South of the River

Looking again

2007-10-20T10:03:00.000-05:00

I've been less than enthused about my garden for the past several months for various reasons, some too tedious to go into and some obvious, like the heat that's continued — as I know it will every year and yet still begrudge — into October.

Much of the garden just looks tired, not unusual for this time of year, and the rest looks unkempt or worse. Then there are those parts I'm just tired of: plants that failed in some way to earn their keep or outgrew their spaces, plants I've failed to take care of and whose unattractive state only reminds me of work undone. I had gotten to a point where all I noticed were the problems (that and the spider webs).

Then an offhand comment made me look at the garden with fresh eyes.

A friend was visiting and walked out into the upstairs garden. She looked around for a minute and, just as I was about to open my mouth to make excuses for the sorry state of things, she said, "Oh, your garden looks so lovely." I resisted the automatic denial that is always so easy for me and, after she left, came out and looked around again. I still saw the problems but I also saw things I liked.

This area by the upstairs porch is, despite the problems I also see (but about which I'll keep my mouth shut for now), the bit that caught my eye that day. Not a lot blooming (you can't see the sparks of blue from the sporadically blooming salvia guaranitica in the picture) but I like the forms of the succulents contrasting with each other and with the leafier plants behind. And the fading blooms of the salvia leucantha in the background are still worth looking at, even as the plant sprawls every which way.

And a couple of days later I stopped to look at the far back bed, which from a distance is a tangle of overgrown and underwatered plants. Up close though I saw a combination of colors and textures that I hadn't noticed from a distance: the yellow tubular shapes of the tecoma stans and the smaller orange trumpets of hamelia patens, intertwined with the vivid aubergine straps of purple heart.

When I went to download these images I noticed this picture of pavonia flowers (and that sweetly pillowed bud, or is that a flower just closing up for the day?) that I took a month or so ago but never found a reason to post. The pavonia has stopped blooming for this year but maybe I'll remember to look more closely when it starts blooming again next spring.

Too much of a good thing?

2007-10-04T14:51:00.000-05:00

I checked the weather forecast in the newspaper this morning and was deeply bummed to find that the cold front — highs in the 70s, lows in the 50s — that I'd heard forecast for the weekend seems to have stalled somewhere north of us. I often find myself studying the weather maps at this time of year, looking for those curved lines that mark a front headed our way. After nearly 50 years in Texas and 25 years in Austin, you'd think I'd know not to get my hopes up this early but . . .

I know. I know. It wasn't really a hot summer by our usual standards. Not one day over 100 at the official temperataure recording station. And all that rain. More than double our annual total by June. What's not to like?

A Texas gardener would probably be run out of the state for suggesting that all that rain might have been too much of a good thing. I keep reminding myself of recharged aquifers and low water bills. But then I drive through my neighborhood, with its enormous pecan trees in every block, and I wonder if the rain didn't have something to do with the infestation of web worms that has sheathed branches of almost every pecan. I keep trying to convince myself that the white webs — which seem to be continuing to multiply and spread — are seasonally appropriate: nature's Halloween decorations. But I find them creepy, repellent even. Will they disappear when the leaves fall? I hope so.

And then there are the spiders. For several months I watched a spider — my daughter says it was a garden spider — build its intricately zig-zagged web in a corner of the carport. Pretty cool until it forsook the web and took to hanging out on the gate between the carport and the yard. Not quite so cool (it had gotten really big). And at first I thought the little crab spiders that started popping up here and there were cute. Such fun colors. A bright yellow spider. I'd never seen that before.

But enough is enough. Now, a stroll into the garden is an obstacle course of webs. At first I tried not to disturb them, carefully ducking under or stretching a section so I could get around. But now I'm just fed up. There is a web between every upright stem and post in the back yard. I knock one down, come back an hour later and find two more in its place.

I blame the rain.

Report from the jungle

2007-08-16T19:39:00.000-05:00

I just logged on and saw that I haven't posted since the middle of June. I missed July and August's Garden Blogger Bloom Days and, looking out at the garden, it looks like the blog is not the only thing that's been missing some attention.

No excuses really but some explanation: We returned from a three-week trip late Tuesday and much of the month or so prior to the departure was consumed with trip planning and preparation as well as finishing up other (paying) work. So both the blog and the garden were ignored.

We returned from our tour of Germany and the Czech Republic to find the Bermuda grass in the back yard an astonishing three feet tall. That was all I could take in at first but once D. hacked the grass back I could see that in three weeks the garden had gone out of control. Really, truly out of control. Apparently the unusual rains of May, June, and July continued through much of our absence and my failure to cut things back before we left resulted in a mad tangle of foliage.

Yesterday and today I've been trying to make a dent in the mess — pulling out masses of purple heart that has consumed whole areas of the long bed, removing enormous quantities of weeds and encroaching Bermuda grass and a few plants that died, either from too much rain or too much competition from overgrowth surrounding them (the mallow plant in the back bed died before we left and I found that all three of the salvia nemarosas that I planted behind the new agave at the corner of the long bed had also died, shaded out or smothered by the shocking growth of the bamboo muhly behind them).

The rains have continued, starting this morning and continuing on and off all day. The forecast predicts more rain over the next few days (the result of a tropical storm that came ashore in south Texas this morning). More rain, more growth, I suppose.

Right now I look at the garden and I'm not quite sure what to do. My impulse is to rip some things up (the volunteer chile pequin's time has come, I think: It's the size of an overstuffed arm chair, much too large for the place it claimed for itself) and cut most everything else in half. I just want to restore some kind of order, give myself and the plants some breathing space.

June bloggers' bloom day

2007-06-15T16:39:00.000-05:00

Bat-face cuphea and winecups

Once again it's Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, sponsored by Carole at May Dreams Gardens, who invites gardeners everywhere to let us in on what's blooming in their gardens on the 15th of each month.

My garden has entered its jungle-like state early this year, spurred on by an extraordinarily rainy and cool spring, causing plants to sprawl this way and that, growing over their neighbors and defying all of my best-laid plans. I often overplant and it looks like this year is no exception. The great growing conditions combined with my inability to judge how much space new plants will eventually require or to remember how big plants that have died to the ground will get later in the season has made for a garden that looks more like a thicket than an intentional space. And then the heat set in and my enthusiasm for going out and making changes or even pruning waned in direct correlation to the temperature. And the heat has definitely set in. All that's left of our lovely cool spring is a faint memory and lot of overgrown plants.

Enough of the whining. Here's some of what's going on in one Central Texas garden in mid-June.

At least one of the workhorses of my summer garden has started blooming. The first intricate blooms of the Pride of Barbados opened yesterday (interestingly, the first flowers are on the POB that we transplanted from the front yard this spring; the much more established plant in the far back is covered in buds but not yet flowering; the ones in more shade in the front are just setting buds).

A close-up of a Pride of Barbados flower

The whole bloom stalk; I love the way the buds come out in that pyramid of little balls

The POB's faithful summer companions, the hamelia patens and the tecoma stans are not flowering, although the tecoma stans did have a few blooms a week or so ago. Behind those plants in the far back, the trumpet vine "Madame Galen" started blooming this week and has quite a few more buds about to open. And draping over the wall, the Mexican flame vine is adding more orange to the summer mix.

Trumpet vine "Madame Galen"

Mexican flame vine; check out the claw-like new buds

Another summer bloomer, the bat-face cuphea (that's it up at the top) is blooming wildly, mixing well with its neighbor the winecups, which are continuing to be covered in blooms on long vines that are crawling gracefully over everything around them. Behind the cuphea the cleomes are continuing to bloom, white and pink and purple.

The salvia guarantica "Black and Blue" that I transplanted into the ground next to the new porch from the pot where it had lived for four years or so is thriving, huge and covered in brilliant spires of cobalt blue. Next to it the zexmenia is also blanketed with yellow flowers.

