".

And decided not to put the water rooted basil out into the wilds. I'll pot it up in the greenhouse instead and keep fingers crossed for enough production to spruce up an occasional salad.

There are other projects nearing completion. Three last bags of mulch will go out tomorrow, weather permitting, and the mosaic mulch bed will be spruced back up for its own photo session soon.

Wherever you are I wish you plenty of time this weekend to get your work done with enough sunshine left over to enjoy your accomplishments.

Busy as a....

2011-10-24T13:56:00.000-05:00

There are days when posting makes sense. Then there are the days when there is so much to do before cooler weather is here to stay that sitting at a computer just isn't in the cards.

There is soil to be turned, weeds to be pulled with everything but the seed heads to be added in to the compost pile. There are coneflower seed bombs to be launched into desired areas. The list of what needs to be done is a long one. Hopefully I'll be back soon with progress reports.

I am off to get started. Bye for now!

Wishes for Your Weekend

2011-10-21T18:46:00.000-05:00

Here we are, preCandyFeast, preTurkeyFeast, preTreeFeast...just a good old weekend coming up in a month finding many of us finally experiencing wonderful weather. However it looks in your neck of the woods - have a good weekend.

TO: Cooler Temps

2011-10-20T08:30:00.024-05:00

FROM: Central Texas

SUBJECT: THANK YOU!

Trio of hanging Pomegranate blossoms

House Wrens are nesting here in the palm fibers

Salvia basking in the sun

Salvia again - this growing in dappled shade

Yes more salvia - this is its time of year to shine

OK maybe I have a little Salvia "problem"

American Lady Butterfly (Vanessa virginiensis)

Fall Obedient Plant (yeah, amongst the SALVIAS)

What we call "Lisa's Lantana", marking the final resting spot of a beloved family pet.

Liar Liar Blog on Fire

2011-10-19T15:12:00.000-05:00

To Each Their Own

2011-10-18T08:30:00.019-05:00

I don't have giant spiders or enormous metal pumpkins.

Doesn't mean I don't enjoy them when displayed with panache. I do.

What I do have is time and a certain sort of imagination.

I won't categorically state these are or are not wonderful to behold.

But so far they make me grin every time I look.

{Reminder: Click on any photo to view a larger version with more detail.}

Begin Began Begun

2011-10-17T09:02:00.000-05:00

There was an old man named Michael Finnegan,
He had whiskers on his chinnegan,
Along came the wind and blew them in again,
Poor old Michael Finnegan. Begin again!

There was an old man named Michael Finnegan,
He kicked up an awful dinnegan,
Because they said he must not sing again,
Poor old Michael Finnegan. Begin again!

There was an old man named Michael Finnegan,
He went fishing with a pinnegan,
Caught a fish and dropped it in again,
Poor old Michael Finnegan. Begin again!

This children's song has a lot to teach about blogging and gardening both.

Circumstances change, a practice that was once easy is made more difficult, the gap between what should be and what is becomes stretched. Nothing new under the sun there.

Or here.

As is usual this time of year, I've kept an eye out on the hummingbird feeders.

Not to watch the birds when they feed, but to watch and see if there are indeed any birds actively feeding.

The two Special Ops Hummingbird Strike Force, the irritable guys who show up annually to resume staking out both a front and back feeder as their exclusive territory, seem to have moved on.

No migrating stragglers have been spotted for at least 10 days in our little corner of the world.

In fact, I've seen more butterflies this past week than I have hummingbirds. Which is saying something.* So I took down our hummingbird feeders and put them in the dishwasher to get them clean for storage until they are needed again.

[*This year, considering reports that GMO soybean planting has nearly eliminated milkweed thereby threatening the survival of Monarch Butterflies, along with the more obvious hardships caused by our drought and heat, we've seen very few butterflies. Maybe one or two a day are working the Fall Gratitude Blooms along with a smattering of bees, but nothing like what we usually experience. ]

Move over feeder, it is the bird house gourd's turn.

So ends another S/Hummer season. Pool floats are out of the water, a shovel leans against the house close to a garden bed that is past due for a thorough turning over. The need for work continues even if the nature of the work has shifted gears.

And, oh, yes, there is this one other shift of note. I am back at the blog again. Yup. I suppose you can just call me Ms. Finnegan.

A visit to Lake Buchanan - Let's Play Guess That Plant!I

2010-09-29T17:03:00.003-05:00

{Reminder - simply click with your cursor on any photo to retrieve a larger version}
Growing up my Daddy liked to pile us all in the car after church was over and then drive us what felt like hundreds of miles out into the country to eat Sunday lunch at a family style restaurant in the Hill Country.

Funny how the ride home was always so much shorter than the ride there.

Along the way he would point out flowers that caught his eye, every single cow or horse or goat grazing behind a fence. My little brother and I would sigh and complain and sure, yes, we would ask "are we there yet?". I would roll my eyes and wish for the earth to swallow me up and get me A W A Y from these old people in the front seat who thought driving out to the boonies was a reasonable enterprise, much less a fun way to spend time.

Fast forward a few decades and predictably enough, the Hub and I are now the geezers in the front seats, enjoying the countryside, pointing out livestock and wondering aloud what the name of this or that flowering plant might be.

Our own experiences as kids taught us a thing or two. Our children are all grown up now. We don't drag them along, heck, last go round we didn't even invite them.

This past weekend specifically, when we took the opportunity to check out the relatively new Canyon of the Eagles Resort out on Lake Buchanan, set in a 940 acre nature park.

I'll let you peruse their web site on your own if you're interested.

We had a nice lunch in the all but deserted restaurant with spectacular views from a high bluff overlooking the North shores of the lake.

We were both quite taken with the Senna Lindheimeriana. These were in bloom all over the Hill Country.

I'd never seen climbing snapdragon before. I think it is charming.

Art imitates life or life imitates art? You decide.

Pollinators were busy everywhere we looked. This hummingbird was really working over the Turk's Cap.

The grounds featured very lightly landscaped mostly native plants.

Not sure if this was intended to be scenic or is the resort's actual firetruck.

Down by the water there were huge slabs set out as tables and benches for picnic lunches.

Truth be told however, what we enjoyed most was the overcast day bringing cooler temperatures. The change of scenery included a good look close up at the after effects of so many inches of rain from Hermine on the Texas Hill Country. Many plants I knew or could easily identify. There are a few however that I simply can't get a handle on. Anybody want to help out?

I think this was a blue heron (left) sharing shoreline with an egret.

Final Update: Winner winner chicken dinner! This is (according to Mr Smarty Plants again - this guy is absolutely THE go-to guy for help with plant ID - Croptilon divaricatum, otherwise known as Slender Scratchdaisy. How fun is that for a common plant name?

This was my first sighting of Spurred Butterfly Pea (Centrosema virginianum).

Update: I have on authority (Mr Smarty Plants himself!) this dragonfly is a Flag-tailed Spinyleg - probably a male.

Update: Mr. Smarty Plants and Lancashire Rose have both IDed this as Bull Nettle. Thank you!

Yet another heron - they were all along the shores of the lake.

I think these large fellas are quite handsome when they are found far far away from my own plants.

Please feel free to chime in with the missing plant names in the comments section. All part of the fun.

What we are really liking right now...

2010-09-17T09:30:00.000-05:00

Pink skies in the morning...

A giant cosmos (that tall spindly thing in the center of the photo) that doesn't bloom until late September - early October (thanks for the plant ID help with that Bob!)....

I was sorry to see the flowers are small despite this plant being over six feet tall, but it is just getting started setting blooms so I am excited to see how many flowers will eventually show.

Fall obedient plants that have more blooms opening every day.

Mockingbirds attracted by poke salat and beauty berries.

Seed heads forming on the sea oats.

All this and temperatures cool enough to have the windows open for at least a bit in the morning to appreciate those pink streaked skies! Summer weather is being slowly but surely shown the door. Welcome, Autumn!

September 11, 2001

2010-09-11T10:13:00.000-05:00

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;

where there is hatred, let me show love;

where there is injury, pardon:

where there is doubt, faith ;

where there is despair, hope

where there is darkness, light

where there is sadness, joy

O divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

Prayer attributed to Saint Francis

Listen to the rhythm

2010-09-07T09:19:00.002-05:00

of the falling rain, telling me just what a fool I've been.....

One inch so far and counting....

Well, maybe not so foolish.

Coneflower Seed Bombs

I did borrow a great idea (I know 'em when I see 'em) from The Grackle and had already put out my own Seed Bombs here and there weekend before last.

I took time over this past long weekend to get a small packet of wildflower seed mix (a freebie with piquillo pepper seeds I'd ordered previously) in an area that could use a bit of a boost.

What I did not do was get out, clear, prepare and seed the bed designated for a complete make over into a winter garden veggie bed.

Before

With all the rain expected from Tropical Storm Hermine (forecast to be anywhere from 2 to 12 inches depending on where you live) in the Central Texas area, I can't imagine freshly planted seeds, especially of the "just press lightly into the soil" variety doing anything but washing around.

My seed bombs, well, if they migrate in the rain that will be just fine. I will be happy with additional coneflower plants anywhere out front.

I was the opposite of this busy outdoors over the long weekend

Today I intend to enjoy the cooler temperatures with windows open. I am actually relieved I don't have tiny seeds or plants out yet. For this once, my tendency to procrastinate has served me well.

UPDATE: We had between 8-10 inches of the wet stuff here in Rollingwood. Our little rain gauge was totally overwhelmed at one point so we can't be more precise. The gusty wind had our chimes clanging around in a most non-soothing way! Glad we got the watershed all charged up and even more glad Hermine is finished with Texas. See ya Hermine!

Odds are...

2010-09-02T08:00:00.018-05:00

If you have been gardening long enough in one place, odds are you have made a few mistakes.

I certainly have. There are times I purchased and planted something in a spot because it looked good there at that moment, without taking into consideration the light, drainage or space requirements.

I have mint that for years was perfectly well behaved until the year it wasn't. I spend hours now cursing myself, cutting it back to make room for anything and everything else in the bed it dominates. It is a lot of work but that smell! Is there anything more delicious than working with mint? Maybe I let it go just a little bit on purpose. Certainly the bees are happy when I do.

There were times when capricious weather did my plants in. A colder than usual spell took a tecoma stans I couldn't shelter adequately, and a dry spell eliminated a New Guinea impatiens because I decided long ago not to try to keep anything that needed daily watering. Not to mention the free lance landscaping courtesy of our neighborhood deer.

Occasionally, it all goes well. Some of the time because I made a well informed choice, more often than not because I got lucky.

This year the basil I seeded in with the wildflowers has tolerated my neglect and is doing quite well.

This year one of several morning glory vines I planted survived long enough to come into its own. I can't help it y'all, I get a little weak at the knees over blue flowers.

This year, out admiring my blue flowers close up, I was reminded how glad I am to have gathered the seeds from a thick stand of purple ruellia in a public parking lot bed (after getting permission from the owners). I like the pink and it has replanted itself liberally. The purple seems more well mannered however and I do love the color.

Last but certainly not least, once again this year, I fell back in love with my Texas Kidneywood (Eysenhardtia texana) for its delicate leaf structure and its wonderfully fragrant white flower spikes.

It has persevered through cold, heat, drought, deluge, crowding out and severe trimming back. Best of all it keeps coming back for more. Sort of like I do.

Sunday Snapshots

2010-08-29T10:13:00.049-05:00

I so enjoy looking at Bloom Day posts on other gardener's blogs. Every month I am determined I will get organized and submit my own set of photos by the 15th. And every month I get distracted or busy or both and simply fail to get out there and just do it.

Not to say the Bloom Day round up is missing all that much for my lack of participation. No false modesty here, truly. Austin is already very well represented in that mix.

But I do like the idea of getting a sampling of what is going on at a certain point so today I decided to quit hair shirting about missing a particular date and simply got out to play with my camera a bit in the morning light.

Here it is. A sampling of my favorite images from the end of August, 2010 - the Summer of the Epic Ankle Injury:

Plumeria - these are the Hub's babies.

Althea gifted from my Dad's old place, long since sold.

The intricacy of Ruellia blossoms fascinates me.

I use Garlic Chives as landscape plants. I love their long lasting blooms and spiky leaves.

Bees capture my imagination every time. I can't seem to resist trying to get a shot when I see them at work.

Oh! As usual, a reminder to click on any particular image for an enlarged view. I can't claim to have anything nearly as spectacular as the close up work of Philip at ESP but bigger can be better....

Meanwhile, back to our programmed cavalcade of Sunday photos....

My Verbena gets leggy but I love its lacy leaves almost as much as I like the delicate purple blooms.

Gaillardia are so cheery. I'm hoping these are reseeding themselves.

I yank out most of the invasive sharp pod Morning Glory but leave a couple in place to enjoy their profuse blooms since nectar feeders like it so much.

Obsession

2010-08-16T16:10:00.000-05:00

I planted this one

I generally don't buy plants I don't like. I mean, who would do that? Spend money on something they didn't at least like? Not me! So of all the plants in our various spaces around here, I can truthfully say to varying degrees I like them all.

Occasionally my emotional response to a plant will move past appreciated, rush through admired, hustle past adored and go straight to obsession. Some plants occupy the obsession shelf for a season, some only until their invasive nature or their failure to thrive becomes manifest. Rarely, a plant acquires obsession status that only seems to get deeper with every passing year.

Such is the case with the Beautyberry. Callicarpa americana, sometimes called French Mulberry, first caught my eye in the piney woods of East Texas.

The birds planted this one

And this one, too

I was happy to plant one here in our Central Texas space, and happier still when it became obvious the birds were going to help out by planting a few more specimens over the years.

This one had been planted by birds in the nursery container of a yew tree we bought that promptly died after we planted it. The beautyberry bush (which we originally overlooked) is not so picky.

I initially appreciated how these plants take cold, heat, drought and even the rare year with record rainfall all in stride.

I admired that they grow well in shade though seemingly tolerate a fair amount of sun if watered regularly. I came to adore that they survive the occasional trim by the deer in our neighborhood (or the "keeping it out of my way" trimming of the the Dear, here at Gardenista).

But I became captivated, totally obsessed, with these plants, for their berries.

Every year I get caught up all over again, staring at the pale first berries in wonder, watching them ripen past pink through to deep purply magenta.

I stand and gaze, watching them through my windows in wonder, until the birds have eaten every last one.

At long last

2010-08-14T15:31:00.000-05:00

I have been variously amused and frustrated lately reading about local gardener's efforts to coax their tomato plants into extending their productive efforts. (check the comments section for the 8/8/10 post here)

Some are trimming back plants and hoping for a second crop. Others have actually put new plants into the ground counting upon our extended warm weather to give them time for tomatoes before frost is even a prospect.