Salvia guarantica "Black and Blue" with zexmenia behind

Several other salvias — greggii, roemariana, and nemarosa — are still blooming sporadically. The greggii and roemariana should probably be cut way back and would probably rebloom while the nemarosa just needs to be deadheaded more regularly.

Another reliable summer bloomer is the pavonia, which has cropped up in several places (it seeds out wildly). Its pink flowers open in the morning and close by late afternoon and I couldn't get a good shot of it weaving its way through the agave lopantha before the flowers closed today. Maybe tomorrow.

All four roses have continued to bloom although the heat is taking its toll. Since last month Climbing Pinkie put on a substantial second flush of blooms, now mostly faded, while Old Blush is just now putting out a second flush. Its new flowers are much smaller than the first round. The new Cecille Brunner in a pot is continuing to bloom as is Maggie.

Other things blooming here and there are the orange bulbine, a pot of mixed verbena, and the purple heart all over the place (a major source of my thicket problems!). The new heartleaf skullcap from Pam at Digging bloomed but is struggling to hold its own between the sprawling salvia guarantica and the columbine, which is still holding on to a few flowers.

And one of two mystery seedlings (the other turned out to be a Gulf Coast penstemon, lost from its brothers and sisters in the front yard) has made itself known as a coneflower. I used to have coneflowers in the long bed and I thought they were all gone. But there's this one left. Maybe I'll have more next year.

Sidetracked . . .

2007-05-22T11:10:00.000-05:00

I finished up a work project this morning and took the opportunity of one more morning of relatively cool weather to assess the effects of last night's thunderstorm on the garden. Everything was washed clean and, with the exception of the suddenly enormous cleomes that were listing and needed to be staked, nothing else looked beaten down or blown over. No pecan limbs in the roses this time around.

I fully intended to head straight back to my office to get to work on the next overdue project. But . . . my inspection revealed that all this rain has lent new vigor to the wisteria and the rampant Turk's cap. Back in the agave parryii corner, the Turk's cap was overtaking the newly planted bamboo muhly and the wisteria was once again reaching for the utility pole. I got in there and yanked wisteria vines (nearly pulling over one section of the rickety fence) and clipping off errant stalks of Turk's cap. And then, just as I was reaching in to do away with another clump of Turk's cap I saw the reason I haven't tried harder to eradicate this plant from the garden.

These are amazing flowers, especially this time of year, highlighted against the crisp chartreuse of the new leaves. Soon enough the plants will sprawl every which-a-way and the heat will turn the edges of those leaves brown and crispy. But I'll try to enjoy them now and also will try to remember these sweet blooms when I'm cursing the errant stalks come the dog days of August.

After I'd finished with the wisteria and Turk's cap (for now, at least) I stopped to take a look at my pot of pansies and violas. I stopped deadheading them before I went to Dallas last week and they were looking straggly and sad, although still blooming. I thought I'd just pull out the orange pansies, which were in the worst shape, but once I started pulling I just kept on, until the pot was empty.

Here's the result of my sidetracked morning. A pile of pansies and violas, a pile of tangled wisteria vines, and a stack of Turk's cap stalks. And in the background you can see the pot (in front of the urn) where the pansies were; I stuck the pots of opal basil and Thai basil in there to see what I thought (what I'm thinking is that the pot may not be big enough; that's what I get for waiting so long!).

I didn't get much paying work done this morning but at least the garden is a bit tidier.

Updating the workings

2007-05-20T14:53:00.000-05:00

I finally decided to update to the new layouts version of Blogger. I'd been avoiding the upgrade out of some sense that everything would disappear or that I'd have to go back in and recreate all my links but this morning I took the plunge and all looks well.

I added a way to access the post labels and changed the way the archives are displayed but other than that it all looks about the same.

Here's a look at my current favorite garden combination: the sprawling winecups, whose vine-like stems have reached out three or four feet in every direction and the California poppies that were planted so late but, with this continued cool weather, have continued to bloom.

And can I just exclaim one more time about this weather: I was in Dallas from Wednesday through Saturday and it was so lovely and cool up there. I assumed the coolness must be limited to north Texas but when I got back I found it almost as cool in Austin.

Right now the whole family (except me, in here typing away) is sitting out on the back porch, reading. A rare sight any time, but especially in the last days of May.

May bloggers' bloom day

2007-05-15T00:02:00.000-05:00

May is a quieter month than April in my garden although the flowers that are starting to bloom now — or that will start blooming in the next month — sport the more flamboyant oranges and yellows of summer, along with a dash of vivid fuchsia, rather than the slightly more subdued pink and purple garb of my spring garden.

Last week I saw the first flowers on the Mexican flame vine (Senecio confusus; that's it at the top), which trails down over the wall in front of the short leg of my upstairs L-shaped bed. It usually blooms earlier but harder-than-usual freezes this winter killed it right down to the ground and it's taken a bit longer than usual to get its feet under it.

Right now the view out my kitchen window features the orange flame vine, backed by mounds of purple heart and the silvery fronds of salvia leucantha. To the side is a new fuchsia bougainvillea (bought for just a couple of bucks at the grocery store last week! and not even potted yet).

Also blooming is manfreda maculosa (in a pot in the downstairs yard; it sent up six or eight bloom stalks this year). I'm still waiting for the promised enormous bloom stalk from the manfreda "Macho Mocha" that I planted in a pot last fall.

Most of my salvias are either primarily spring or fall bloomers. The spring-blooming salvia greggiis are still sporting a few flowers and I hope that if I shear them in a few weeks I'll get another burst of bloom. The salvia roemariana (cedar sage) is still blooming a bit and may rebloom, while the fall-blooming salvia leucantha (Mexican bush sage) and saliva "Anthony Parker" are showing just a few early, and tiny, blooms.

But the salvia guaranitica "Black and Blue" that I rescued from a pot (I thought it had died over the winter) has gotten huge after I put it into the ground and it finally sent forth some of those fabulous cobalt blue blooms this week. I put it where I can see it out the sitting room window and it seems to love the spot (morning sun, deep afternoon shade from the building).

The orange bulbine continues to bloom underneath the red yucca (which you've seen plenty of).

And I couldn't resist another shot of the winecups. I'd like to get a picture of the winecups weaving amongst the golden California poppies but by the time they all open in the morning the sun is so bright it's hard to get a good shot. Maybe tomorrow.

And here is a close-up of the intricate bloom of the annual cleomes that I put in to fill in around the newly planted agave parryii area. Of course they're getting huge (they looked so tiny in their little 4-inch pots) and are trying to take over but the flowers are so very cool.

Also blooming are the Old Blush and Climbing Pinkie roses; Climbing Pinkie looks ready to put forth a fairly major second flush of blooms while Old Blush's second round are kind of puny. The new Cecille Brunner is covered in more small pink flowrs while Maggie has sent up a few new canes topped with clusters of buds. Other bloomers include purple heart; pavonia (I keep missing getting a picture of the blooms, which close up like tightly tufted pillows each evening); salvia nemarosa/superba "May Night" (I've just about decided that they're the same thing); various colored verbenas; a giant pot of yellow and gold zinna linearis; zexmenia; white potato vine; and the last of the Gulf Coast penstemon. Oh and those pansies and violas are still blooming away in their pot, holding me and my spade at bay for at least a few more days.

And this month's volunteers are these yellow daisy-like flowers (I should know their name; I'm sure one of the other Austin garden bloggers will) that have sprouted along the edge of our alley parking spot. I just noticed a sunflower springing up back there too. Maybe it will be blooming by next month.

Check out the blooms in other gardens around the world at May Dreams Gardens, where Carol hosts the monthly Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day on the 15th of every month. Thanks, Carol.

Past prime-time pansies?

2007-05-10T07:59:00.000-05:00

Here's a slightly different example of the should-it-stay- or-should-it-go dilemma I was musing about in my last post. In this case the problem is more about when than whether or not to make a change.

Last fall I planted a big pot with an assortment of brilliantly colored orange and purple pansies and violas and stuck the whole pot into a blank space in the long leg of the L-shaped bed. They have flowered profusely for months, nipped back a bit by mid-winter freezes but returning stronger than ever. But for the last few weeks, as temperatures have risen, I've known their days are numbered. I'm having to water the pot twice a day now and even so, the plants look droopy most of the time; the stems are lanky, even with my daily pinching off of spent blooms, and the size of the flowers has decreased. I suppose it's time to pull the plants up and replace them with something else, something more suited to the coming heat.

But . . . the flowers are still lovely every morning and are welcome this time of year in the lull between the spring flowers and the onset of the summer bloomers.

Here's what they looked like this morning (a lovely cool morning for this time of May, it must be said).

Complicating matters is the fact that I've already bought the replacements — an opal basil, a Thai basil, and flat-leaf parsley — and they are now languishing in their small plastic pots, waiting — dare I say begging? — for a better situation (I admit it: I jumped the gun but I was sure the pansies were done for when it got so hot a couple of weeks ago). And that pot is it: I don't have any more bare dirt in the garden and I don't have another suitable large pot.

Herbs waiting on the edge of the porch; they've doubled — at least — in size since I bought them about three weeks ago.

I'm with Carol, who said in a comment on the previous post that she has a hard time getting rid of a plant that's in bloom. This situation is certainly different than the problem with the red yucca because the pansies and violas are doomed, whether their death is the sudden one of me ripping them out of the pot or a slow one caused by inevitable increases in heat and humidity. Even so . . .

I was just out looking at the pot of pansies and I know in the next day or so I'll get up the nerve and it will be good-bye pansies, hello mini herb garden. I'll keep you posted.

Plant or pet?

2007-05-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

Closeup of the salmon-pink bloom of the red yucca

Pondering a few changes in the garden has reminded me of something D always says when I'm trying to decide whether I've reached the point of no return with one plant or another: "Well, it's not as if it's a pet." Sometimes I find it easy to agree with him and out that plant goes, sometimes dug up and moved elsewhere, sometimes passed on to a friend, sometimes into the yard waste bag (yes, I know. I should be composting).

But, as in so many other parts of my life, I rarely come to a quick decision. Usually I waver, considering all the possibilities. Sometimes I consider for so long that the plant finally dies and the decision is made for me.

Occasionally though the plant takes matters into its own hands (leaves?) and renders the decision even more difficult. A plea for survival? Who knows.

Last year I lost patience with the one remaining clump of red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora) in the long upstairs bed. For the second year in a row it didn't send up even one bloom stalk. And it is an incubator for hackberries and Turk's cap. The seedlings spring up amidst the yucca fronds and are impossible to eradicate.

When I originally planted the L-shaped bed in 1995 I put in three clumps of the yucca (two one-gallon plants in each clump, I think). The idea was that the salmon-pink bloom stalks were attractive in their own right, and also that the rigid but arching stalks of the plant itself would add structure and give some winter interest to a garden made up mostly of plants that froze to the ground.

All well and good for a number of years. The clumps got larger and bloomed profusely. At some point, for reasons lost to memory, we dug up two of the three clumps. The remaining clump is in the long arm of the bed, between the Old Blush rose and the Climbing Pinkie on the steel tepee. The clump is about three feet deep and five feet wide, a substantial amount of real estate in my relatively small garden.

This spring I had every intention of pulling out the entire clump and replacing it with something new. I hadn't figured out exactly what that something new would be so I delayed removing the yucca. And then one day I noticed the reddish tips of several bloom stalks. And then more and more. All told the plant has sent up twelve stalks. The most ever, I think, and for no clear reason. I didn't fertilize it at all or water substantially more. We have gotten a fair amount of rain this spring and the pruning of the wisteria off the utility pole increased the amount of sun in that area of the garden.

So now I'm deeply conflicted. On the one hand, the yucca blooms are lovely, both up close with their yellow interiors and in a mass. And they are a hummingbird magnet. On the other hand the plant takes up a lot of space. And the salmony color of the blooms doesn't really mix well with others, particularly not the pink roses on either side. But the upright leaning stalks are an interesting companion to the wands of orange bulbine planted underneath (purely by chance; I'm sure I didn't give this a thought when I did the planting).

I think my real problem is an inability to get rid of anything that's blooming. I love flowers (although I have become more interested in foliage over the years) so a plant that's supposed to bloom but doesn't is an easy mark for me. But show me some flowers and I'm much less decisive.

What do you think? Should it stay or should it go? Or should I just procrastinate a bit longer?

Party plants

2007-05-07T18:05:00.000-05:00

Last weekend was our son's bar mitzvah (lots of family in town, proud grandparents — and parents, a great time had by all). We shared the day with our former next-door-neighbors, whose daughter was our son's bnei mitzvah partner. Malka — the mom — and I became gardeners together. We both started gardens of mostly native plants about the same time, more than ten years ago. Over the years the gardens between our two houses merged into one. We shared and swapped plants and seeds and advice with each other.

Then a couple of years ago, Malka and her family moved about 20 minutes away and we haven't seen nearly as much of them since. But before they moved we made a plan for our son and their daughter to have their bar and bat mitzvahs together. When we moved into this house, our son was six months old and their second daughter was a few weeks old so the two of them grew up together. When they proposed that the kids share their bnei mitzvah day, we agreed immediately.

The day's events included a luncheon following the bnei mitzvah service. Malka and I talked about centerpieces for the 20 tables and I told her how much I had admired their decision to use small, one-gallon native trees as centerpieces at their older daughter's bat mitzvah luncheon several years ago. Guests were encouraged to take the trees home and we still treasure a Texas mountain laurel from that occasion. For various reasons the tree idea wasn't feasible this time around so we decided to go for flowering perennials.

Malka and I met at Barton Springs Nursery week before last and pondered the possibilities. We wanted to keep it to $5 per plant which meant we needed sale items. We also wanted flowers so we looked for plants that were either budded out or already flowering. We ended up with various salvias — red salvia greggii, some kind of pink salvia (greggii-like, but I don't think that's what it was), salvia "Indigo Spires" and salvia leucantha/Mexican bush sage. We also got fleabane, Chrysanthemum pacificum, and bamboo muhly.

As we wandered through the nursery, enjoying the chatting about plants that we haven't done together in two or three years, Malka suddenly said, Oh, I have a great idea. Instead of getting flower arrangements for the front of the sanctuary, let's get some kind of small flowering trees. So we wandered some more, looking for something in bloom. We narrowed it down to mock orange or Barbados cherry and ended up with two of the cherry trees, covered in small pink flowers.

At the end of the afternoon we lingered beside Malka's car after we had loaded the plants. Our children brought us together in the first place — years back and forth from one house to the other, sitting together under the magnolia that shades both our houses while the kids played incomprehensible games up and down the front yards. And now it was our kids that had brought us back together again. But just as our gardens sealed our friendship years ago, I know that one of my fondest memories of this bnei mitzvah celebration will be that hour wandering together through the garden store.

Malka kept the plants at her house for a week, watering them and protecting them from the winds and lashing rain of last week's thunderstorms. Last Thursday we met to wrap the black plastic pots in layers of colorful tissue paper and shiny mylar. We trimmed back some broken branches and spent bloom stalks and then set the decorated plants out and admired our handiwork.

During the luncheon on Saturday, as I wandered from table to table, chatting with the friends who had come to celebrate with us, people kept asking, Is it true we can pick a plant and take it home? When I told them that was the plan, they had questions. Would this one do well in shade? What about this one in a pot? I watched people make their choices, make trades to get a plant they liked the looks of better. Several friends came up and said, Look what I got. This is going to be lovely in my garden. I have just the spot for it. Many of these friends have gardens I know and imagining the plants growing in them was an added pleasure on an already extraordinary day.

I had my eye on one of the bamboo muhlys, which I staked a claim to early, and we also brought home one of the Barbados cherry trees. I have a spot in mind for the muhly but I'm not sure yet what I'll do with the tree. It may have to live in a pot for a while but I know eventually I'll find the perfect spot and then every year when it blooms it will remind me of this lovely weekend with our beautiful son and our family and friends all around us. And maybe I'll visit some of those other gardens and see the party plants growing and — I hope — thriving there as well.