On the other hand, around the Gardenista we have been babying along what are surely the slowest growing, most extended adolescent type tomato plants I've ever personally witnessed. I don't know what the problem has been. The plants were all started indoors from seed way back in February. They were not transplanted out into unprotected beds until well after the evening lows had hiked up into the 50's. The baby plants went into beds prepped with compost and manure and the plants were mulched to help protect against moisture loss.

Providing supplemental water from the rain barrels gave us plenty of chances to keep an eye on their progress (or lack of it). Nothing much happened. Weeks turned into months. I racked what passes for my brain. Why so little growth for so long and no tomatoes from these guys? (Whyyyyyyyyyy!!!???)

Two little too late?

I had no clue and once my ankle injury sidelined my active participation I decided I no longer really cared enough to even ask the Hub how the plants were doing. It was just too discouraging.

Cue upwelling of inspirational music.

Then it happened. Two days ago, lo and behold, at least on the Roma plants, I spotted actual fruit. The other varieties are blooming fairly regularly at long last and I have my trowels crossed that if we baby them through this final burst of high temperatures, we might just get an actual tomato or two.

Even one hand full of tomatoes (should they make it to harvest) would be just enough to entice me into trying to grow tomatoes all over again next year. [Disclaimer: With the obligatory annual alterations designed to overcome various mistakes and obstacles of course.]

I suppose that is always the way with an amateur like moi self. I accidentally get it right juuust enough of the time to keep me from getting totally fed up.

As an optimist over all, in my outdoor attempts especially I minimize or outright ignore my (many) failures and maximize my successes. I focus on what works and blithely jettison what either never worked at all or mysteriously has stopped working. Sun/shade conditions changed? I didn't hold my lips right when planting this year? Wrong phase of the moon? Soil pH? Star alignment? I rarely ever really know.

Samuel Johnson purportedly labeled remarriage as "the triumph of hope over experience". I think he may as well have been talking about gardeners. Gardeners and one stubborn blue bonnet plant perhaps.

The plant pictured below self seeded and decided to grow off-off season. It is blooming in August because I guess it wants to? Given the circumstances of my somewhat dismal fruit and vegetable crop results, I could not be happier. I will take a tick mark for the "Win" column in any form. In or out of season.

Stardust

2010-08-07T10:29:00.000-05:00

We are stardust.

We are golden.

And we've got to get ourselves, back to the garden....

At long last I am able to put weight upon The Ankle. I am not stepping out confidently for unlimited stretches of time, no, but I am able now to safely wander out and see, up close, first hand, what is going on outside my windows.

It is a bit of a mixed blessing.

There is beauty out there, no question. There are also clear signs of a bill come due after weeks of involuntary neglect.

Bermuda grass seed heads abound, nodding gracefully in the breeze, happily broadcasting the promise of hours of weeding in the seasons to come.

Morning glory vines have crept up and over as far as they could reach. They at least, are easily grabbed, wrapped about and wrenched out, although bringing along with them whatever they climbed up if care is not taken. But that is hardly the point.

There will be stronger days yet to come, cooler days as well, when the work of reordering can be rejoined. The real work possible now is to prevent the joy of being an active observer again from being extinguished in any way by the heavy blanket of a to-do list.

It is enough, for now, to simply enjoy what has thrived in these less tended to spaces. It is enough, for now, to watch birds and bees and ants and butterflies work the garden in their own way. When all is said and done, these spaces, the ones I call "my garden" do belong to them. They, the real gardeners here, enter and exit, harvest and work at will while I am in fact the visitor. To call these spaces "mine" is a conceit of time and I will do well to hold that idea foremost as I begin to make choices for my re-entry into the activity.

I would love...

2010-07-07T12:25:00.002-05:00

I would love to be able to tell you that I have neglected posting here because I was busily improving the garden beds on our property.

I'd love even more to say I'd been swamped canning a surplus of tomatoes, or redesigning the blog.

But those are fantasies at best and more plainly put, outright falsehood.

What has kept me away has been a stupid accidental injury, reducing my extremity count to only one fully functional foot with the resulting lack of bipedal ability.

I am currently hobbling, when I am mobile at all, with a set of ~~Trip Sticks~~ crutches. As I gain confidence mastering the many challenges of our multi-level home, I look wistfully forward to the day I'll be brave enough to take my act out of doors again.

Until that time comes I stare out our windows with glasses off, determined to blur the view of green so I will see it all as green I wanted, green I planned for, purposefully planted, rather than the jungle of weeds intermingled with overgrown desireables.

I am currently working not to fret about ant hills or other insect infestations I can no longer witness firsthand, or the lack of tomatoes on plants I cannot clearly discern from indoors.

What I am working to do is take full advantage of various personal insights revealed during this enforced slowdown. Some of these insights naturally contain lessons. Many of them I do not welcome, with bottom lines that are anything but uniformly attractive or affirming. Such as they are, let it never be said I willingly shirked when there was work to do.

So here I sit, with my Catastrophic Cankle elevated, working. Working on seeing. Working on healing.

Healing my ankle, healing my frayed temperament, seeing a kind of health and wholeness that has less and less to do with my original singular focus on being able to get up and walk around under my own steam.

From time to time I am writing more about it all here. If you are willing, feel free to drop in and visit with a non-gardening version of me. I won't blame you if you aren't, believe me when I say nobody will be merrier than me when this blog requalifies for Garden status. But until then, and for as long as it takes, you are most welcome to share some growth of a slightly different sort with me at Austin Agrodolce.

Testing, testing, one two three....

2010-06-04T09:03:00.000-05:00

Do you love online tests? I do. Especially when it means I can sit in conditioned air and take the test pretending I am doing something that will benefit my garden.

Sidebar: You've read The Ant and The Grasshopper, yes? With temperatures heading into the high 90s in the forseeable future, it seems both ants AND grasshoppers may be getting more time out in our garden spaces than we will.

So here is this Roots of Change "Are You A Climate Friendly Gardener?" test.

I did pretty well, overshot on how far produce travels though. It seems to me nearly everything in the conventional grocers down the thoroughfare from where I live comes from Chile. Apparently a careful reading of the question would have emphasized their wanting the "average" distance. Otherwise feel I acquitted myself honorably.

How about you? Do you have what it takes to impress yourself with an online test? Beauty of this is, no weeding, no feeding, no pests to pick off. A simple test to take with an associated article if you're interested.

Check it out: Are You A Climate Friendly Gardener?

Color Full

2010-05-26T10:54:00.002-05:00

Society Garlic/Iris? This one's for you......

The world is a carousel of color,
Wonderful, wonderful color.
The world is a carousel of color,
History, comedy, fantasy,
There's drama and mirth,
There's old mother earth
With all of her secrets to see.

The world is a treasure-trove of faces,
Fabulous, faraway places.
The hopes and the fears,
The joys and the tears
Of people like you and like me.
The kingdoms of magic science,
The glorious story of art,
The world of romance,
Of music and dance,
This world where we each play a part.

The miracle of imagination,
The marvels of earth, sea and sky,
These wonders untold
Are ours to behold
In the funny world,
The sunny world,
The wonderful world of color.

I don't know about you, but I spent most of the Sunday evenings of my youth watching The Wonderful World of Disney, first in black and white, then in wonderful, wonderful, color.

My strongest early memory of this was the first time I saw (or remember seeing anyway) the speeded up film of a flower bloom opening. That same segment showed a vine tendril curling to achieve purchase on a surface it was climbing and it absolutely captured my imagination. I don't think I ever looked at any plant quite the same way once I realized that their static appearance was only a matter of time and perception.

I think this explains my fascination with Before/After shots. The implied motion in the changes demonstrated seems almost magical, though I know from personal experience there is nothing magical about the sweat and effort and planning required.

Anyway, I wanted to explore recurrent colors around this place, with the idea that subtly or not, color preferences tend to work their way into our landscape when we aren't paying attention, sort of the way that queen's wreath vine out front keeps trying to move over and ring our doorbell if I don't keep it tucked neatly in place.

For today? Purple. Not "just" purple per se but pinky purple, reddish purple, and all the shades in between. Ready? Let's go....!

Work work work!

2010-05-24T09:49:00.000-05:00

Oof.

I've spent the past several days, mostly in the coolest morning hours (relatively speaking as our humidity keeps the mid 70s from being altogether enjoyable for hard labor) getting back to some of the most basic grunt work of trying to garden.

Mostly I am a victim (using the term guardedly) of our own success. Allow me to explain.

Ground covers keep wanting to do just that - cover the ground. No respecter of subtle stone barriers that are supposed to suggest "here and no further" they keep heading into new territory, growing up and eventually shoving down whatever tries to stand in their way.

Dis-Obedient plants revealed that yes indeed they will naturalize nicely at the end of that path. Good luck trying to keep them from stepping out into that path however. The flowers may behave on their stems but their root systems go wherever they see an empty space.

Stepping stones that were needed to get into newly cultivated areas have disappeared into exuberant new growth. Now providing cover for all sorts of ants and ground nesting insects, corners of the stones wink slyly out, reminding me that there used to be a way, as well as a need, to get from here to there.

The remnants of a finally completely dead bush have come out, though not without a fight. At least the top parts of the slowest declining shrub in hedge history have been not so much removed as wrestled out, leaving a maze of woody roots down below that will make replanting an enterprise for the stout of arm, not to mention heart.

But because our dreams of what might be often morph within an all too short space of time into our latest bit of drudgery and upkeep, I want to stop and salute the mass of plants I literally tore out by the roots today. The time just spent sweating, cursing and slapping at mosquitoes was all a sign of success if I will simply see it that way.

There were other years when all we could do was water and hope, squint and try to imagine what a space would look like when the plantings we'd placed there had finally filled in.

Well, fill in they have by golly. Filled in and grown past their bounds. So today was a banner day in its own way, and after the sore muscle meds have kicked in I bet I'll be actively glad about it, too.

Enough tedium and workaday shots of garden chores accomplished. As your reward for hanging in with me thus far, a little bug love.

If the leaves are a rockin', don't come knocking.

You'll pardon me for saying so, but I am guessing at least one of these is no lady.

Here goes nothin'

2010-05-06T11:14:00.018-05:00

I have had a dickens of a time getting captions lined up with photos in this post and am throwing in the trowel, er, towel. Further down in the body of this post was a photo of a Question Mark butterfly which would NOT stay with the caption. Now it has disappeared and I don't know why. I apologize but life goes on. Forgive me and I promise to do better. Next time. (maybe...) As a reminder: click directly on any photo to get a larger version with better detail....

Rush hour here at Gardenista....

I have mentioned here enough times by now how I stink at identifying butterflies and other critters in the garden. However I am driven to keep trying.

Dun Skipper

Whenever I see a butterfly that I know I have successfully identified in the past and just can not for the life of me recall the name of, I feel frustrated beyond measure.

Cloudless Sulphur

It is, I suppose, the insect corollary to the dull rage I experience when I see a plant I know but can't remember the name.

American Lady

Even if the plant is thriving, it feels to me a garden failure when I can't wander about carelessly tossing off the common and botanical names of everything in sight.

As an example, for some reason, for years I had the hardest time remembering "verbena". I recognized it as "that damned plant I can never remember the name of". Go figure. I've got it firmly in my head now, except for when I don't.....

Onward.

Tawny Emperor

Like others I have noted a wealth of red admirals in my gardens this year.

Red Admirals

Most of them seem to be congregating first around the fallen loquats around one side of the house, but they all eventually find their way over to the flowers.

Today I went out a bit earlier than usual and found a few other locals hovering.

Common Checkered Skipper

I'd hate to get anybody confused...that is MY special territory, OK?

I need to be the best at SOMEthing. So if you see anything misidentified, please correct it in the comments and I'll owe you one. If I remember......

Inch wormy thing

Frantically glad

2010-05-02T08:45:00.000-05:00

That is May in a nutshell for me.

For starters, let me celebrate the easier breathing out of doors that is May. WooHOO! It is such a gift to be able to open windows to cooled night air. If you haven't been robbed of the opportunity to do so safely you may have lost sight of the treasure of these lovely cooler evenings and mornings. Long may they wave!

I love my oak trees for the most part and now they aren't trying to poison me with their prolific reproductive tendencies we are fast friends once more.

On the other hand, my ability to move more freely about my cabin also means no more excuses over jumping in to garden chores other folks have long since accomplished.

Every year it is the same. I know I can't work outside in April due to pollen. I know the chores will all be there waiting for me in May. I read about what I "should" be doing and I begin to look around our property with eyes that start to see every area more as a checklist of outstanding work to be done. It is daunting - no other word for it - to get back outside and have half of March and all of April's chore list to tackle in my garden.

For me it is an exercise in will to look at my flowers and enjoy them, rather than focusing on the weeds in the path or the divisions and transplanting that needs to be done.

The scale of work needed is large enough it can be paralyzing, but with years of similar late start freak-outs behind me I know just what to do. I start with one small job, get that done, and then begin another.

Rinse, lather, repeat. Any jobs too large to do in a reasonable work span get broken up into smaller pieces and I focus on the small victories, rather than the huge backload.

For instance... Out front there were two dead limbs in a redbud we'd thought was a goner. However, it not only didn't die, now it looks better than it has for a good three years so far.

I can't explain why or how the longest deepest drought followed by a fairly cold span of winter days would benefit a struggling redbud so I don't try. I look at it and love it for being so tough and yesterday I by golly clambered up onto our stone mailbox and from there, alternating with perching precariously on a step ladder, I got those dead branches pruned out.

Same goes for an althea out front. It had two dead branches yesterday. Today it doesn't.

Does that mean there aren't 391 pruning and other jobs to be attended to? No it does not. But two major eyesores out front, the ones that bothered ME the most, have been addressed. I can drive in and out and get the mail without feeling like I must avert my eyes.

The length of my May "to-do" list does not overrule the idea that these days I really am forced to pace myself. As a gardener closer to 60 than 50 I have learned the hard way not to push my limits they way I used to so take for granted. If I want my return to the garden to last without a retreat due to injury or overwork? I simply must plug away for a span of time and then turn and walk away.

Yes I know it will get hot and stay hot soon enough. And yes, I'd rather get the biggest heaviest stuff all done before that happens if I can. But honestly, there are some years everything doesn't get done precisely as it should, or when it should. The garden doesn't care apparently so I am learning to simply let that go.

At least a little.

If I'm not learning something while I'm gardening then I think I may be missing why I even ever tried to garden in the first place.

Plants will grow outside with or without me.