Spring showers etc.

2007-05-04T14:05:00.000-05:00

A winecup in this morning's soft rain

The garden came through Wednesday night's wild thunderstorms mostly unscathed, although the Old Blush rose suffered some minor injuries from a medium-sized branch that plummeted from a great height out of the neighbor's pecan tree. Fortunately it landed tip down and stabbed straight through the rose bush without inflicting serious damage. Those pecan trees, with their long, supple branches, both frighten and fascinate me in high winds. I watch them from the new porch or through the sitting room windows and their branches twist and turn in a thunderstorm as if a giant, invisible eggbeater was churning through them. In addition to the one pecan branch in our back yard, branches were down all over the neighborhood. No whole trees uprooted as a result of this most recent storm, though, at least none I saw.

The last couple of weeks of April and now the first few days of May have been remarkably wet and, until recently, cool. According to the National Weather Service we had at least a trace of rain on 15 out of 30 days in April (16 at the weather station at Bergstrom, which is closest to us, and 14 at the station at Camp Mabry). And we've already had nearly an inch and a half of rain in the first three days of May! But the temperatures have been rising these last couple of days and soon enough it will truly be summer.

With the roses mostly past their first flush of bloom, the garden has changed in the last two weeks. Maggie is still covered in blooms but Old Blush and Climbing Pinkie are resting. I expect them both to bloom again unless it gets too hot in the next few weeks. The new Cecille Brunner in a pot is covered in a new round of buds but that may be because it's so recently planted (or maybe it just blooms later; I guess I won't know until next year).

This week my new winecups (Callirhoe involucrata) started blooming. I'm quite pleased to have winecups back in the garden, even if they are the creeping rather than the standing variety (the kind I've had before, with the same flowers but held up on long rigid upright stems instead of on viney stems, is Callirhoe digitata). I'm liking the way they look in front of the agave parryii. That magenta is one of my favorite garden colors.

Also starting to bloom are the cleome, the dark blue plumbago, and the zexmenia. Even the sadly mistreated California poppies have produced a few flowers. The transplanted Pride of Barbados (Caesalpinia pulcherrima) seems to have fully recovered from the shock of being moved and is sending out new leaves at a fast clip (so much for the idea that PoBs are impossible to move; I've got several other seedlings that I may try to move in the fall). Although the various Salvia greggiis are past their first big bloom cycle, the Salvia guaranitica "Black and Blue" is about to bloom as is the Salvia "Anthony Parker" (strangely, since it's usually a fall bloomer; the two Mexican bush sages (Salvia leucantha), also fall bloomers, are sending up a few bloom stalks as well). All three of the cedar sages (Salvia roemariana), the transplanted one and the two new ones, are covered in blooms. And I discovered one large and two or three small seedlings behind the globe mallow. I'll move them as soon as the ground dries out a bit.

Visitors and then some

2007-04-23T12:26:00.000-05:00

On Saturday ninety people descended on our newly expanded house and garden for our 11th annual spring party. (Question: If we skipped last year because of the construction is it still the 11th annual or should it be called something else?)

And then on Sunday seven Austin garden bloggers arrived as part of a progressive garden tour of five of our gardens (R. Sorrell's of The Great Experiment, Annie's of The Transplantable Rose, my garden, M. Sinclair Steven's of Zanthan Gardens, and Pam's of Digging) plus a walk-through of the beautiful and inspiring garden of Austin-based garden designer and writer Jill Nokes.

Both Saturday and Sunday were overcast, misty days — the sun peeking through from time to time — with highs in the 70s, perfect for showing off a garden. All the buds and blooms were rimed with dampness, nothing was droopy or blasted by the sun. Having old friends in the garden on Saturday was wonderful and then having seven Austin gardeners — and bloggers — visit on Sunday was the most attention this garden and gardener have ever known.

This morning I got up and found a wonderful description of the experience on Zanthan Gardens' site. Like MSS, I worried all week — what would be in bloom, would Climbing Pinkie continue looking glorious, might the buds of the zexmenia or the winecups open in time. And then I was so astonished by the variety and beauty of all the gardens that, when it came my time to act the host, I forgot to worry. I forgot to ask any of the questions or request any of the advice that I had thought about beforehand. And then, all too soon, we were off to the next stop on the tour.

The afternoon sped by, the names and scents of roses — oh, such magnificent roses — a delicious confusion. Last night, after six hours of touring and talking, I lay on the couch in my sitting room, my garden in darkness outside. I should have gone to bed but I wanted to take just a few more minutes to remember the woodland meadow and the rose-covered picket fence, the mystery roses and the brilliant yellow and black caterpillers on a volunteer fennel. I wanted to hold onto the rush of words and the images and scents and textures of plants — clematis and sweet peas, lilies and coneflowers, agave and iris — for just a few minutes longer.

Containing the beast

2007-04-17T19:29:00.000-05:00

Remember the wisteria? So beautiful for those few weeks in March, so graceful and inviting out the kitchen window. Now it's entering its second life, as a leafy green ceiling for an area of our downstairs yard. The shade is so green and pleasant in the summer that, even if the vine didn't put on such a magnificent show for those few short weeks, we'd be loath to cut it down.

But (cue theme music, something like Jaws maybe) . . . there is a downside to an aggressively established wisteria, especially one whose trunk, make that trunks, are mere feet from a house. Here's the problem:

Don't see what I mean? Check out that innocent looking tendril curling its way around the pole. Ha, I say! Innocent. Think again. Given free rein that very tendril would make its way up the pole within weeks, a month at the outside. (And notice one of the many clumps of Turk's cap that crop up everywhere in my garden; lovely in moderation, not so much in uninvited multitudes.)

Here's the pole. Our electric service comes from the alley to this pole and then down to our house. To the left of the pole you can see the upper branches of our neighbor's pecan tree. And that's the top of the wisteria on the arbor behind the bench.

Imagine, if you will, wisteria growing all the way up the pole, clawing its way up into the pecan and advancing down the electric wire at the same time. Meanwhile, the wisteria on the arbor is also reaching up to entwine itself with those tendrils advancing down the wire. Before you know it, before you've even taken a moment to pay proper attention, an entire sheet of wisteria hangs from the electric wire, solid from the wire to the top of the arbor. And — at the same time — wisteria has transformed the pole into a mass of twining, swaying greenery six feet wide.

This has actually happened. Not once but twice. Experts were consulted. Men with tools — chainsaws on the ends of long poles, wielded in close proximity to the electric service, I kid you not — worked long hours to bring the beast back within bounds.

The most recent clearing was undertaken about two months ago, before the wisteria flowered or leafed out. The pristine pole (not that it's any kind of ornament for the garden but, bristling with vines and swaying in the wind, it just looks dangerous) was an added reason to clear out that corner of the garden this spring. We took out a yucca and a hamelia that grew so large that by mid-summer I gave up on beating my way back there and trying to keep the wisteria off the pole.

This summer, I swear, will be different. That corner is now home to much smaller, more orderly plants and I shouldn't have as much trouble getting to the pole to keep the vines pulled off. The problem is — and I swear this is true — if I go out in the morning and trim back the vines that have crept out under cover of darkness and then check again in the afternoon the vines have returned. We're talking growth of several feet a day.

So, take this as a warning: All is not bright and flowery in wisteria land. The blooms may have looked beautiful in the pictures — and they were fabulous — and you may come over in July and marvel at the cool relief of that green shade — and it is marvelous — but just remember that those luscious blooms, those bouquets of purple, and especially those tendrils, those sweetly curling, ever so graceful tendrils, are the disguise of a beast.