I like it best when they do so with my cooperation.

So welcome to you May! I'm happy to be back in my garden again!

It Can Be Easy

2010-04-21T12:15:00.000-05:00

being green....

Here is my entry for Gardening Gone Wild's April Picture This.

A leek root salvaged from a batch of Ginger Fried Rice was water rooted, transplanted into the garden and allowed to grow. I love the sculptural shapes even more than the tiny clumps of flowers after they open.

Dashing Out and Dropping In

2010-04-12T09:43:00.000-05:00

Just because I am precluded from spending time out of doors due to a sincere wish to keep breathing without breaking the world record for most sneezes in a row, does not mean the garden is lying fallow.

Far from it.

Just about everything I can see out there is blooming up a storm.

Every so often I can't stand how restricted the view of the flowers from our windows is, so I dash out with camera in hand and try to take as many photos as I can while holding my breath. It kind of works out.

Appropriately, April is Poetry Month. These flowers speak to my heart the way any good poem will do.

And, like a good poem, they beg to be shared.

Toadflax, laurel, oxtail, rose, bluebonnet, primrose, fleabane, varying allium, shasta, scarlet flax- arranged like so many stanzas in the poetry that is Springtime.

For the Record

2010-04-03T11:21:00.002-05:00

I believe I reported here earlier that the Hub had put together a very respectable small greenhouse from a kit purchased over the interweb.

While it is cunning as can be, it lacks an independent heat source, and so far, whatever the high or low is out of doors, it is replicated in the greenhouse with perhaps a degree or so variation.

For this reason (and no other) I had resisted the Hub's repeated advisories that I "should" put my baby tomato plants in the greenhouse.

You see I'd read in several places, and believed it when I read it, that tomato plants are sensitive to being subjected to temperatures under 50 degrees. They don't like it and repay the injury with the insult of a low to nonexistent crop of fruit set on plants not appropriately protected.

As a matter of fact, I attributed the Great Tomato Crop Failure of 2009 directly and repeatedly to a combination of early exposure to low nighttime temperatures in conjunction with our drought and ovenesque summertime highs.

"The evening low temperatures are not yet reliably staying above 50 degrees" was my stated hopefully not personally insulting rationale for resisting Hub's ongoing campaign to help populate his completed greenhouse. "You know the greenhouse is running at the same temperature as the outside air.".

His reply to my resistance yesterday evening? Another question.

Hub: "What temperature is it outside now?".

This was around 7:30 PM and, after glancing at the thermometer outside our kitchen window, my pro forma reply was "Seventy-seven".

Hub again. "And the temperature inside the greenhouse?".

Me [sighing slightly]: "Seventy seven.".

The Hub then launched into a bit of a verbal broadside, maintaining the tide has turned, the weather she has warmed, and furthermore there are no forecast lows below 50 for the next run of days. He calmly stated if I would simply move the seedlings he would see to it they were watered and fertilized.

I replied I was up to my spatula in dinner prep and he had my permission to move the plants with my gratitude for the small favor.

So he did.

Predictably enough (those of you who are in long term relationships will see this one coming a mile away) this morning, after their very first night in the greenhouse, when I checked the ambient temperature out of doors? It sat in the high forties.

The temperature where my tomato babies now resided inside the greenhouse? The same.

Your Honor, let the transcript state, if these tomato plants do not produce a bumper crop, all blame that should reasonably be divided into two portions, and thereafter laid in equal halves squarely at the feet of Mr. "You Should Move the Plants into the Greenhouse" Hub and Ms. "But the Nighttime Lows Aren't Reliable" Gardenista, will rather be apportioned in one large lump sum as ALL HIS FAULT.

Because, that's why.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I rest my case.

Seasonal

2010-04-02T13:32:00.000-05:00

Tis' the season....

For Spring bulbs and wild flowers...

For observant faithful to celebrate Passover and Easter....

For me to hide indoors most of the time, ducking further exposure to tree pollen.

My wish for you is to be able to fully enjoy the flowers, the warmer temperatures, the garden coming back alive after winter's cold, and, if you are celebrating religious holy days, the gathering of friends, family and fellow faithful as you enter into the centuries old rites and rituals.

Down but not out...

2010-03-12T08:44:00.000-06:00

Do you live in Central Texas? Then by all means please take a look at any live oak tree close to you. If you live here, there will doubtless be many to choose from. Go ahead, I'll wait.

You see? Watch for longer than 30 seconds and I guarantee you're seeing leaves dropping to the ground like sand in an hourglass.

It is "that time" again. Live Oak Leaf Fall comes first. Then the airspace under each tree will be filled with inchworms dropping on their silk lifelines and then BAM! Central Texas will be coated with pollen just as surely as if Emeril himself had been seasoning our world.

I am preparing as best I can, stocking up on tissues and reserving loads of books from the library because starting, oh, about RIGHT NOW and lasting as long as it takes for the leaves to come back and the pollen dangles to go away, I am on indoors quarantine.

Not that I can't leave the house, but every time I do try to be outside for any length of time I begin to sneeze, feel flushed, nose drips like a faucet, heart speeds up and my body adrenalizes like I just ran a race. I know it SOUNDS like fun.....

And yes, I do the whole allergy medicine dance. Faithfully. But I grew up here, I developed my allergies here, and solong as I stubbornly choose to live here I will simply have to take my seasonal knocks.

I'm just saying (OK - it sounds like I am whining and maybe I am - just a little) that my garden will have to fend mostly for itself for a while. I'll be out, briefly, in the late afternoons when the pollen counts are down, or those days it mists rain and I can work for a bit in rain washed air, but mostly I'll be in.

It won't keep me from taking photographs occasionally of things like this. The first bluebonnet of the year for us.

Woot!

And Daffodils!

It may not be official by calendar dates yet but the
thermometer and the oak trees and the bluebonnets (and my nose) never lie. It is by golly SPRING!

Happy happy Spring, y'all! Be sure to fully enjoy the mildness before the death star heats back up and the Season of Complaining and Ducking Into Shade is upon us.

This is what we pay for, annually, this is our trade off, the sunny days filled with wildflowers. Enjoy, be merry, if you do venture out and about, please don't trample the bluebonnets.

If I'd known then

2010-03-09T10:11:00.001-06:00

what I know now, I'd never have planted those autumn blooming chrysanthemums under a then leafless pussy willow tree in Salt Lake City, Utah because I would have realized by the time they were blooming they'd be in near total shade and would be leggy things hanging waaaaay out over the sidewalk hunting for sun.

If I'd have known years ago how prolific and how productive loquats are at reseeding under their canopy I would have devised a better mulching under those trees as they began to fruit, rather than carelessly allowing a miniforest to sprout. Four different times.

Fact of the matter is, after years of trying to grow things, we all make mistakes, we all make good choices, and we all have a little luck, good and bad, along the way. If we are paying any attention at all, we learn as we go along, and at least make new mistakes, rather than repeating old ones.

Occasionally though, a long hard summer drought like last year will knock me backwards in my estimation of myself as a gardener. Confidence shaken, I begin to personalize the failures, begin to think I have a brown thumb, that I simply can't get things to thrive and produce.

Blogs are sometimes helpful to help me hold perspective, but typically bloggers (and I include myself in this number) tend towards showing their successes, displaying those near perfect blooms in close or narrow shots that only give a glimpse of Nature at her finest.

It can be daunting.

Today however, I went out and noted that not only have the bulbs in the collection I received from Gardening Gone Wild started coming up ("stem side up....root side down" I kept repeating as I sorted and tried to get those various sized knobs at the appropriate depth), but they are showing signs of actually wanting to bloom.

The bluebonnet patch is finally exerting itself in a truly reseeded, densely packed way that is, for once, not the result of my caving, buying and placing actual plants there.

The tomato seeds I stuck into pots, watered and dragged in and out of sunshine and cooler nighttime temperatures have sprouted. As they should, yes, but I have put seeds carefully and carelessly into play that have not shown any signs of germination. Entire packets of them (that means YOU, Anthriscus cerefolium!).

[Now you are wondering if I am aware others have full fledged tomato plants already, in sufficient numbers to generously share with other gardeners? I am but shhhh- please don't interrupt me while I am gloating posting. Like a three year old it will only encourage me to start over, breathlessly, at the beginning of my story....]

These signs of success (and yes! I fully realize bulbs and seeds are supposed to sprout and bloom and this is not some sign of specialness on my or the bulb's or seed's part), have me feeling all warm and well, cocky at this moment. Signs of new and returning growth have encouraged me to believe that, in some reasonable sort of climate, with mostly moderate temperatures and acceptable amounts of rain, I too, am totally awesome moderately capable when it comes to gardening.

Let it be said here and now however. If I eventually end up with actual tomatoes this year, there will be no living with me.

You've been warned.

The Waxwing Invasion

2010-03-02T12:40:00.000-06:00

Yesterday in the midmorning and throughout most of the afternoon, I was delighted to host an invasion of cedar waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum).

Not only was I thrilled to have identified them correctly on sight (this does not happen all that often for me folks, cut me some slack) but I had great fun working on getting a few photographs of them devouring the berries on the weeping yaupon in the back yard. While resting up from mobbing that small tree, they flitted to other fruiting yaupons in the back and occasionally hit a fruiting ligustrum which is just over the fence from us.

I was careful not to try and get so close that I spooked them from their feasting. We planted fruiting trees for the birds, not for me to get photos of the birds, so I snapped away from a distance and then put my camera aside to watch and enjoy.

I'd guesstimate we had a flock of 20 or so working the trees around our house yesterday. Predictably enough, though the trees are not completely stripped, today the birds seemed to have moved on.

I felt fortunate to have been home and paying attention for their several hour visit. Not a shabby way to start a week, says me.

Promises, promises...

2010-03-01T06:00:00.003-06:00

All kinds of promises.

Spring has marched in more or less, even if we are technically supposed to wait until the 20th to declare so. The last typical freeze date around here is March 15th, folks are already sporting sunburns around town even as they remark upon our wonderfully brief snowstorm recently, and if I had no idea from my own experience, a quick glance at garden blogs would reveal it is time to get ready for SpuhRINNNNG!

Spring gets a lot of virtual ink in terms of hope and promises. And to me, the idea of Spring does carry with it big buckets of promise.

There are bulbs that finally (finally!) have sprouted and/or bloomed, assuring me my efforts to get them buried at the correct depth, root side down, were not in vain.

There are bluebonnets showing in numbers adequate to assure reseeding in an area I've been working on for oh, about five years now. In my mind's eye this corner has always been filled with bluebonnets. Reality dictated otherwise. Until this year that is, when some wonderful conspiracy of germination, temperature and moisture seems to have finally turned the ignition on for my Bonnet Patch.

Despite the loquat trees insisting upon blooming and trying to set fruit during a winter of abrupt dips below freezing, there is evidence there will yet be loquats in a few weeks.

The cilantro plants are beginning to look like they might not only survive, but thrive with a bit of warmth and continuing moisture.

I have tomato seeds ready to start indoors, with my determination that THIS will be the year I get another bumper crop. It has to happen sometime, the lesson of my Bluebonnet Patch (don't give up!) is not lost in the shift from flower to fruit.

Spring also promises a shift in our horizon view soon. These lovely oak trees that are all over our property, indeed all over Central Texas, have survived wilt threats so far, have survived that long hot hell of a summer, and now are readying themselves to shed their leaves and get busy making baby oaks. A process I would not begrudge them if it were possible for them to do so and for me to simultaneously be allowed to breathe while outdoors.

Sad to say, it is a respiratory showdown, and I come out waving (and sneezing into) a white handkerchief year after year.

Spring and it's promises, promises, all kinds of promises. Some, like the bluebonnets, bearing the satisfaction of long sought after goals, some, like the tomatoes, bringing guarantees of flummoxing yet to come, and others, like the oak pollen, simply needing to be survived.

And what will summer bring? Who knows...summer is still far enough away that any potential bullying of the death star seems a faint threat, especially in the cool of a sunny Spring morning.

So off I go to enjoy precisely that, a cool sunny morning out of doors, before the oak trees try to kill me with their slutty awful pollen making. For now I can garden AND breathe, a victory I'll take while it lasts.

On the Upcoming Occasion of Valentine's Day, An Open Mash Note to My Garden

2010-02-08T13:02:00.009-06:00

Oh garden mine, do you really know how much I love you? Let me count the ways...

I love you for your patterns

for your produce

for your sounds and shapes and structures.

I love you for your flowers

for your herbs

and for your constant encouragement to look out the windows and get out of doors.

You are demanding, ruthless, determined to have your own way, and yet you are rewarding, generous, and constantly surprising me with your beauty. You have humbled me, taught me, fed my spirit, my senses, and my body. You have been central to some of my best - and worst moments. I cannot imagine life without you. Be mine, garden, for I am already yours.

Hope is.....

2010-01-23T11:08:00.006-06:00

Honestly I don't have much to add to all the observations posted by area bloggers with regards to plants saved, plants lost, speculation as to what will withstand another blast of cold air and what will not.

Between disasters in Haiti that provide a perspective on the true definition of calamity and political events that reveal the back and forth reality of our human condition as we seek to pretend we rule ourselves, I find myself not defeated precisely, but quieted.

Me being me I took camera in hand and forced myself, after a bit of obligatory watering, to try a bit of a wider look, a softer focus. To see if there was really anything out of doors waiting for me other than my unfortunate three-four week long "Tasks Remaining Undone" visual listing tendency.

Oh, people. Nobody should be surprised to hear that the rest of the world has gone right along creating and destroying, being beautiful and awe inspiring and wonderful, without my watching.

And there is the center of it, really, as far as I am concerned.

Here I was being all me-me-me, thinking it was what I was noticing and what I was feeling, what I was doing or more lately, not doing, that counted.

And sure, what I do has an impact, but thankfully....with the deepest reverence and relief I am reminded by looking around that life is so persistent. Creation keeps on re-creating itself, in all its myriad forms. All I need to do is breathe, and watch. (Note: There is a snake photo in the slideshow to follow, just a warning to avert your eyes for my snake-a-phobic friends.)

UPDATE: Snake identification information from local expert Jerry Cates: "The snake is likely a juvenile Colubrid, in the genus Elaphe. It is almost certainly a Texas rat snake (Elaphe obsoleta lindheimeri), as the markings on the dorsal head are typically what we'd see in that species. Two related species, the southwestern rat snake (Elaphe guttata emoryi) and the corn snake (Elaphe guttata guttata), both look very much like this specimen, but have a set of "spear points" on each side of the head emanating from the first dark saddle on the neck, stretching forward over the eyes continuously to near the dark eye mask that passes through the eyes and over the nose. Instead this one has two paddles that break into smaller, discrete markings on the crown, characteristic of the Texas rat snake.

This is a very beneficial snake, and is not venomous, but it does prey on our birds along with its favorite source of food, mice and rats."

Out of the Way

2009-12-29T08:48:00.007-06:00

We all have our own ways to let others know when we need them to do something to satisfy us.

When I am wanting somebody else to do something not because they want to, but because I want them to? When I know they know this is mostly about me and not so much them, I will generally phrase it thusly: "Please clean up/move/take care of (fill in the blank) right now. It offends mine eye."

That King James Old Testament style speech is meant to send the accompanying message of "humor me - we both know I am asking you to do this for me...".

The Hub on the other hand, feels more a need to justify his request that we arrange some portion of our intersecting lives to satisfy his sense of what is salutary and right, so he will say "It is in my way".

This "in the wayness" applies to any clutter that is "not his". And honestly, clutter that "is his" is not considered clutter in his mind, so you get the drift of how the "in the way" designation is selectively applied.

And for better or worse, when things get to the point where the Hub is telling me that something or other of mine is "in his way", then I know it is time to do something about it. For him. Because I love him and he loves me and that is how it is supposed to work. We are not only about the life going on in between our own ears, sometimes we do things not for our selves, but for others.

So it was interesting to me recently the way the frozen gray and brown messiness of the tender plants here and there in our garden beds finally got to be too offensive to mine eye, so offensive they actually morphed into visually getting in my way.

I could not look out the windows without seeing flashes of morbidity everywhere I glanced. It looked to be a huge job and I typically avoid huge jobs like the plague. But enough was enough. Yesterday I took a deep breath, shrugged on a jacket and went out the door, clippers in hand.I spent 90 minutes working steadily and there is still a fair amount of work left to be done but over all, the results of much judicious pruning and removal have returned my exterior vistas to a more pleasing state. For winter.

How is your tolerance for wintry messiness? Are you lessez faire with regards to freeze nipped foliage? Are you motivated by plant health concerns or a sense of untidiness that must be addressed? I'm not looking for justification to leave the rest of the messiness outside untended to (really - I'm NOT). I am just curious as to what constitutes "the line" for you. What you can see and leave as opposed to what motivates you to get out and get it done? We're all friends here. Feel free to weigh in with your comments. I promise they won't be in the way.

Hanging by a thread

2009-12-17T08:35:00.006-06:00

I consider myself a fairly busy person this holiday season although I took every precaution I could to space out obligations in order to keep stress to a minimum.Regardless, the other morning I was feeling stretched a bit thin when I noticed....

My "Good Morning" spider, the one with the web in our kitchen window I watch routinely as I pour my coffee, was busily respinning her web.

This was not due to damage so far as I could tell, but a choice made after she'd moved previously trapped and web silk encased food sources from the perimeter of the old web to a spider sized contrived pantry she'd built over by one side of the windowsill.It struck me. Here I am, thinking of myself as "taking care" of a patch of earth, while all the usual occupants are busy taking care of themselves, with no real help (although occasional hindrance) offered from me. How very human of me to believe I was in charge.

I raised my cup in salute to this busy webby wonder, and felt a certain lightness as I realized how very little I am truly responsible for in the larger sense.

I am hopeful you will each experience your own version of lightness and wonder this holiday season, in whatever form it may take.

May peace and joy find you wherever you live.

How Low Did You Go? (DialUppers Beware:Loads of Photos)

2009-12-05T08:21:00.007-06:00

Considering the interweb is the "new fence" over which we all lean and compare notes, for those of you here in Central Texas, who along with me yesterday stood and shook your heads over some 40 to 60 minutes of intermittent snow flurries as you realized the worst to get through would be however many hours of bitter cold we faced last night, well now I'd like to know.

How cold did it get at your place last night?

Around 8AM it is already back up to 31 degrees but here in Rollingwood our low was 28 degrees according to our digital thermometer. Although it stores that information, it does not specify when that low occurred or how long it stayed below freezing here. However long that was, it was:Long enough for the bird bath out back to form a thin sheen of ice on top.Long enough the water in the rain barrels froze a little up top under the screening.Long enough for the redbud tree out front and the hackberry tree out back to be losing their leaves, a few at a time, simply dropping them in a neat circle round their trunks.Long enough to frost the grass.Long enough to rime the uncovered kale babies and mint.Long enough for some typical suspects to die outright, like the poke plants. The collards, along with other broad leafed plants may lose a few leaves, but typically they don't die outright. Typically it doesn't freeze hard this early either so......

All that remains now is to wait until the temperatures are safely above freezing to pull the improvised coverings off the various beds and survey potential damage. Some may not turn up for a day or so, but hopefully, most of the covered plants have survived to thrive in the more typical above freezing winter weather here. Fingers crossed.....

Technically...

2009-12-04T12:54:00.004-06:00

It took until nearly 1 PM and nothing is sticking (thank goodness!) but they did get it right....today, in Austin Texas, it is S N O W I N G....

Share a thought for all the teachers in this area trying to get anything close to what was on their lesson plans accomplished now.

Naturally, I now have an errand to run to help ChefSon pick his car up from the dealer after repairs which means I have to drive in this rather than getting to brew up hot chocolate and enjoy the view out the window. Still, it is the elementary school teachers I feel for in all this. Good luck everybody!

Will it...or Won't it?

2009-12-02T07:35:00.005-06:00

Gorgeous skies out this morning. The clouds moving East as briefly backlit in spectacular fashion by the rising sun reminded me of this old saw, which was a favorite of my father's...

Red sky in morning, sailor take warning.

Red sky at night, sailor's delight.

Supposedly this predictive capacity of the sunrise and sunset skies is based upon the idea that a red sky results from the sun shining through clouds filled with dust and/or water, and if such clouds are to the West of a viewer that indicates a dust filled sky with newly stabilized air after a front has already passed through (most fronts moving from west to east riding the Westerlies according to this theory), while a red sky in the morning indicates either dust, or with a "fiery red" situation, moisture laden clouds with unsettled weather yet to move through the area.

So what's up with the red skies in Austin this morning? Maybe your life is not filled with weather geeks the way mine is, but whether or not you've been paying attention, buzz has it in meteorological circles that Austin is due for a hard freeze and potentially the first snow of the season, Friday, December 4th.

That's Austin, Texas, not Austin, Minnesota.I usually don't take such talk very seriously but was given pause when I heard they had thundersnow in San Diego a few days ago.

All of which highlights the need to understand we are not simply dealing with warmer temperatures alone so much as we are experiencing a more widespread climate disruption. I mean, snow in Central Texas before Christmas? Look in the dictionary under "disruption" and a copy of this week's weather forecast could be the illustration for the definition.

And I wouldn't care at all except for what a hard freeze could do to folks trying to earn a living growing food around these parts. Growers on a larger than back yard scale may not be able to arrange row covers for entire fields. Bad weather plus a recession can equal no profit for struggling farmers.

Not to mention what this might mean for trees already heat and drought stressed. Good news is the colder temperatures might put a damper on the nasty insect populations, but that will depend on the length of time spent below 32 degrees, of course, and unfortunately, the freeze doesn't differentiate between "beneficial" and "mosquito".

We have a new greenhouse here thanks to Hub's efforts but it seems not to provide any insulation other than protection from winds. The temperatures inside the plastic sheeting are currently running even with the temperatures outside.We will have to provide a heat source if we want this structure to do more than isolate certain plants. Which is almost as frustrating as the random early freeze predicted.

Gardening, especially with an eye to providing edibles, is certainly not for the faint of heart.

So.... What do you think about the snow in Austin in early December buzz? Typical, drum up advertising dollar weather forecast hooraw or might this be a serious freeze threat for our area?

And, how do you cope with the random hard freezes we have in this area? Do you duck? Let nature self select what will survive?

Cover? Throw protective layers over the tender stuff and hope it holds the temperatures higher?

Haul everything inside? Do you have room in your spaces for planters that ordinarily live out of doors? And if you do pull things in - do you leave them in for the winter or take them in and out depending on the forecast?

We do what I have come to think of as the WinterTime HodgePodge around here. Some plants will fall by the wayside if it gets too cold, others will get wrapped up a bit with fingers crossed, still others will do the in/out dance from the garage while a couple will start their wintering over inside the house stints.

At least the rains stopped for a bit so we can get things in without getting soaked for our troubles. Ah....winter......

Lemony

2009-11-19T15:32:00.008-06:00

After weeks and weeks of waiting our two Meyer Lemon trees were finally ready for harvest.

To read about my plans for this long anticipated bounty, check out my other blog, Austin Agrodolce.

As a bonus for your trouble at the end of the post is a link to a wonderful recipe for Pumpkin Ginger Nut Muffins. (yes, they are every bit as yummy as they sound...).Enjoy!

End of the Line

2009-11-17T09:16:00.008-06:00

[click on photo for larger version]

I am recently returned after having been away, but cannot resist adding my two caterpillar's worth to the wonderful series of photos already entered into Gardening Gone Wild's current Picture This Photo Contest for November.

The theme for this month is "The End of the Line" and the thoughtful responses sent in so far are well worth your time spent visiting the blogs represented.

As is typical after being away from hearth and garden, I have a long (LONG!) list of chores demanding my attention, so I hope you will forgive my lack of an accompanying post this go-round. I am optimistic the photograph will provide its own context.

In the meantime I am hopeful you are enjoying the wonderful November light. I find this one of the most beautiful times of year here in Central Texas and with that said, out I go to enjoy more of it.

A Martha Stewart Moment

2009-11-07T16:49:00.009-06:00

First things first. I know we don't get a spectacular amount of fall foliage change here in Central Texas, but because of that I think I am more appreciative of the flashes of color we do get.So hooray for hacienda creeper and Happy Fall, Y'all!

Earlier today I was enjoying a post by Society Garlic about weeding she has done recently in her lettuce beds. I am a horrible procrastinator when it comes to weeding.

I rationalize I am letting the weeds get large enough to make it easier to get a good grip on them, but really I am just ducking the chore until I can't stand it any longer or there is some apparent threat posed by the encroaching weediness to the plants I am actually trying to grow.

Besides, as long as I leave my glasses in their case, everything looks all lovely and green.

With corrected vision however, the truth is out there. Our beds are currently nutgrass and bermuda havens, training camps for all sorts of invasive behaviors in waiting.

Along with weed removal, the idea of digging out our invasive nandina bushes has been a task I have delayed to the point of ignoring. I console myself with the knowledge that if I keep the berries cut off, at least I am not feeding those berries to birds who will then fly all around the neighborhood, cheerily depositing the seed materials along with a little dose of fertilizer for good measure.

Problem is, I really like the way the berries look. It is not unheard of for me to leave them on the bushes way too long, only to finally head out with pruning shears in hand to discover most of them already long gone. Consumed and presumably sown.So today I got busy and took all the berries off the nandinas but rather than putting them safely into the trash this year I instead channeled the Great Martha and arranged them into two displays for our front porch.I am keeping a close eye to make sure these stay decorative and don't turn into freeform bird feeding stations, but am optimistic that most of the birds around here are so used to our regularly filled feeders with water close by in the back that they'll skip a visit to the front porch to gnosh on berries.If we do get a Hitchcockian assault out front, I'll go back to Plan A and in the trash they'll go. In the meantime, I think the arrangements look pretty durned spiffy.Totally festive, yes?

More, tell me more (updated)

2009-10-28T06:00:00.001-05:00

Update: To make more sense for those who might visit here from out of our "viewing area", here is a video clip featuring one of Austin's mover/shaker garden bloggers/organizers, Pam of Digging, as her garden was featured on Central Texas Gardener, the show I mention later in the body of this post. Enjoy!

Besides doing trimming to provide better sight lines around the bottle tree, I finally got all the corks together I'd been saving for "something someday" and decided they constituted "enough" to mulch the area right in front of the doing its best to imitate a still growing ~~hackberry~~ bottle tree.

Kids, don't try this at home. Safely accumulating corkage of this quantity requires the efforts of seasoned swillers.On my way over to the bottle tree I noticed an amusing moth settled in on my pre-munched collard plants.I cannot say what this moth is rightfully called, but if there is any sort of justice in the moth naming world, it would have to be called something along the lines of the elephant-snout-nosed-lays-eggs-that-hatch-into-larvae-that-eat-your-collards-moth. "Snouty" for short.

While wrestling with my own definition of whimsy lately (whimsy is like pornography perhaps - hard to define but you know it when you see it) I did spot an idea that was so genius I had to steal it to use in my own surrounds.Cheryl of Conscious Gardening's bottlecap snakes (that's her photo above) were the long sought after answer to a question I've been previously unsuccessfully fielding from my family for a couple of years now, that question being with regards to my own stash of caps "but what are you going to DO with them?!?". My answer prior to recently being "I don't know - something!".

Seeing as thiswas the slightly less than grand extent of what could be considered seasonal decor at our entry way I thought to press the upcoming candyfest into double duty as a raison d'snaktre, and et voila!

Cheryl - you are my hero(ine) and yes I totally have stolen this idea directly from the photos of your garden but I promise to always give you credit for coming up with this first. Pinky swear. Your garden is wonderful and I would clone it if I could.Oh - and while I'm on the topic of "Stealing Ideas from Cheryl" yes, reading about her garden is what got me thinking "now WHERE did I put those two buckets filled with corks?!" to anchor my bottle tree with cork mulch.

Fair is fair - I already had my bottle tree and had idly thought previously that putting the corks in around there as mulch might be cool but truth be told....I did not find the motivation to pour the corks out there until somebody else led the way.

And yes I guess I am that person Mom. If everybody else threw their corks off the edge of a cliff I suppose I might do it too.

Anyway, besides it not being pouring rain today (Yay! and a bigger hooray that we've had enough rain that I am not moved to grateful tears just at the sight of precipitation promised in our forecast) I was dragging my camera around because I love morning light here.Which led me to thinking about ESP's upcoming stint on Central Texas Gardener and while I'm in the booth, padre, I have another confession to make.

At times, especially when I have my camera in my hands and the morning light is just so, I totally fantasize about having my spaces featured on CTG.

I walk around,framing shots,cropping them to keep the weedy and nongorgeous parts hidden,while in my head I hear the calmly seductive voice of producer Linda Lehmusvirta saying things like "the seemingly impossible task of managing to keep a sense of humor while dealing with Central Texas weather makes leaping tall buildings in a single bound pale by comparison, but this West Austin gardener manages to do just that and take whatever Mother Nature dishes out in stride.."while Smash Mouth's "Walking on the Sun" blares out in the background.What's that you say? CTG doesn't play music with lyrics while touring a garden? Well, all right Mr. Fantasy Crusher - there will be something very much LIKE SmashMouth's song only a lot quieter and without lyrics then. Jeepers. Keep your garden gloves on.