Construction clarification

2007-04-17T08:12:00.000-05:00

After my extremely long post yesterday complaining about our neighbors' new parking lot and their apparent plan to build a second-story overlooking our backyard, I wanted to make it clear that we don't have to look at the parking lot from our backyard or porch (thank goodness). Fortunately our addition wraps around the garden, with no views to the alley or across the alley, except when you're standing in the backyard itself and then you just see the top of the house, not the parking lot.

Here's the view over our back fence, looking west. You can see the top of the house (that's the top of the current one-story house), with the back section of the roof removed.

Without a second story all we could see was the peak of their roof (but before the tree-clearing for the parking lot we couldn't see even that). Someone was standing up in the newly exposed attic space last week and I was in the backyard poking around and I could tell that from there he could probably see most of the backyard (but not onto the porch, which is to the left in this picture).

Here's our current view from the new porch. This is looking to the northeast (our backyard is to the west of the original house and north of the addition).

The white house with green trim that you can see through the garden is the duplex I mentioned in yesterday's post. Over the weekend they hired a guy to "neaten up" the — admittedly — overgrown vegetation around the duplex. As far as I can tell he just hacked down anything that was close to the building, including a pomegranate tree covered in those startling orange buds. I do mean hacked: small trees and shrubs chopped randomly, left standing waist high with no foliage remaining, ends of branches shredded. Ah, neighbors.

In a comment on yesterday's post, Annie from The Transplantable Rose suggested a fabulous solution to our potential view problems. On a garden tour last year she saw a tall trellis built in front of a wooden stockade fence but taller than the fence, creating the possibility of something hedgelike but with a small footprint at ground level. I have an image of a rose I've always coveted, Zephirine Drouhin, rising ten feet tall all around my garden. Do any of you remember the huge Zephirine Drouhin that used to cover the roof of the big shed at Barton Springs Nursery? That was some rose, beautiful and fragrant. It would make a magnificent screen.

Progress or problems?

2007-04-16T09:03:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to post some images of changes going on across the alley from us for some time and yesterday I finally got around to taking the "after" picture.

Our neighbors catty-corner across the alley bought the house directly across the alley from us some months back and in January or so told us they were taking the fence down as the starting point for some renovations and additions to the house. We park one of our cars in a spot just off the alley and it was thoughtful of them to notify us of the work beforehand so we could move our car out of the possible danger zone. We knew that they were also planning to cut down the trees (most of little value except as greenery) but we really weren't prepared for what happened.

Here's what the alley looked like before.

And here's what it looked like yesterday.

Quite a change.

In my long-winded way, a little background:

When we moved into this house nearly 13 years ago, the alley was part of the attraction, both because of the availability of off-street parking and because it was such an overgrown, leafy-green tunnel. At the time, the alley itself was hard-packed caliche and gravel and, although probably half our alley-mates used it to access parking, it saw little traffic. Our kids and the neighbors played back there, learned to ride their bikes back there.

Five years ago the city-owned electric utility cleared trees under and around the electric lines that run on poles down the alley. In our backyard (the rear 10 feet of which is an easement) they cut down a large number of hackberries, mostly smallish but one fairly large. Around the same time they resurfaced the alley with asphalt. The alley was less shady but also less muddy after heavy rain and much improved for bike riding.

We took the opportunity of more sunlight to plant a Texas pistache (Pistacia texana) on one side and a tecoma stans (the yellow variety) and a Pride of Barbados (Caesalpinia pulcherrima), both of which tolerate extremes of heat and drought. That bed has done well and has, in fact, been expanded post-construction. Earlier this spring we thought about putting a Texas redbud (Cercis canadensis var. texensis) into the expanded area.

Then our neighbors started the work across the alley and we're having to reconsider.

When the parking lot went in — concrete lotline to lotline — we were shocked. The shock has worn off a bit but then the actual work on the house started.

If you enlarge the "after" image you can see that they've taken off part of the roof and are, apparently, planning a second-story addition. That addition will have, we think, an excellent view of our backyard. Hence the reconsideration of our back bed plantings. Maybe we need something bigger, taller (but not so tall the city will want to come cut it down in a few years) and preferably something that keeps its leaves in the winter. Something like the pistache.

But that would mean losing the yellow bells (Tecoma stans) and the PoB, which are both in the way and need quite a bit of sun. And I don't want to block the western sun from my long bed since those plants are also mostly sunlovers.

We'll probably wait and see what happens before we make a decision about revamping the whole bed but the situation has inspired a lot of thought about how powerless we are regarding what happens in our immediate surroundings. We have created a house and a garden that we love but something our neighbors do could change our whole experience of those spaces.

Our area has been in the midst of a serious real estate boom for years now. We are close-in, about one mile south of downtown, an attractive neighborhood of trees and hills with a long park running beside the banks of a creek straight through the middle. The original houses are a mix of mostly small two-bedrooms and a few much larger houses; the larger houses were built in the late 1800s and early 1900s (some of the first built on the south side of the Colorado River; downtown and the Capitol are to the north), while the smaller ones mostly date from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, with unbuilt lots filling in since then.

We've been here for nearly 25 years (which explains why we can afford to be here now) and have witnessed a lot of changes but the last few years have been extreme. Starting two or three years ago we finally started seeing the teardowns that have plagued other similar neighborhoods here and elsewhere. Developers bought vacant lots or smaller, run-down houses and in their stead built enormous monoliths, some as large as 4,000 square feet, on fairly small lots. Some of those structures were the impetus for a new city ordinance passed last year that became known as the McMansion ordinance. I'm not an expert on the details but I know it applies to central city, older neighborhoods where smaller houses were being overwhelmed by out-of-scale newer structures. The ordinance limits the size and height of both new houses and additions more strictly than the previous ordinance and, while some of us applaud it and hope it will help maintain the character of these older neighborhoods, it has been controversial.

We built an addition to our house last year (designed and permitted before the new ordinance was initiated) and we felt a responsiblity not to build something that would tower over our neighbors or intrude more than was absolutely necessary on their ability to enjoy their outdoor spaces. I don't mean to be too self-congratulatory but I think we succeeded in that goal. It was an important part of the process for us.

I suppose we knew all along that others might not have the same attitude. We've witnessed that all over the neighborhood so why not next door to us? Of course, we don't know for sure what our across-the-alley neighbors are planning (although we have been analysing their building permit, available on-line) but we've now started pondering the implications of the duplex next door to us on the north. Prime development potential, we now see. Rental units in the neighborhood have disappeared as house prices have gone up (we both moved to the neighborhood initially as renters) and the lot is surely worth a fortune, while the duplex itself is rather dumpy. If it was razed and a new structure — even one meeting the McMansion ordinance requirements — replaced it, it would overlook our backyard and our up-to-now lovely and private new porch.

Yesterday we were talking about calling the duplex owner (who doesn't live there) and telling her that, if she ever decides to sell, we'd like to make an offer. Then at least it would be in our control. I don't know that we could afford such a step but at least then I wouldn't be considering the need for a 10-foot-tall hedge along the north edge of my garden.

Bloom day addenda

2007-04-15T19:07:00.000-05:00

I can't believe I forgot about these bluebonnets that have been blooming beside our carport for the last few weeks. I always — almost always — love a volunteer in the garden and, although these volunteers haven't quite made it into the garden, they're still welcome. I have no idea where they came from. Birds, I suppose, but there aren't any bluebonnets particularly close to us. They did come up in an area where the soil was disturbed during last year's construction so maybe there were seeds in the soil and the disruption caused them to germinate. Whatever the reason, I'm hoping they spread. Any tips on helping that happen?

I also forgot about another plant that's sending up blooms: my manfreda maculosa. That's not the giant manfreda I posted a close-up of a few weeks ago (and which is supposed to produce a giant bloom stalk, maybe in May) but its daintier relative. You can see a picture of the bloom stalk and a link to the flowers on Digging's Bloom Day report.

April bloggers' bloom day

2007-04-15T13:56:00.000-05:00

I'm pleased to participate for the second month in Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, sponsored by Carol at May Dreams Gardens. Ever since my photography breakthrough (relative though it may be) a week ago or so, I've been looking forward to the chance to record the garden in its April moment.