So yeah, the camera is panning around and Linda is murmuring, "Preserving a place for wildlife to peacefully coexist is one of the main goals in this suburban backyard where native plants are in abundant evidence to provide food and....SCRRTCH! Sound of needle scraping across record as the tell tale evidence of my lifelong romance with the (dun dun dunnnnhhhh) totally invasive, every gardener worth her trowel has torn these all out already,nandinas in the back yard.

Linda's voice suddenly takes on an uncharacteristically stern and scolding tone "Here and there are signs there is work yet to be done in this evolving paradisiacal space". The camera cuts abruptly to me as I begin to squirm in my chair and whine about how charmed I have always been with the lore that if you plant a Nandina at the entrance of your garden and whisper to it all your worries and cares, your life and your garden will be trouble free.

I mumble guiltily about how I've always admired Nandina for doing something interesting year 'round, producing colorful leaves or white flowers or gorgeous berries... I glance around furtively, failing to make eye contact with the camera as I mutter about how forgiving Nandinas are to being trimmed to display stems or to being cut back, how they accept any soil, any amount of water, care, or total abuse and yet continue to put their best face forward, no matter what.The camera begins to do a Brian DePalma like swirl, quickly taking in whatever else redemptive there might be to look atas the segue music swells up, playing at 5 times regular speed.

Cut back to a startled and slightly frowning Tom Spencerwho is actually atypically flapped and speechless for a moment having not prescreened my segment prior to airtime. Now caught totally unawares that this featured garden served as an invasive plant training camp of sorts for the really terrible, if I don't tear them all out by the roots soon then the terrorists will already have won Nandinas, he struggles valiantly to find some positive way to end the segment.

"And that wraps up our tour of the good, the bad, and the ugly as we are reminded once again there is always something more to do in a typical Texas Garden".

And, cut to Trisha Shireywho will be demonstrating how, with a little plant based dye turned spray paint, you too can use elements from your compost pile as economical Christmas decorations in these, our troubled economic times.

Sigh.

Good luck ESP with your segment and especially with your stated goal to set Linda to giggling live on camera. You carry on your shoulders the hopes and aspirations of so many of us for whom being featured on CTG will remain only a dream......

I do have plans on getting all the Nandinas pulled out by their roots one of these days. Really, I do.

Doing the Math

2009-10-25T13:10:00.015-05:00

Take watching Central Texas Gardener's show on the Master Gardeners Tour, add reading various blogs featuring wonderful photos of their favorite vignettes on the tour, take that total and add the extremely prolific's EastSide Patch's announcement of pre-taping jitters for his own appearance on CTG and what do you get?

Inspiration enough to get me moving on a long list of small jobs and a well considered but continually postponed project for our bed out front closest to the house.

You don't believe me? Here, I'll show you my work....

In the back, I trimmed overgrowth back to clear out a better line of sight for the bottle tree. Seeing as temps are dropping into the 50's overnight regularly and another cool front is on the way tonight, I went out to enjoy and capture the tropical bloomers for what may be the last time this season.

I checked on the sloooowly ripening Meyer Lemons and I wove the rambling rose into the trellis.I also poached two large rocks for my front bed project.

And speaking of the front bed, here it is in its BEFORE state.There was nothing wrong with this bed per se. As a matter of fact, some people will probably look at my after shots (be patient, I'm getting there!) and be thinking to themselves "she calls that an improvement?".

I'd shifted it over to nearly all herbs because it is close to the door (a must I've discovered for last minute herb harvesting in inclement weather) and small. This allows me to give it extra water as needed and cover it to protect the plants from any hard frosts or freezes we have to face in our increasingly sketchy Central Texas weather.

I could have bought a couple of bags of bark mulch, tossed them on, and let it go at that. But. This bed just didn't really fit with the other areas in the front of our house. And slowly but surely, despite my apparent intentions to be as haphazard as humanly possible with regards to any sense of overall design for the beds around our house, there has been the excruciatingly slow evolution of what I think of as Central Texas Eclectic.

What do I mean by that? While not a completely native landscape, there are mostly native plants in use. There is liberal use of native stone and xeric plantings and not a single blade of St. Augustine left (except for the persistent strands that occasionally crop up in out of the way places). I have not spent much on the plants or hardscape, using loads of passalong plants and seeding in areas from packets and harvested sources both.

And this little bed close to the front door just hadn't gotten with the program. Until today. I think the bed with rocks is simply more interesting than without. See? Boring: And then interesting:My bed, I get to say. Deal? You want all mulch you do that in your yard. Okay then.

I went to my favorite local nursery, scored the requisite three bags of rocks, some chervil seed (the one herb I was missing to serve as a replacement for tarrgon which won't grow well here), and as mentioned before, poached some larger rocks from other beds that had maturing plants no longer requiring the stony interest pieces in place.

And...voila! Now this bed is much more like the others.As is typically the case, getting the horizontal surface into shape only underscores for me now how much I despise the side wall of the rising driveway in the background there. But, as I was sitting sipping water and enjoying the new look, I had a brainflash about what to do to transform that fugly wall into a Central Texas Eclectic Charmarama.

I am going to gather and assess the materials already on hand for this magical transformation to be, and hope to start work on it as soon as the showers predicted for tonight and tomorrow pass through. So stay tuned folks. The transformation of this bed might not rock your socks off, but you will either love - or hate - what I have planned next.

While I was out working, I tweaked the shelves a bitand took another bit of time to stop and enjoy the orange and purple going on in another bed, a look I had actually planned for and then had to wait through the hottest most hellish summer imaginable to see.One final note. This little bit of whimsy - a marble planted in the nook of a rock?This one is for you, ESP. A teensy tiny vote of gardener's thanks for all the inspiration you provide through your blogging. Gracias, amigo!

It takes a storm system this big....

2009-10-09T10:00:00.006-05:00

I was out watering my vegetables and certain tender seedlings last night just in case.

I realize we had a 100 percent chance of heavy rain forecast for today but somehow I couldn't bring myself to trust the tired looking, wind beaten babies to what still seemed fickle fate. Plus we'd had several similarly high percentage forecasts revised down (WAY down) regularly lately as the storm systems moved to the North, East, South, or West of us. It was raining predictably anyplace but here.

I read reports of substantial rain all around us this past Sunday (for instance), but we didn't get drop one on our beds. This was great news for ACL Festers (we live close to Zilker) but no so great for the wildflower seedlings that are optimistically springing up here and there. I was happy for the Festers, sure, but they are not my concern. The seedlings are totally mine to fret about. As are the vegetable starts out there promising cool weather harvests to make up for the Summer of No Home Gardening Success To Speak Of.

So I watered a few choice plants late yesterday just in case. Which now I superstitiously will claim actually triggered the long lasting watering they are getting skywise today.

I can take a scientific stance about many things but rain? There I get very "shake a rattle at the sky" for some reason. Go figure.

Pardon my saying so but....

2009-10-06T09:08:00.012-05:00

The above is my entry for the October Picture This! contest. It is an arrangement from our mid-June '08 CSA share from the wonderful folks at Tecolote Farms.

This month's theme for the Gardening Gone Wild Picture This photo contest is "Abundant Harvest".

According to the judge for the contest, Saxon Holt, his friend and fellow gardener, Rosalind Creasy along with photographer David Cavagnaro invented the style - that of a basket spilling seemingly artlessly arranged produce.

I am not one to argue with judges as a rule, but I'll offer the suggestion that "abundant harvest style" is just as likely one previously planted in all our subconscious image storage bins seeded by years of viewing Thanksgiving Cornucopia arrangements.

No matter. Rosalind Creasy is a longstanding heroine of mine so I'll stop my quibbling. At the least it could easily be said Creasy and Cavagnaro perfected the Abundant Harvest look, OK? Onward.

While the artlessly-spilling-from-the-basket format was precisely where I began with photographs of our CSA baskets from Tecolote Farms last year, (the following shot from March '08) what I ended up with after playing with the photogenic produce a bit, gave me what I think of more as a still life style.

And maybe that was the intended takeaway - that artless look - which means I've missed the point of the assignment. D'oh! I decided not to overthink this - the contest is supposed to be fun despite picayune nattering from entrants like me.

Whether or not you are contest minded, do be sure to check out the Gardening Gone Wild website itself along with the typically stunning contest entries. There is a wealth of information and an embarrassment of photography riches there all ripe for your picking. Reading there is a ton more fun than weeding, and potentially just as beneficial.

One final reminder, click on any photo in the post to get a larger view and enjoy the details.

There were bells...

2009-10-04T08:33:00.012-05:00

[Headnote: This is a bit of a shout out to the lovely Iris of Society Garlic. She posted recently about Reliable Ruellia and it got me nodding my head as I was surveying with satisfaction the ruellia in my own yard. Appreciating them got me to looking around and noticing with new eyes some of the other heat/drought hardy performers around here. I wanted to shine a bit of blog light on them in case I get all rain reliant and distracted when it comes time to buying new plants next year. Under the kindler gentler conditions of Spring some years my gardener's memory seems to get pretty short.]

In the hills,
but I never heard them ringing.
No I never heard them at all,
'til there was you.

Substitute "guitars" for "bells" and that is what its like around the Agrodolce this weekend. Austin City Limits Music Festival at Zilker is in full swing which naturally, means a lot of different things to different people.

Photo of Bright Light Social Hourby Matthew Taplinger,courtesy ACL photo stream for Friday

For some it means they can't get to here from there. The Bee Cave Road on ramp to MoPac is closed for the duration. Others won't get their walks around the river due to parking snarls and competing foot traffic. Some of us, living just west of the park area, will be treated all weekend long to a muffled version of the music as the sounds float to us over the intervening hills. Especially with windows opened to welcome cooler air.

I've heard a few complain of this but it mostly reminds me of when my kids were younger, living at home (insert deep, slightly pathetic, old geezer sigh). Hearing slightly muffled music emanating from their rooms or their vehicles as they pulled briefly into the drive for a pit stop at home, was not all that different from overhearing the music in the park this weekend. My kids' music wasn't playing specifically for me either, my hearing it was only an indicator of their proximity, an instance of somebody enjoying their tunes, a prospect I generally encourage.

This is the first time since the introduction of Fest that no part of our family will be part of the milling throng. With LawSchoolGirl away at school, and ChefSon scheduled to work all weekend, our two likeliest candidates are well out of the fray. As the Hub is not a fan of musical experiences featuring the inability to control volume, ambient temperature or comfortable seating options, ACL is not his style. As for me, I won't go alone. I don't enjoy huge crowds so only ever tolerated Fest in the company of 1-3 others so I could hunker down, enjoy the music, and watch the crowd flowing by like they were on some sort of (really!) big screen.

That said, Friday's weather must be taking a prize for all time Fest Perfection, yeah? Cool temperatures, slightly overcast most of the day then clearing for a great sunset and an awesome nearly full moon. Won't ever get much better than that around here.

And Saturday's weather certainly started well. Cool, overcast, and I was out the door figuring to get to Wheatsville early so I could do my grocery shopping and get back home before most of the fest traffic and hooraw was underway. That's when I got stopped dead in my tracks and had to go back in the house to fetch my camera.

A volunteer Datura bloom had opened and was just begging me to take its picture. I am captivated by these flowers, in form so close to a morning glory but with enhancements of larger size and those curlicued flourishes to recommend them. I cannot begin to describe to you how enchanting I find these. They look to me like piped icing confections.I'll grant you my admiration for this plant was first attracted by their appearance on canvas by Georgia O'Keefe. She didn't pull any punches, calling her work "Jimson Weed".

Yes, the plant is Jimson Weed, but Datura is a better match nominally for how I react when I see these spectacular flowers. I don't have livestock to worry over and if a careless deer suffers from unwisely gnoshing on this plant my sympathies will extend only to offering them the advice to keep their teeth off my landscaping. Ahem!Exotic? In appearance only as it turns out, proving to me for all time that "weed" is ever only in the mind of the beholder.

Predictably enough, once I got out there with my camera I slowed down, took a look around, and was struck by several other beauties that had patiently waited out the summer's heat only to bounce back with an assist from the rain and cooler temperatures of the past two weeks. I'd been taking them mostly for granted.

Once recognized, that sort of callous approach didn't sit well. I wanted to document the sterling performers for the stars they truly are and I needed to do it immediata!

There is the majestically exuberant Queen's Wreath, called Coral Vine by some. Antigonon Leptopus for long.The bees just love this, and I love that it bloomed through the heat, through the drought, with little indication that it heeded either.

Then there are the Four O'Clocks, Marvel-of-Peru, or Mirabilis. These beauties kept it low and slow this year and I thought I'd lost many of them but once the rains started back up and the heat index dropped back down properly into two digits they were all about making up for lost time.

Many consider these weeds because they crop up in ditches and along fencerows locally, but I remember them as one of the first flowering plants I ever successfully raised from seed when we lived in Salt Lake City. I held on to that, my first seed packet, for quite a while before I could bear to part with it. The ones in my yard at the moment are from seeds I gathered on walks in my neighborhood. They set seed profusely and I simply pull out the ones that grow where I don't want them, tossing the plant into a spot where they'd be more welcome. As often as not, next season, they'll reappear where I tossed them. Mirabilis, indeed.

Finally for today, my sweet little Potato Vine, Solanum laxum. This plant, growing in fairly deep shade, is not nearly as bloomtastic as the Queen's Wreath but it is evergreen throughout the winters (so far) and does keep offering a few flowers nearly year 'round.The small blooms hang in clusters, starting out a light purple then brightening to white. Tiny beacons of light in the shade of the oak trees and welcome there no matter how few in number they might be. I've seen photos of these loaded with flowers when grown in sunnier spots which makes me even more grateful for the persistence of the smattering of blooms mine gives me in lower light.

And there you have it. A Fabulous Four of bloomers that have hung tough through what was certainly the worst Texas summer I've gardened through. Add in shared admiration with Iris for Ruellia, and you have yourself the start of a nice hardy, well adapted to the area plant list to give you ideas for addition to your own spaces should you have some gaps or a need to replace more persnickety species.

Texas, bring your worst. Deer, drought, heat, ice storms or flooding rains, these potentially lesser appreciated plants have survived it all like the tough Lone Star Ladies they are, with beauty and grace.

At last...

2009-09-26T11:06:00.006-05:00

I finally (FINALLY) got out and spent most of an entire day weeding, planting and transplanting.