Here's what's blooming in my south Austin garden this beautiful Sunday.

All four roses are blooming. From the top, the new Cecille Brunner in a pot; Climbing Pinkie (check out my last post for a view of this whole plant; she's been stunning for a week now); Old Blush, past her first flush of bloom but working on another; and Maggie, so sweetly scented and about to burst with blooms.

I couldn't resist posting a picture of my rescued-from-the-construction columbine in both bud and flower.

Here are two flowers so delicate that I had a hard time getting a good picture. At the top is bush germander (Teucrium fruticans); this picture makes the flowers look much larger than they really are. At the bottom is Gulf Coast penstemon (Penstemon tenius).

These are the flowers of two succulents. The top is a plant that was a gift a few years. I can't remember what it's called but these blooms appear on a tall stalk. And I can't remember what the bottom plant is called either but you can see it in the background and I'm sure someone will tell me what it is.

These are two of the six salvias I have in the garden. At the top is a fuschia salvia greggii and below salvia nemarosa "May Night" (I have another clump of salvia that was sold to me as salvia superba "May Night"; they look identical). Cedar sage (Salvia roemariana) is also blooming but for the life of me I couldn't get a good shot of it; Mexican bush sage (Salvia leucantha) is also sending up a few bloom stalks, although it's mostly a fall bloomer.

Here are two in bud and oh so close to flowering. At the top is red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora) and at the bottom the annual cleome, planted from transplants not seed. Also in bud are winecups (Callirhoe involucrata), California poppies (from transplants, planted very late), and zexmenia.

And here are two final perennials (well a tree and a perennial): The anacacho orchid tree again and a globe mallow (Sphaeralcea), variety unknown.

And one annual that I wasn't going to post (from a big pot of pansies and violas that I'm hoping will hold on for one more week as the temperatures rise). I couldn't resist the face of this viola.

A few other things are flowering that I didn't include: orange and yellow bulbine, a Laura Bush petunia that survived in a pot from last fall, purple and lavender verbena in a pot, and a fuschia bougainvillea (but it was blooming when I bought it so it may not count).

Whew. This is a busy time in a Central Texas garden. If the temperatures don't skyrocket the garden should be in peak form for another month or two and then I'll be reduced to the truly tough plants.

Comments and community

2007-04-13T14:00:00.000-05:00

When I started this blog I didn't think much about readers. But within a few short weeks, the blog was discovered, first by Annie of The Transplantable Rose and shortly thereafter by Pam of Digging. I'd left a comment on another Austin garden blog (The Great Experiment, I think) and from there they tracked me down. As Pam said, once you comment, you can run but you can't hide. They, and a few others, left comments here and there and my perspective on blogging started to change. Blogging wasn't just writing for myself, record-keeping or navel gazing. I wasn't exactly sure what it was but I started looking forward to seeing those comments.

It took me a while to understand something about the communal nature of blogging, that thing that Annie was writing about the other day. I started out reading food blogs and there is certainly community there. The same people — from Paris to Seattle to Munich to Bloomington, Indiana — cheer and gripe and share, back and forth and around and around. When one travels, another throws a dinner party and invites bloggers from the neighborhood to join in. The food blogging community has contests and fundraisers and gift exchanges.

As I started reading more garden blogs I saw that a similar, if apparently smaller, community exists here as well (smaller maybe because it's easier to share a recipe than a plant? Or because everyone eats and only the discriminating garden?). Events like Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, sponsored by May Dreams Gardens, and the Mouse & Trowel Awards (have you submitted your nominations?) bring garden bloggers together. And shortly after I was found out by the Austin garden bloggers, they kindly invited me to an actual gathering, face to actual face, in Annie's garden. Now we're planning an all-afternoon tour of our Austin gardens, north to south and back, with snacks and, no doubt, lots of garden questions and advice along the way. Being part of that community is certainly welcome (especially since my friend/next-door neighbor/fellow gardner moved a few years ago, reducing my garden gossip chances by at least half).

I have to admit that, although I check on about 20 garden blogs a day (among the 50 or so blogs that I get feeds for through Bloglines), I mostly lurk. So maybe, in that sense, I'm not truly participating in the garden blogging community. I don't know. I enjoy getting comments, I like knowing that someone is reading, I like that sense of connection. But for some reason I wasn't commenting much.

Then, over the past week or so, I put up several posts and no one seemed to notice. No comments at all (okay, since then several people have commented so I guess someone is reading). Every time my e-mail dinged (I get notified of comments by e-mail) I'd stop what I was doing and check to see if it was a comment. I realized how much I enjoyed getting comments and became determined to comment myself more often. Turnaround is only fair play, right? Or should that be, what goes around, comes around?

I still have some more pondering to do about the difference between personal reflection and a larger readership. About keeping notes for myself and writing something that might be interesting to others. But plenty of time for that.

Oh, and the picture at the top is my attempt this morning to catch Climbing Pinkie at what is absolutely her best moment ever (why do I think of my roses as she? Do you do that?).

Finally, the orchid tree buds

2007-04-10T19:00:00.000-05:00

Here is a close-up of buds on the anacacho orchid tree (Bauhinia congesta). I think they look like little clusters of green bananas. The tree is still covered in blooms and buds, although I think it's probably past the absolute peak of its bloom. Last week, while D and I were out walking the dog, we saw a huge orchid tree absolutely loaded down with flowers in the back yard of a house in the next block. Its trunk was quite a bit bigger around than our tree (although it was not much taller) so maybe we have that to look forward to in a few years.

We seem to be past the weirdly chilly weather of last weekend (at least the chill seems vanquished this afternoon, with temperatures in my backyard near 80). Although I'm fairly certain that the temperature here didn't get below freezing, it did get down to 35 or even 34. The leaves of the bat face cuphea purpled up a bit although the plant looks fine but some coleus in the front planter look a bit worse for the wear. I didn't realize coleus was so cold tender but I guess it makes sense. The smaller plants dropped a number of their leaves and leaves on the others look shriveled and brownish. I guess I'll wait and see if they recover.

I've been patrolling the garden with extra vigilence the last few days, looking for signs of decline or disease. Usually every year before our big party at least one part of the garden develops some kind of funk. Some plant spontaneously dies overnight or insects attack and chew a whole section to pieces. So far nothing horrible has happened this year although powdery mildew has taken hold of the Old Blush rose, shriveling its new foliage and damaging some of its buds (and it looked so lovely just a few days ago, I wail). Climbing Pinkie shows some signs of mildew as well although nothing as bad as Old Blush and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my application of a solution of baking soda, water and dish washing soap (the recipe found on the Natural Gardener's website) will keep it in check until it bursts into a riot of flowers as it looks set to do any day.

And the annual infestation of what I have tentatively identified as Colorado potato beetles has started. A year or two ago I took some leaves covered with little brown spots to Barton Spring Nursery and was told they were the mark of the Colorado potato beetle. I finally saw some of the bugs (they hang out on the under side of the leaves and are remarkably fast) and compared them to pictures online and they look similar although not exactly the same.

Whatever they are, the little reddish black bugs attack only certain plants and mostly just disfigure them. Unfortunately one of the main targets are the salvias, of which I have a large number. They also love the bush germander, which is where I first noticed the damage this year. I spray with some kind of environmentally friendly insecticidal soap, which knocks them back but not out. But mark my words, I have my eye on you, bugs.

Ready for our close-up

2007-04-06T17:41:00.000-05:00

D. and I have been playing around with the camera all day, taking close-ups of anything in the garden that looks interesting. The ability to capture the exquisite detail of the buds and blooms of the April garden is a revelation and a delight.

Here are some of today's results:

A detail of the manfreda variegata "Macho Mocha."

The intricate geometry of a bulbine bud, just opening

The incredible bluish purple of the salvia superba "May Night"

One of the first blooms of rose "Maggie," the most powerfully scented and intricately constructed bloom form of any of the roses in my garden

I still haven't captured the buds on the orchid tree. The wind is whipping the branches around so much that I can't get a shot in focus. I'll try again later this evening or in the morning but right now I'll just enjoy this lovely cool weather.