Despite the resulting need to gobble over the counter anti-inflammatories like candy, I am feeling a huge sense of relief. There are hours (and hours) more work to do, including a lot of foolishly postponed weeding I ignored while temperatures were simmering in the triples, but I have enough of a start I think I now can actually break the rest down into doable pieces.

That is a difficulty I have when jobs feel too big. I know I can't get it all done so I typically postpone getting any of it done.

But I've crossed the line now, broken the barrier, entered the zone. Whatever you want to call it, after some cooler days and two rainy spurts, the plants came back and so did I. The gardening game is officially back ON.Now I feel I am functioning more properly as the gardener again, I also feel free to thoroughly enjoy the beauty of the garden.How about you? Are you steadfast in your garden chores weather be damned? Do you get daunted when large projects loom? I don't consider myself a fair weather gardener but seriously - the heat this summer. It was too much for active gardening in my book. Oh, are you sitting there silently judging me now for admitting I mostly kept out of the heat? (that is rhetorical - don't feel a need to answer unless you will be gently encouraging)

We may not have broken the all time record (and if you are one of those who felt that would somehow have made this past summer matter more I extend my condolences) but record breaker or not, I am thrilled to have the summer of '09 safely behind us. So, yup, I apologize for the interruption and will happily return to my regularly scheduled gardening.....

Did You Hear It?

2009-09-22T10:22:00.011-05:00

We had that lovely three inch rain recently, and cooler temperatures to go with, but then the weather began to snap back into a disturbingly familiar pattern.

Warm by mid morning, hot by early afternoon, no rain in the forecast and despite the promise of a cooler wetter Fall, we all had become too well acquainted with heat and drought to quite buy the hopeful promise of "wet stuff to come". Jaded, we'd already spent weeks that turned into months with no rain or relief from triple digits here in Central Texas.

I had wearily resigned myself to more conversations about how if this does not change, people are considering packing it up and moving. Carrying the weight of The Potential For Hot and Dry Forever and Ever, Amen, as the temperatures climbed, all our heads were hanging a little lower, our steps slowed, warily surveying the skies.

But then it happened. Woken last night by a quick flash of lightning, thunder delayed just to the point of having stopped counting "Mississipi"s, and there, did you hear that?

The gently insistent whisper of rain hitting the roof, water flowing from gutters into barrels, all disturbing only the lightest of sleepers.

This morning, when we woke up, the Hub checked his schedule to discover he didn't have to be anywhere at any particular time. It was 65 degrees outside and our gauge was working on catching a third inch.

And so it was decided. Today would be a day to have a sit down breakfast. In the morning.

This might not strike you as particularly earth shattering but around this house we long ago abandoned the idea of any sort of a meal in the morning. Common wisdom be damned, after years of abrupt starts to the day we became "just coffee" in the morning people, and although we still enjoy breakfast foods a great deal, they had exclusively appeared in the guise of "breakfast for dinner" for as long as I can remember.

Not today. We opened the windows to cool breezes and the kind of peaceful quiet only a rainy day can bring (no mowing or blowing in this wet weather). I made nutty pancakes and sausage links and we enjoyed them with slow cups of coffee and watched the rain falling gently onto our grateful garden beds.Cool wet weather. I am not certain I have ever appreciated it so much as I have this year. The weather today soothes like a mother's cool kiss on a child's feverish forehead.I'm off to watch the hummingbirds quarrel over who gets what perch at their feeder. I hope you have a lovely day, wherever and however you are, and I hope you too are surprised by cool or warm or wet or dry, whatever you need the most.

Up On the Roof

2009-08-24T20:28:00.003-05:00

Although I am beginning to think we will never truly garden again as we continue to manage a hospice center here for dead and dying drought victims, take a look at what enterprising folk are doing in other "impossible" gardening situations: Twelve Stunning Rooftop Gardens

Stunning, indeed...

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Merriam-Webster Comments on the Weather

2009-07-23T07:48:00.008-05:00

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day
July 23, 2009

skosh

\SKOHSH\

noun
Meaning: a small amount : bit, smidgen

Example Sentence: It rained cats and dogs in the Austin area last night much to the relief of many a gardener and farmer but at my house it only rained a skosh.

Sad but true people. A few miles to the north, south, east or west of here and there were rains ranging anywhere from 2 to 10 inches. 10 inches. That may be too much of a good thing.

Here where I live? Not even enough rain to get the driveway wet underneath the oak tree canopy.

It got nice and humid and we could hear the thunder, see flashes of lightning occasionally, but really nothing happened here last night. Kind of a rain tease if you know what I mean.

The forecast is for more rain "in the Austin area" again today. It has rained all around us for days in a row now, the moisture taunting us with a "so near and yet so far" attitude. I keep hearing a weather version of the soup Nazi in my head "No rain for you!".

Time to shake a rattle at the sky, people. Maybe if we all set up our largest fans we could blow this hot dry weather over to the folks on the East Coast where they have had nothing but rainy cool days for the most part. Y'all ready? 1-2-3...Blow!

Picture This Photo Contest for July

2009-07-15T07:45:00.022-05:00

The folks at Gardening Gone Wild have designated Flowering Trees as the subject of the July Picture This Photo Contest.

I really appreciate flowering trees and had a hard time settling on a shot to submit. I eventually chose this favorite from a couple of seasons ago, when Central Texas spent the first two weeks of a new year with daily high temperatures in the 70's. This was followed by a vicious three day cold front bringing battering rains that turned into what became an epic ice storm around the 15th of the month.

[click on the photo for a larger version]

The Redbud trees had apparently been tricked into early blooms, which appeared along branches then cruelly coated and weighted down with ice.

The ice caused quite a bit of damage and I had concerns we would lose this tree, one of our favorite Redbuds (Cercis canadensis var. texensis) out front. Even two years later it is still too soon to know if it will recover fully, especially now it is being treated to a second year of drought and extreme heat. So far so good however, and when I look out at our yard currently cooking in the heat of July, and then compare that view to my photos of the same areas coated with ice, I can only shake my head at how resolute the force of life is in these plants that share our spaces with us.

The photos submitted for the Picture This contests are often quite breathtaking. I have found cruising through the entry links one of the most pleasant ways ever to make the acquaintance of a lot of new gardeners with blogs who share my tendency to take photos of everything they are doing. Hope you'll drop in and see for yourself. Better yet, find your own favorite photo of a flowering tree and send in an entry. Don't dilly dally, the deadline for July submissions is Wednesday the 22nd at midnight.

I like to watch (everybody eats)

2009-07-05T07:01:00.010-05:00

Hope you had a lovely 4th. We are all duly flagged, paraded, hot dogged and fire worked for the year. A bit gratefully we will return now to our regular programming minus that red/white/blue color scheme.

Although we did have an inch of rain over a 36 hour period last week which was as welcome for the cooler temperatures the cloudiness brought as for the moisture, all that is history now. Out in the rough and tumble of our garden beds the plants are strictly in "but what have you done for me lately?' mode.

What we have done for them is to manage to keep things trimmed and watered for the most part, but that is about it.Otherwise, we are mostly hanging in the air conditioned house and watching whatever is happening outside through the window, preferably with a cool drink close by.

As if heat and drought weren't enough, the few hardy plants that have survived so far are now being subject to the damage various herbivores and insects are bringing with their munching parts of all sizes.That's the way it goes out here in the semi-boonies. Life in the hills is considered a fair trade for not being in "town proper", which it mostly is if you do not take the damage caused by the wandering hordes of deer, the digging dillo's, marauding squirrels, birds and insects too personally.

I'm mostly there.

Did CanMonkeyGirl serve as an effective deterrent to keep Bambi and company from nipping the tops off the zinnia starts? Nope. CanMonkeyGirl is still cute despite the loss of one button eye that has her caught in an eternal wink, but she serves now as a slightly weird way to throw a little shade on the subject. The zinnia baby stumps have been apologized to and moved to the back deck where the deer and the antelope don't play.

My morning glory starts are in equally rough shape. One start carefully placed along a section of back fence already gave up the ghost, appallingly cooked in place although I clearly thought I'd watered and shaded it sufficiently. I thought wrong.

The morning glory vine in the front bed planter is off to a better start although it and the surrounding caladiums were all being systematically attacked by a teensy brilliantly colored grasshoppery critter. Correction: make that a teensy brilliantly colored grasshoppery critter with a voracious appetite and a huge mouth.

I did not manage to ID the culprit but speculate it is bird vulnerable because it was quite shadow shy. Whenever I leaned/loomed in for a closer look and/or attempted to capture it, once my shadow hit the plant it flung itself off into parts unknown. Given this heat, it did not take me long to call it even and retreat. The bug then returned to resume methodically gnawing all available leaves off the barely established vine. These hide and seek games went on for three days.

I never managed a photo but I did finally manage to kung fu style grab it with my hand and move it to a far corner of our lot where it can munch on something I'm not so emotionally invested in. The third remaining not so glorious start is still in its little pot where I hope to keep it safe until it reaches a size that seems more suited for the hard knock life here in Central Texas this summer.

Aside: I'd read someplace where a gardener had ripped out all her Poke plants because they came up "everywhere" after a year or so.I get that poke plants are typically considered weeds but I remain a staunch fan. Although I am noting small poke plants in more places as well, probably due in no small part to the freelance gardening effects of mockingbirds "processing" the berries they seem to enjoy, I feel encouraged by their presence rather than threatened.They hold up well even in the extremes of heat and drought, produce berries the birds love, are large and slow growing enough that I feel quite capable of staying ahead of the curve of their spread should they reach threatening proportions. The deer don't seem to like eating them and they provide an interesting silhouette and ongoing color with flowers and berry bracts, so I am sold, frankly.

Otherwise it is as I stated earlier. We are in holding mode, hand watering the pepper and tomato and basil plants, sprinklering the rest of the beds once a week as allowed by the Stage Two Drought Warning issued by Rollingwood.We are leaving the wildflowers gone to seed in place, keeping the feeders filledand trying to assure the munching parts of various hungry visitors don't actually kill anything. Through the window is not so engaging as out and about engagement, but until and unless the triple digits with no rain weather pattern breaks up for more than a day or so, that will simply have to do.

To trellis, perhaps to climb?

2009-06-14T16:03:00.018-05:00

When I read that the Picture This photo contest for Gardening Gone Wild would center around roses for the month of June, I was crestfallen.

Reading the list of suggestions on how to impress the judge, Debra Lee Baldwin, my heart sank further.
– ID the rose (give its cultivar name, such as ‘Perfect Moment’) if possible. Include the name on your blog or website when you post the photo.

– Effectively show a rose bush in a garden setting. This demonstrates skill on your part because overall shots are more challenging than tight shots.

– Get creative. Present your subject in a delightful and surprising way.

– Idealize the subject, as though it were in Eden. Try not to allow anything unsightly, like a marred petal, detract from it.

If ever there were a contest that I should not consider entering, this my friends, would sure enough be that.

We have two examples of what I consider "real" rose bushes. One red and one pink floribunda. We don't fuss over them and after a year of drought and a week of triple digit temperatures they look it. There goes the whole not letting a petal "mar" the shot idea.

The red floribunda is in an area we recognized last week had a broken sprinkler fixture. This explained the rapid conversion of that spot to a look that could best be described as "early Death Valley". The fixture has been repaired but the rose bush is still considering her options. Live on to return to thriving? Hang on coughing to tragically but slowly die? The jury is still out.

The other rose bush, the pink floribunda, was a gift given us some 18 or so years ago from a grateful patient of my husband's. We have transplanted it probably three times now to try and find a spot with the right amount of sun. We moved it again two years ago to where it is now - in a planter in our triangular bed that is "mulched" with a freestyle broken ceramic mosaic.Under ideal circumstances this would seem a fabulous set up for that whole "effectively show a bush in a garden setting" ploy. Except. Earlier this year we killed the St Augustine lawn around that triangular bed to convert it to garden beds. Right now those pink roses are blooming in the midst of a sea of dead grass sparsely populated by this year's crop of pepper plants. Additionally, the wildflowers in the beds just beyond the path it borders are rapidly going to seed.

None of this makes for what anybody would consider a Kodak moment, I assure you. Rather than Eden, this looks a lot more like some special level of Hell, perhaps reserved for people who were (caff!) careless with the roses entrusted to their stewardship.

As if there were any more straws needed the final one just might be that If I ever did know the name of the cultivar, that information has long since settled into some dusty irretrievable corner of my mind.

So. Here I sit reading the criteria for a June Picture This photo contest that is asking for precisely what I can not provide.

All that said, I despise excuses. I also try not to decide in advance for others what the outcome of any enterprise will be. I am grateful not to be the judge of this contest. Debra Lee Baldwin is. I am nothing if not stubborn and competitive so I decided to enter the contest anyway.

I will put our best face forward, toss a few shots of our pink floribunda into the fray, and see what falls out.

June Picture This Entry #1 Pink Floribunda

After spending more time than I am comfortable admitting to you searching through online photo identification sites for roses, I think this rose most looks like the cultivar Cecile Bruner. CB is typically a climber however and we have never even attempted to let this rose climb. Yet.

Now that I have spent the time trying to hunt down the identity of our blushing blooms out back I am halfway tempted to attempt to justify that by throwing a trellis up and inviting the rose to show me what's it got. If it is indeed a Cecile and has been languishing all these years just waiting for a chance to express its truest nature, well then better late than never.

June Picture This Entry#2 Pink Floribundas backed by wildflowers

Right? If I help this rose find its inner climber, then I think I've already won this contest.

Oh Yes I Can

2009-06-13T10:26:00.008-05:00

UPDATE: Thanks to a clever suggestion from LawSchoolGirl, who is home for the summer, the CanMan (who she maintains looks more like a can monkey - so be it) needed a couple of details. Voila. CanMonkeyGirl! Now, back to the original post:My impulse to keep taking photos of the morning glory vine babies to chronicle their progress has birthed a new saying here at Gardenista: "As boring as watching the vines grow".

Which for me, means not boring at all. For everybody else around here? Meh!

OK - truth be told it is not my taking the photos that is so much the problem as my irritating insistence that others view the photos and express what would apparently be faked enthusiasm for their progress.

Scene: Urban home office. Two adults seated at their desks, backs to each other, facing their computer monitors.
Adult 1: Hey honey! Look at how much the morning glories have grown since yesterday!
Adult 2: (not looking) Ummm hmmmmm.
Adult 1: Seriously honey, take a look at these two photos! Look how much progress they've made! Isn't it something?
Adult 2: (still not looking) That's great.
Adult 1: SWEETHEART. LOOK.
Adult 2: (barely glancing) Yeah. Great. Did you read that Dartmouth study on the lack of association between spending more on health care and getting better results?