Looking better

2007-04-06T10:59:00.000-05:00

I've been frustrated by my inability to get good images of the garden, especially close-ups of individual buds or flowers, to include with the blog. Yesterday I e-mailed Pam, whose images at Digging I've admired (and envied) for months. I asked her some questions about what kind of camera she uses and for any other advice.

I was amazed to hear from her that she is using basically the same camera we have (a Canon Powershot A85). She made some suggestions about using the macro feature and about stabilizing the camera and the results, if I don't say so myself, are an immense improvement (and I've finally got the close-ups with the background out of focus that have been eluding me!). The thanks go to Pam, both for the inspiration to attempt to improve the images and for the encouragement to try to get the best out of my camera. Thanks Pam.

In addition to taking her advice, I spent some time with the manual (I've tried to parse it before but it puts me to sleep) and at the same time my techie husband went off to do some experiments that mostly involved increasing the resolution of the images we were shooting and changing the compression factor from normal to superfine.

The image at the top is the corner of the long L-shaped bed in the upstairs backyard; the pink rose is Climbing Pinkie, growing up through and spilling out of a steel teepee-like thing (I'm sure there's a name for it — tuteur?). Below is a cluster of Climbing Pinkie buds, with one bloom open; the plant is covered in bud clusters.

This is the first flower on the yellow columbine plant that the foundation crew had to dig up last spring when they were building the giant french drain through the garden. They positioned the drain so carefully that the columbine was the only plant that was disturbed and they dug it up and I've saved it in a pot ever since. I just got it in the ground this week and now it's flowering.

And these are the buds at the end of one of eight bloom stalks on the clump of red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora). I mention the number of stalks because last year it didn't bloom at all. Not one stalk. I was ready to dig the whole clump up (it's been in the ground for 12 years and I thought maybe it was too old to bloom) but now it's redeeming itself (although the salmon color of the blooms does clash with the pink roses on either side. Oh well).

And finally, this is one of many clusters of flowers covering the Anacacho orchid tree (Bauhinia congesta). I'm going to try to get a close-up of one of the unopened bunch of buds when the light is better later; they look like tiny bananas to me.

Spring planting and party plans

2007-04-04T17:35:00.000-05:00

For the last 10 years we've had a big party in late April, timed mostly to coincide with various April events that deserve celebration, but not coincidentally also coinciding with the garden's best moment. Or is it the other way around? Have I gradually created a garden that looks its best at a time when we want to have a party (we've found that mid to late April gives us the best chance of relatively cool weather and no mosquitoes, at least at our house).

We skipped the party last year, which would have been the 11th annual, because of the construction. We actually toyed with the notion of having it in the midst of the building project and, if we had been at the just-framed stage, it might have worked but by mid-April we were into drywall and that was a mess that wouldn't haved mixed well with a party, even if the garden was looking better than I would have expected with no attention and construction going on all around it.

The first year we had the party — 1996 — the long back bed had been planted for one year. (I wish I had some digital pictures of the garden from those days; surely I have prints that I could scan. I'll have to look). In the intervening years that long L-shaped bed has changed and evolved. The only plants left from my original plan are a couple of red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora). The picture at the top of the page is the long leg of the bed today, looking from front to back, past the wildly blooming Old Blush rose and the orchid tree, covered in its white flowers.

That original configuration also included the only plant that existed in the back yard (other than weeds and Turk's cap) before we built the bed: a large multi-stemmed yucca, possibly twisted leaf yucca. Over several years that yucca deteriorated, plagued by various insect infestations. About five years ago we cut it down and thought we dug it up but it returned and we let it grow back, filling in the back of that part of the bed. This spring we decided that it just looked straggly and unattractive and were determined to be done with it once and for all. My able assistant worked long and tirelessly until, finally, he extracted an enormous, bulbous root, about three feet long and probably 18 inches around. After that I got the bright idea that I wanted to dig up the hamelia patens that had been in the ground beside the yucca for the past seven or eight years. It was the orange variety and I much prefer the red one I have in the far back. Besides, witih it gone (it was HUGE in the summer, six to eight feet wide and tall) I would have the perfect place for the agave parryii that I bought with my birthday gift certificate. So Dan set to with my new garden fork and extracted the hamelia.

I built a circle of stones to elevate the agave a bit and improve its drainage and transplanted a Pride of Barbados (Caesalpinia pulcherrima) seedling from the front yard behind it. I put (probably too many) annuals and a couple of small perennials around it: some rather sad California poppies in 4-inch pots that I've had since December but never planted, three bat-face cupheas, three winecups (the creeping kind not the standing which I prefer but couldn't find in 4-inch), three 4-inch cleomes, and two one-gallon salvia superba "May Night" (I have some other salivas called "May Night" but they were labeled salvia nemarosa; they look identical to me). Also the one-gallon dark blue plumbago I bought last fall and couldn't find a home for. Oh, and I plan to plant the Cecile Brunner rose that my mom sent me in a big pot in the spot where the hamelia was.

I also finally got the yellow columbine that was dug up when the French drain was built last spring back in the ground (just in time for it to bloom) and put the salvia guaranitica "Black and Blue" that's been overcrowded in its pot for several years in the ground too (that's the pot I'll use for Cecile Brunner). Now I just have a few more plants to get in the ground (some inland sea oats and a couple of salvia roemarianas/cedar sage).

It's a good thing I'm finally getting everything in the ground because we finally decided yesterday, a bit late, to go ahead with this year's party and now I have a little less than three weeks to get the garden in shape (with the added incentive of a visit by the Austin garden bloggers on the day following the party.

The back garden is actually looking quite lovely right now. Hopefully it will hold up for a few more weeks.

Out the kitchen window

2007-03-20T16:39:00.000-06:00

Here's my attempt to show what the wisteria looks like out the kitchen window. From the window, what I see is the wisteria showering down from the right, with the Old Blush rose behind it, covered in pink flowers. I'm not sure you can see the roses in the picture and I couldn't really give a sense of how the wisteria dominates the view at this time of year. If I was a foot taller (or willing to lie across the sink and hang out the window) I might be able to get a better shot but, between my short stature and the blocking effect of our casement windows that don't crank all the way open, this is the best I can do.

Wisteria, just past peak

2007-03-20T15:46:00.000-06:00

I believe that this year's wisteria bloom was at its peak yesterday. Today more leaves are showing and, although there are still buds that haven't opened, the breeze and light rain we've been having on and off all day have knocked petals off the existing bloom stalks.

Here are some pictures of what it looks today, both overall and close-ups of some of the blooms (I had to use our old camera so the pictures may be slightly low resolution).

If it rains in the next few days most of the blooms will be knocked to the ground. I'm always sorry to see them go — and the heighth of the bloom is so fleeting — but the carpet of lavender is lovely in its own right.

I wish I could get a picture out our kitchen window, with the wisteria in the foreground and the Old Blush rose bush, covered in pink flowers, behind. I'll try it and if it works I'll post it later.

Forking foul-up

2007-03-17T18:34:00.000-06:00

I was so excited to get out and start digging up the garden with my new garden fork that I didn't stop to think about where I was digging. I started in on the section of the far back bed where I'm planning to move the badly placed hypericum and immediately struck roots of the Ashe juniper that we cut down last year. I was pulling out giant sections of half-rotted root and turning over huge chunks of soil. I was accomplishing so much, so easily.

My husband had come out to admire my digging prowess when I hit something that felt really big. I assumed it was the mother of all roots and I pushed and pulled and levered and finally pulled up . . . the plastic drainage pipe from our new gutters!