And so it goes.

It is a good thing we "decided" to create a wildlife friendly space in our yard. The deer have taken to using the vinca major as a drop in day care for their babies.Please know this is not a result of anything new we are doing, deer of all ages and stages have been hanging around in there whenever it suited them all along.This is simply the first time I've been able to capture evidence since my car has been temporarily displaced from its spot in the garage while some 75 year old church pews are in there awaiting their eventual transformation into benches for various family abodes.

The deer are totally adorable when babies and I am charmed by the idea of sharing our space with them. Once they are weaned off mother's milk and become mindless grazing machines however, their negative impact on our landscaping efforts and their persistent attraction to certain flower heads I would like to feature in the front yard mean we are destined to clash.

Simultaneous with the morning glory vine success, I had reasonable luck getting some zinnia babies started. I have them in a pot out front. I really appreciate the deep hues of zinnia blooms and tried having them out front before only to have Bambi and company show up to delicately raze all the blooms off the tops of the stalks.

When I grow zinnias I am all about the blooms. Not so much interested in a pot full of zinnia stalks. So this go round I was ready to take certain steps to protect my flower babies.

Enter the Can Man. I keep reading that if browsing deer bump into something that clanks and/or moves around they will startle and move on. So I have fashioned a Can Man - very clanky - moves with even a gentle breeze - and have deployed him to assume Zinnia Protective Maneuvers.As is typical for my efforts I am smitten with the results. We shall see if anybody else finds my ScareDeer charming or if they rather feel he is a bit, well, junky looking.

I made him with a bit of a tongue out attitude, so he's ready for potential critics.I get that some folks are attracted by formal gardens and well kept borders. I am clearly not one of those people.

A Vine in Time

2009-06-10T10:51:00.003-05:00

Certain easy to grow plants are so encouraging I wonder why it is I ever mess with anything else.

Take these Seeds of Change Granpa Ott's Morning Glory seeds for instance. I snagged a packet of them at Wheatsville on a whim Saturday. I put them into pots on Sunday and today, Wednesday, I already have plant babies poking their heads up into the sun.My Hub was slightly less than surprised. He maintains if you watch a morning glory vine for about 10 minutes you might actually see it grow.

He may be right but I continue to be totally delighted and won over whenever seeds do what they are supposed to do, and especially whenever they do it so durned promptly.

I may take a running series of photos of these plants just for fun to chronicle their rapid rate of growth. Yes, that is the kind of garden geek I am. I'll own that.

To balance the unanticipated Instant Gratification of the morning glories there is my other frustrated quest to get a good photo of the two kinds of finches routinely feeding in our yard.

We have lesser and American goldfinches both, and they are not only thrilled with the thistle in a designated bird feeder we hung but they are also busy working the seed heads of the various wild flowers growing in the back.

They are very camera shy apparently and tend to manage to stay about three feet further away from me than I need to grab clear shots. Especially taking into consideration their darting tendencies.

Here's a typical sequence....

I spot a flash of yellow diving towards the ground. It is finches, feeding on the flowers! My heart leaps. I already have the camera in my hand.

Ooof. The bird is behind the flowers from me.

I inch stealthily forward....

Did somebody hear something click?

Fly away!

Last Gasp Before Summer?

2009-06-07T11:03:00.012-05:00

Here in Central Texas the squirrels, like the humans, seem to have developed a noted preference for heirloom tomatoes. In blog after blog there are reports of heirloom purple cherokee tomato stealing squirrels.

Not surprisingly, reader comments reacting to squirrel theft issues run the gamut from folks advising peaceful co-existence, reminding us squirrels were around since well before any gardeners arrived, to folks who state they too love their squirrels, right next to their mashed potatoes.

I got my tomato plants in late this year (thank you pesky oak allergies!) All my heirloom tomatoes are currently coming from the store like these beauties.My tomato plants haven't successfully produced enough fruit to attract anybody's attention. Yet. So far the squirrels in our area are mostly content to try and outmaneuver the weight sensitive bar on our bird feeder. When they give up (only temporarily) they hang out. No offense intended but this photo of a young male on the feeder pretty much offers a visual definition of the terms "balls out", don't you think?The Beauty Berries are blooming in preparation for setting a record number of berries later in the year. I haven't ever seen squirrels eating the vibrant purple fruit clusters but the birds, especially mockingbirds, really love them. They should be happy campers if these flowers are any indicator.

We had such a mild winter the queen's wreath vine never really died back. That means we have flowers earlier than usual this year and the bees have been a near constant presence. Getting a great shot of the rapidly moving bees is always tricky, but these all black bees are particularly fast workers. I don't know if they have a different way to collect pollen or nectar or if that is not what they are up to but they zip around so quickly I can't imagine they get much at a time. Anybody know what type of bees these are and why they seem in such constant motion?Finally, while I don't have tomato theft issues so far this year I am fighting a losing battle with rollie-pollies and the strawberries. Whenever I spot a strawberry that looks nearly ready to eat I carefully set it up off the ground on another stem or leaf. Somehow more often than not they end up back on the ground and by the time I get back to pick the berry it has been attacked and partially devoured. The bugs are there full time while I am a sporadic visitor, so they definitely have the opportunistic advantage on me.This is our first year to try these plants at all and now I see the philosophy behind the eponymous terra cotta planters. On my To Do list for next year is to buy more plants and their designated planters both, to see if we can manage to get sufficient berries at a time for a batch of jam or failing that, enough to feature in a salad or atop shortcake for two.

After several discussions about potentially starting queen's wreath vines in a couple of other locations, I decided to try some old fashioned Grandpa Ott's Morning Glory vines instead. One of the new features of gardening for me this year has been to stop pretending I don't care much about results.

I have, any number of times, thrown seed carelessly on soil hoping for vines without much to show for it. Yet, every time I see an old fashioned morning glory plant in bloom they stop me in my tracks. This time I decided, late in the year or not, I would try planting the seeds in pots, at the recommended depth, giving them good sun and keeping the soil evenly moist while germination is in progress. I will transplant the baby vines into the ground where I hope they will take off on their own and am determined to give them extra water until they are well established.

Yeah I know. Following directions to get more predictable results. What a concept! I am optimistic I will be back here later in the year with some nice shots of glorious blooms. If following the planting directions does not yield spectacular results then I predict more surly seed tossing with a return to previous "I don't care anyway!" posturing.

Finally here is one more shot (oh hush - don't look if you don't want to!) of our bottle tree.We have continued to do general work clearing out pesky hackberry trees and persistent trumpet and grapevines recurrent to the area. I am very enamored of the beauty this cleared-for-the-moment little cove reveals.

Whenever we see a bottle tree constructed out of a post and/or metal my husband tends to comment "that's not a bottle tree it is a bottle post!" and on cue I say "that's right!". It is a harmless enough conceit.

The highs in our area are predicted to climb to 98 degrees Monday and Tuesday. That trend in combination with a Do It Ourselves approach here makes it unlikely any large projects (or small ones either!) will begin outdoors in the foreseeable future. As previously mentioned, I do have a list started for next year. Included on there is a note to myself that I want to develop an area suitable for growing cucumbers. I'll do some reading up on them. I think I'd like to get some sort of vertical vine support fashioned so I'll be keeping my eye out in the blogosphere for ideas. I haven't read about squirrels stealing cucumbers off vines but that may be only a matter of time. Squirrels certainly seem to know a good thing to eat when they see it. As do rollie pollie bugs. The plan will be to have enough on hand to share.

Show and Tell

2009-05-27T07:52:00.013-05:00

It is busy out in the garden beds this time of year.

If I want to uncover ant activity, all I have to do is move a stepping stone to one side. Generally some enterprising colony has taken advantage of the protective cover and they'll have a nest going underneath. It is apparently very exciting to have this revealed judging by the frenetic activity that results.I moved the stepping stones out of necessity, not just to screw with the ants, but I was pleased in a kind of shuddery, "ugh" sort of way to note several different species of what I hope are native ants apparent. When fire ants become prevalent in our area they often out compete native varieties.

This is roughly akin to what happens at rush hour on MoPac. Great numbers of folks who have moved to Austin are all trying to get to work or back home at the same time along the same route. This results in gridlock. Only in ant terms, they don't sit in traffic and wait to get home, they apparently duke it out and the natives tend to lose out, territory wise.

So I am happy to have found other types of non-fire ants making themselves at home on our property. [Cue Disney singers to hum "Circle of Life']

Then there are the leaf foots and stink bugs. They are congregating morning and afternoons both, mostly on the shasta daisies although I found a few on a butterfly plant yesterday. I promptly doused them in soapy water. I was glad I didn't get so distracted that I missed the butterfly plant's seed pod that had opened to reveal these beauties.I'll scatter some and let the wind do the rest.

The butterflies are kicking into high gear lately. I completely suck at properly identifying these, but I always try at least to figure out what it is I've been admiring. I did see one white sulphur I couldn't get a shot of - camera shy I guess. These others were sunning, perhaps newly emerged?

It is always fun for me to try and catch them when they open and close their wings repeatedly. A sort of butterfly hide and seek game. I think these are Gulf Fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae) but I'll bow to anyone with more experience and confidence in identification.This shot isn't the wonder I'd envisioned, but I wanted to share how pretty it is down inside the throat of the trumpet vine flowers. Most of their blooms occur way way up in the tree tops here so it was fun to have some low enough I could get a good look inside. Sort of a hummingbird's-eye-view. We have had storms in the area lately, but nothing in the way of real rain here. Thank goodness for sprinkler systems. The skies have darkened, the lightning has flashed, thunder has been heard but all sound and fury signifying no useful rainfall.While all this sky hooraw is happening I've noted the grackles tend to light somewhere and call incessantly when there is rain close by. Their version of a rain song perhaps? I wish it worked more reliably. We really need some sky wet.

Last but not least, a bit of waiting finally paying off. These cone flowers are finally heading into their own. This plant takes two seasons to bloom and I am a lot of things but patient isn't even on my backup list of qualities. I'd all but written these off, had to sort of "forget" I was hoping they'd take hold so I didn't fret myself silly and so this year, when the bloom heads are showing up here there and yonder,it is hard not to get all grinny and smug to realize the waiting has paid off. So will I learn anything from the experience? Like how being more patient can really pay off? ???............ Naaaaah.

That's it from here for today. Hope the slightly cooler at least dampish weather is the boon for your garden that it has been for mine.

Daisy, Daisy

2009-05-19T12:26:00.010-05:00

It took me some time to track down just where I'd just seen them, but I knew I'd seen these bad boys somewhere (besides in my back yard), and I realized I was seeing them in enough numbers I ought to DO something.

It was on Renee's Roots - and these are leaf footed bugs and they are bad players in the garden.According to the comments, from folks no less reliable than Skip Richter, Travis County Extension Horticulturist and Master Gardener; Dick Pierce, lead teacher of Austin Permaculture Guild and also a Master Gardener; and Jeff Ferris, assistant Permaculture teacher and a gardening instructor at Austin Community College, there are various approaches to ridding yourself of these pests but the verdict was a solid GUILTY. The bottom line was to get rid of them, to do so without using toxic sprays, and to use varying approaches to best suit your situation.

They all recommended their own favorite tried and true methods and products, but none less invasive than the good old "get em off the plants and out of your garden for good" maneuver that uses very simple tools already on hand. A container, hot water, and soap.

I take my garden shears out with me and locate the spent flower heads loaded with bad bugs. Whenever I can, I simply dip the head under the surface until the bugs sink to the bottom. If there are too many (which creeps me out) I sometimes simply clip the flower head off into the soapy water with similar results.

I like this better than spraying because I can get out and drown bugs any time of day without fear of leaving water droplets on leaves when they might get sun burned as a result. So today I went out Bad Bug Hunting.

I'll admit - I had that song stuck in my head the whole time, slightly revised,

Bad Bugs

(bad bugs)

Whatcha gonna do?

Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?

Bad Bugs

(bad bugs)!

Dowsing in hot soapy water does magically immobilize these pesky critters, even adult stink bugs if I can get them before they fly off, and I am happy to report none of them were actually on (or even that close to) my eensy weensy tomato plants.I am also noticing that it is the spent heads of the Shasta Daisy plants that seem to be drawing them in, so in future I want to make sure I have those routinely planted around the perimeter of my veggie growing areas to see if I can keep using them as bait.

Ooops - missed one.

The Garden Sages above mentioned all sorts of other plants known to pull bad bugs away from your veggies, and perhaps they are all natives and beneficial in ways the Shasta Daisies are not, but I have these plants growing already and they do seem to be leaf foot and stink bug magnets for real.

Some of the time, what I have done in the garden just works for reasons all its own, despite my "efforts" to maintain a certain balance. This is one of those times and folks, I am just going to tip my hat to the garden gurus and know that in my back yard? Shasta Daises = an easy way to locate and eradicate the bad bugs. At least this season. Thank you daisies!

Picture This

2009-05-15T12:47:00.006-05:00

This is my entry for "Picture This", a photo contest from Gardening Gone Wild for May. The subject is container plants and Steve Silk, reportedly a master at creating spectacular container gardens himself, is the judge. Wish me luck!

ALL POINTS BULLETIN for Sphingidae Larvae

2009-05-08T11:28:00.009-05:00

NOT what you are looking for but....

Sphinx moth larvae munching on Euphorbia dentatum. Showing off with my ID? You BET!

Yesterday I had some fun actually successfully (for once!) identifying not only some caterpillars munching in the back garden bed areas here, but also the plant they seemed to prefer.

I usually stink at identification, so I am especially appreciative for the many folks who host sites that help people like me figure out who - and what - they have discovered in their gardens.

So when I heard back from Canadian researcher Bill Oehlke, who hosts the site that helped me identify the sphinx moth larvae yesterday with this special request, I was more than happy to agree to try and help.

From Bill's page: Sphingidae: Lintneria genus
In his book The Hawk Moths of North America, James P. Tuttle, designated the genus Lintneria as appropriate for several US species, previously listed as members of the Sphinx genus:

Lintneria: eremitus, eremitoides, separatus, istar and smithi.

Based on some consistent characters of adult moths, he predicted that almost all of the previously classified Sphinx species in Mexico and from Mexico south throughout Central and South America would be more appropriately assigned to the genus Lintneria. Only Sphinx adumbrata from Mexico remains as Sphinx adumbrata.

I am requesting assistance in exploring Tuttle's prediction. I seek larval images from Central and South America that are of the same general pattern exhibited by these Lintneria species.

The link to the page is here and here are a few of the images of what he is looking for evidence of:
Lintneria separatus, fourth instar molting, Cochise County, Arizona, September 29, 2007, courtesy of Robert A. Behrstock, id by James A. Tuttle.

Lintneria (Sphinx) istar or separatus, Ft. Davis, Texas, October 1, 2005, courtesy of Mary Brown via Katherine McMahon.

There are more fascinating images on the page which I sincerely hope you will check for yourself.

Again from Bill's page:"It is anticipated that the Lintneria larvae will most often be encountered on Lamiaceae: Salvia (Sage), Mentha (Mints), Monarda (Beebalm) and Hyptis (Bushmints); Verbenaceae: Verbena and Lantana camara (shrub verbenas or lantanas).

DING DING DING! - if that isn't a list of commonly used garden plants here in Central Texas I'm a sphinx moth's uncle.

Bill again "Although they may be encountered feeding during daylight hours, one is even more likely to discover them feeding in the evening or after dark.

Two of the greatest clues for discovering larvae are stripped foliage and droppings beneath the plant. You might be quite surprised at what will turn up in the evening or after dark in a flashlight assisted search.

It is believed that all Lintneria larvae will exhibit "a fleshy thoracic dorsal "horn" in the first 4 instars (unique in the Sphingidae of the world to my knowledge) which is replaced by a thoracic dorsal "hump" with a large black patch in the 5th instar." J.A. Tuttle.

Lamiaceae: Salvia and Hyptis sidifolia (= H. umbrosia) are the anticipated hosts in South America.

As most of these larvae are undescribed as yet, it wil be very helpful if you can rear the larva through to adulthood and also send an image of the adult moth.

If/when you are able to send images of the larvae, I will help with notes on care of larvae to get pupation and subsequent adults. You will be credited for any discoveries that get published based on your submissions.

If you are able to find any larvae matching the pattern/characters illustrated above, please send images (lateral and dorsal) with data (date, time, specific location, host plant, elevation, etc.) to Bill Oehlke. Your assistance in this matter will be greatly appreciated."

So OK we are not in Mexico or Central America either one but seeing as moths don't strictly regard political boundaries when traveling and due to differing weather patterns are showing up in all sorts of unexpected places, it makes sense for those of us here in "Northern Mexico" to be on the lookout.

These larvae are not armed or dangerous (though those horn thingies are impressively keeping me from wanting to cuddle). Just keep an eye out in your area, help spread the word, and let's see if we can help Bill out in return for him helping so many others out with his helpful site.

Thank you. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Everything Eats

2009-05-07T17:38:00.008-05:00

I am prone to expletives when startled. I am also prone to dropping things.

This afternoon as I headed out with hammer and nails in hand to try and rig up some way to keep a tripod trellis from continuing to tip over at the slightest breeze, I was stepping carefully as always when I noted this behemoth, triggering
my engagement in both startle tendencies at once. After I gathered my wits (and the nails) I more carefully placed the hammer to give you a sense of the scale of this monster.I then ~~wasted~~ spent twenty or so minutes getting various angled shots of the beast before getting on with my tipsy tripod triage.

When I pointed out said beast to the Hub he opined it was a bad player in the garden, based upon size and the speed with which it was munching before our very eyes. He stated it would probably attack the tomatoes next.

Fist to skies, "noooooooo!"

Because I am so contrary I immediately leapt to the creatures' defense, even though looking at it was creeping me out, and pressed him for specifics. Did he really know this to be a bad guy in the garden? No he admitted. But he advised capturing the two (I'd spotted another close by the first) at the very least if I wasn't going to kill it outright so I could try to determine what it was rather than unleashing it our unsuspecting plants.

He may have had a point. When I was showing ChefSon around the pepper plants last night we both noted the Hungarian Wax Pepperlooked to have been attacked by a deer, only it is in the back yard where deer can't freelance landscape the plant tops.

As I took a closer look around today, I spotted this so far slightly smaller third version of Gargantua, happily munching away on another pepper plant. Was this the Hungarian Pepper Plant murderer as well? Judging by the hasty retreat he beat when my shadow loomed overhead I say yes. Guilty is as guilty does.Trying to be karmically groovy (no easy task for a dedicated carnivore) I "relocated" the smaller of the three 'pillar pests to another area where it will have more choices that are not baby pepper plants, or hopefully tomatoes, either one.As if I can corral these busily munching bugs anyway.

I will try to identify these guys with the idea that the next time I spot any I'll at least know what response is warranted. But. I suck at bug identification so I'll throw out a big SOS here and now.

How about it? Do you know what these monsters are? Feel free to educate me in the comments section. I don't want to rob the world of a gorgeous butterfly to be but I also don't want to be feeding them expensive pepper plants, either. Or our tomatoes.

Update: Damn it! I discovered these guys are Larvae for the White Lined Spinx moths, (Hyles lineata lineata ). They are highly varied and feed on a great diversity of plants including willow weed (Epilobium), four o'clock (Mirabilis), apple (Malus), evening primrose (Oenothera), elm (Ulmus), grape (Vitis), tomato (Lycopersicon), purslane (Portulaca), and Fuschia. Tomato! Crap! I will relocate these guys (if I can find them again) out front where there is a patch of four o'clocks and call it a day. Sigh... I only found one - the mid size model, leaving the giganto stretch and smaller sporty sedan sized eating machines out way too close to my tomato plants for comfort. But I know who they are now and will not hesitate to capture and relocate them if they show up again. I just hope they only feed during daylight hours. Yikes.

Done! (for this year)

2009-05-04T10:32:00.014-05:00

I have been working sporadically to get areas in front that used to be exclusively St. Augustine lawn transformed into garden beds. I have a vision in my head of a very casual semi-rock garden look. There are spots where I think my vision is clear.Other areas will need more work and more time for grasses and other naturalizing plants (like this pigeonberry) to fill in. Not having a super hot droughty summer will help, but that may be too much to hope for.Here is what we originally had:And this is that same area now, uphill from the driveway, which is where I started the project.Click on the photos to get a closer view, as the teensy shots here don't quite do it justice. I think these beds are most entertaining for pedestrians, with different lines of sight opening up as you proceed along the curb. We have a lot of folks walking in my neighborhood so I consider this my gift to them.

I've been working from the curb up the hillside. The plan being to get a swath planted along the lowest parts to help keep erosion to a minimum while things were getting established. It seems to be working so far.I have big plans for eventually covering the entire hillside in all different sorts of plants with gravel and rocks interspersed. Seeing as this was the last day we have high temperatures forecast below the 90s, I am declaring the areas "done for this year". This year meaning the hot season. Once the temperatures begin to dip back into the 80s I'll get back to work.For now I want to rest on my laurels which hopefully I reduced a bit with the exercise today. As opposed to the first summer after we killed all the grass, I think you can tell there is something potentially beautiful other than regulation grass at least planned for here. Now begins my rain dance! Feel free to join in.

One last note. It was the urging of my daughter who got all this started. She kept encouraging me to stick with these very long term projects of moving from a monoculture to permaculture status. Actually, all the work in these beds represents a labor of love. My entire family has been very patient and supportive and any beauty that has been created here is but a small reflection of my love for them. Addendum: I have been sweetly reminded that the lovely ladies I walk with for exercise have also been extremely patient - listening to me gritch and moan about the work to be done, my aches and pains after a work day, and excusing me from joining them on certain cool mornings (like today). Thanks, ladies!

The Saga of a Bottle Tree, Chapter Two

2009-04-05T10:39:00.015-05:00

In which our protagonist calls "do-overs!" on her proposed version of a Bottle Tree.

My original choice for a bottle tree was close to what I wanted, but simply was too modest a specimen. It would not support the number or the variety of bottles I wanted to display.

Looking around the immediate area I spotted what seemed a more ideal candidate just behind my original choice.

Given that the oak pollen counts have limited my forays out of doors to brief sprinter like sessions in the afternoons only (supposedly pollen counts are higher in the mornings and no, I don't know why that might be, but my nose tells me it is true), I took advantage of some free time yesterday afternoon. I made several short work trips out back to de-leafify* limbs that had sprouted from a hackberry we had (mostly) cut down last year.

*Deleafify is a technical term we classier garden bloggers use to denote a process of stripping the small leafy branches off of bigger limbs. Some pedestrian types might call that "pruning", but it has nothing to do with prunes. Really. It is what it is - de-leaf-ifying. Onward.

This particular hackberry had unwittingly looked into its trash tree soul and somehow, by throwing out a halo of smallish limbs around the sawn off trunk, transformed itself into what may be a near perfect Bottle Tree.This tree, in other words, had read my mind and known what I wanted before even I realized it.

Creepy, but cool.

So here it is in all its current glory. [Click on the photo for a closer view.] More bottles to come certainly, and I want to play with the length of the limbs a bit more, but you already get the general idea. I wish it got a little more sun, but once I get back to a time of year when I go out of doors AND still breathe through my nose I will deleafify around the bottle tree to brighten the overall prospects.While I think about it - just in case you are not already familiar with the bottle tree tradition, here is an excerpt from an article with a version of the history of bottle trees.

The south is full of strange superstitions and this is one of them. According to legend, evil spirits, spooks, haunts and wooly boogers just cannot resist crawling into the blue bottles on the tree. It seems they have a great deal of curiosity, so they climb the bottles to see what is inside. Then they are trapped. By morning, when the sun comes out, they are destroyed.   

Curious little devils, are they not? It is said that when the wind blows past the tree, you can hear the moans of the ensnared spirits whistling on the breeze. The blue bottle tree is one of our oldest traditions, alongside painting your front door blue, which also helps to keep the spooks, evil spirits or what have you from entering your home. The origins of the tree go back to the ninth century Congo where hand-blown glass was hung on huts and trees as a talisman.

I've been coveting other folks' bottle trees for a couple of weeks now. This photo captures one of the most original variations on the theme I spotted so far:What about your yard? Are you hosting a bottle tree where you live? If so, feel free to send me your photos [austinagrodolce at gmail dot com]. If I get enough samples perhaps I'll start a Bottle Tree Gallery here on Gardenista. How much fun then, to have bottle trees both inside and out!

Projected

2009-04-03T09:22:00.017-05:00

I attempt to have something new going on around our house at any given time.

Trying out new plants, placing new features here or there, it keeps things interesting and reminds me that the more I learn about gardening in Central Texas, the more there is to learn.

We have another area of St. Augustine turf grass we are allocating for a new garden bed. This requires killing the grass off once it moves out of winter dormancy, leaving the dead plants in place for a season so their roots will hold the soil and nurture it as they decompose, followed by reseeding/replanting the area gradually with various new specimens to create a stable biomass.

OK - I tossed the term "biomass" in there because it makes me feel very much the SuperGardener.

If you've followed this blog long you already know I am quite the fan of before/after shots. For posterity, here is the new garden bed to be in its "Before" state.The new area is on either side of that triangular mosaic bed with the various planters in place. It will take weeks to months before I have a decent "After" shot but if you wait patiently I promise you there will be one. Eventually...

I don't seem to manage to get organized enough to participate in Carol's May Dreams Gardens Bloggers Bloom Day on the 15th of each month because I don't always have the proper names of whatever is in bloom handy. I am bad about that. I will buy something from the nursery, plant it, sort of forget about it and then when it begins to bloom or otherwise make a showing for itself I may have forgotten what it is.

I like having the proper botanical names though. If you call a bright yellow flower Taraxacum officinale it sounds less like a weed, don't you think?

A dandelion by any other name...

Forgetting what is where happens most often when I toss out wild flower seed mixtures. Some of the plants pop right up and I am comfortable with them already. Like blue bonnets (Lupinus texensis). I have really been enjoying the shapes the seed pods make as they form this year.Although their appearance makes me a little sad because that is also the beacon of the beginning of the end for the bonnets for the season. I've discovered I especially enjoy having blue flowers around me. Blue is supposedly the rarest color for flowers and perhaps my favorite shade for blooms as luck would have it. So I really appreciate these corn flowers too (Centaurea cyanus).

Then there are the plants like Showy Primrose that take two years to produce flowers. I'd forgotten they were in the seed mix, or maybe thought none of them had germinated because I'd also forgotten they take a while to get established. I typically don't recognize the plant without the blooms but once in bloom they are a childhood favorite for me. We used to call them buttercups because of the yellow centers. Another childhood favorite is the rain lily (Zephyranthes candida). I guess some of the flowers I like the best are the ones that are both tough and delicate.Other plants have names I like so much or that are so evocative in some way I have little trouble recalling them. Such as Moroccan Toad-flax.

Enough about names for the moment. Here is a fun new project that will be weeks in the making.

I decided I needed (read:wanted) a bottle tree. It is a very Southern custom, originally thought to have been brought to North America by slaves taken from Africa. The bottles, placed upside down on branch ends, were placed outisde a house to capture evil spirits before they could enter.

I want to go on record as being all for capturing evil before it gets in the house. I have enough trouble cleaning up after the cat.

While talking to the Hub about introducing our own bottle tree, he suggested I use one of our regrown-from-the-stump elm trees in the back and modify it into a living bottle tree. I am not altogether sure this will work long term, and I am not completely convinced there will be enough usable branches to get the effect I am after, but after pricing some of the bottle trees for sale on the internet, I figured it was certainly worth a shot. Here are the early results with (ahem!) the promise of many more bottles to come. Bottle Tree Before:And After:I know it doesn't look like much right now, but I have big big plans to sacrifice myself ruthlessly in a quest for more bottles. Plus, other than those plans to empty lots of bottles we are (thankfully) fairly small frogs in the "evil attracting" pond so far as we can tell.

To wrap it up for this post I will offer these beauties. Another couple of specimens that bloom more reliably after a season to get established: the Cutleaf Coneflower,(Rudbeckia lacianata) and the Verbena Rigida, or Sandpaper Verbena.I think the way the edges of the individual florets crinkle and turn blue as they age is wonderful. But then some say I am too easily amused. Oh wait - one more item. There is a mystery I must share. To wit, this gorgeous poppy. According to the bag from Wild Seed Farms this ought to be either a Corn Poppy or a California Poppy but to me it looks more like an Icelandic Poppy.

Whatever specific type it is, it is most definitely a Poppy of some sort and I am quite smitten with the shading on the petals. Each flower looks like a watercolor masterpiece in miniature.

There you have it - a report from this garden and gardener for April. Once the oak pollen counts fall I will be back outdoors working to get in some vegetables, fingers crossed before it gets too hot. I will also be posting new photos of the bottle tree as it either works out beautifully or gets chalked up to "Lessons Learned". Stay tuned and do drop back in!