Once I uncovered the whole section of the pipe (it's ridged black plastic about four inches in diameter) that I'd been attacking I found it riddled with holes. And at first we thought I'd cut it completely in half, since one end was poking up above ground and we couldn't even find the other end. We finally realized that I'd speared it just above a joint and had pulled one section out where it was shoved into the next section. We pondered the problem for a while and decided that if we could get the exposed end back into the continuing section and then covered up the various holes I'd made with the fork so that dirt wouldn't gradually fill in the pipe we'd be okay (we decided it didn't matter if the pipe leaked a little on its way to drain out into the alley; hopefully we haven't created the beginnings of a marsh back there). We made a trip to Home Depot to look for repair materials and finally decided that wrapping the wounded pipe with a plastic garbage sack and then backfilling with soil would solve everything for pennies.

I meant to take pictures to show the power of my new gardening tool but once I got started putting it back together I was too glad to get the embarrassing evidence covered up to remember the camera.

Belated birthday

2007-03-15T17:01:00.000-06:00

Today I received not one, but two, belated birthday presents — and both were for the garden. First, when my husband went out to bring the papers in this morning he found a box from the Antique Rose Emporium on the front porch. Apparently it was delivered yesterday afternoon but the UPS person just dropped it off without ringing the doorbell and none of us happened to notice it. Inside was a robust, one-gallon Cecile Brunner rose from my lovely mom and dad in Dallas. When I called my mom, she said the Rose Emporium people told her Cecile Brunner was a small shrub, perfect for a pot, which is just where I intend to put her (as soon as I can find the perfect pot). According to the Rose Emporium's website, Cecile Brunner has light pink blooms and is nicknamed the Sweetheart Rose. It tolerates poor soils and even partial shade. I'm thinking that, for now at least, I'll put her in a pot, maybe up on a plinth of some kind, in the far back, providing a focal point back there while the hamelia, yellow bells and Pride of Barbados resprout and fill in this spring.

Then this afternoon my friend Alisa came by to take me out for a birthday lunch (we've been trying to find a time when our schedules meshed since my actual birthday in late February and we finally made it work today) and she brought me a present that I can already tell is in the category of "how did I ever garden without this." It's a garden fork and I've been out digging up various parts of the garden with it all afternoon. I mean really, I've been digging in this garden for nearly 13 years and at my other house for seven or eight years before that and I've never had a garden fork. It's been on my wish list for a while (clever Alisa for listening to me ramble about my travails in the garden) and I even thought about a trip earlier in the week to look for one but was put off by the rain. I can already see that the fork will make digging up and moving plants much easier and I've got my eye on several to experiment with. In the picture my new tool is next to the hypericum that really needs to be moved.

After lunch Alisa and I headed out to do some garden shopping. We didn't make it past the Natural Gardener (we meant to go to Barton Springs Nursery too, to make a dent in a birthday gift certificate I received earlier — do you sense a birthday theme? — but we ran out of time) but we made our time count. Alisa, who rarely sees a plant she doesn't want, a woman after my own heart, bought a lush orange tecoma stans and a leatherleaf mahonia (she loves the berries) as well as a bamboo muhly (Pam, I told her you had recommended it to me and that sealed the deal for her) and various other things. With the Barton Springs gift certificate in my pocket, I restrained myself (I even put a few things back after they'd made their way into the wagon!). I bought three 4-inch bat face cupheas, three 4-inch winecups and one extremely cool euphorbia rigida, also known, the tag says, as gopher plant (that's it in the picture). How could that be anything but cool? They had one in the ground in one of the display gardens; like most euphorbias I'm familiar with, it doesn't exactly flower but gets these interesting chartreuse and yellow bract-like things on the tips of each branch in the spring. I'm thinking of putting it into the spot where the hypericum now is (the hypericum gets too tall and wide for the Maggie rose next to it but I think the euphorbia will stay low and kind of sprawl under the rose).

And when I get finished in the garden I can come in and slather on some avocado butter, olive and basil body butter, another gift from the lovely Alisa.

March blogger bloom day

2007-03-15T09:35:00.000-06:00

I noticed on Zanthan Gardens' site that today is March Garden Bloggers Bloom Day (an idea of Carol at May Dreams Gardens, a blog I've not looked at before, for garden bloggers to list everything blooming in their gardens on the 15th of each month). I admire Zanthan's meticulous garden recordkeeping and, while I'm not sure I'll ever manage to collect the depth of information about my garden that she does about hers, I think I can manage to compile a monthly list.

So here's my list for March (using Carol's rule that buds count, at least in March):

• Bush germander (Teucrium fruticans); the variety with the darker flowers
• Salvia greggii (raspberry), first blooms opened this week
• Old Blush rose, covered in buds and blooms (shown in picture at top)
• Salvia nemarosa "May Night", several buds
• Pansies and violas in a pot
• Orange bulbine (Bulbine frutescens)
• Wisteria, about half the buds are open (see yesterday's post for a picture)
• Potato vine (Solanum jasminoides), the white variety

And a few more I thought of later, on places I forget to look earlier:

• Texas mountain laurel, hidden away on the side of the house
• Mexican honeysuckle, which bloomed hidden away all winter in the front bed
• Yellow bulbine, hidden under the yaupon in the front bed

Wisteria (and other) updates

2007-03-14T17:33:00.000-06:00

I meant to take a picture of the wisteria blossoms each day so I could track the progression from bud to flower but the recent rain foiled that plan (not that I'm complaining about the rain!).

Here is a picture of some of the wisteria flowers as they look today and an overall shot of the whole vine in early stages of its bloom. The flowers are probably 1/3 to 1/2 open. It will probably be in full bloom by the weekend.

The rain has, in fact, been lovely. A deluge Sunday night, continuing all night, and then almost constant steady soaking rain on Tuesday. I wish we had a rain guage so I would know exactly how much we've gotten over the past few days. I estimate 2 to 3 inches.

As I poked around this afternoon I found the first sprouts from the stumps of the two hamelia plants and definite signs of life in the til-now lifeless clumps of Mexican flame vine. I even think I see the very first hints of new, red growth at the base of the Pride of Barbados in the far back. I had just about given it up for dead and was pondering its replacement.

The rain has bent the Old Blush rose almost to the ground, leading me to belive that I didn't prune it enough last week. I really don't know how much such a rose should be pruned. It's been in the ground about 4 years, I think, and has gotten quite large, about 5 feet tall and probably 7 or 8 feet wide. I pruned back some of the lower branches and some interior canes a week or so ago but, since it was already budded out I hate to chop it back too much (it was covered with buds before the last freeze and those buds were damaged, shriveled and not fully developed when they opened, but it's developed additional buds since then).

Oh and the first salvia greggi flowers have opened, on the plant to the left of the Old Blush. The other two haven't shown any signs of buds yet.

Wisteria watch

2007-03-08T15:59:00.000-06:00

As I mentioned a few days ago, the wisteria has suddenly budded out. Every year it takes me by surprise and this year was no exception. From bare sticks the buds just seem to appear overnight (either that or I'm just not as observant as I'd like to believe). According to my somewhat random record keeping it usually is in full bloom by the third week of March, with the blooms lasting a week or two depending on wind and rain.

Here's a few not so great shots of the buds as they look today (I'm still attempting to master the close-up setting of the camera).

Right now they look like pale, elongated raspberries. I'll post again in a few days as the buds mature.

Every year, before the wisteria starts budding out, I stand underneath it and consider some kind of pruning. I read an article in a magazine a few years ago that described a systematic approach to pruning wisteria that, it claimed, would result in a massive increase in flower production. But as I stand underneath the arbor, all I can see it a twisty, confusing mass of vines. Nothing like the illustrations in the article. I don't know where to start.

We've had the wisteria dramatically pruned once, but that was more to save our electric service than it was to do anything for the plant (the vine had reached up and twined itself around the wire bringing the electricity to the house; eventually a solid curtain of wisteria hung between the electric wire and the top of the arbor. When the wind blew, the curtain whipped back and forth, pulling the wire perilously close to breaking). We had that pruning done in March 2002, right before the wisteria would have started setting buds. I was afraid that the whole plant would die but when I mentioned that to the tree guy, he laughed. And he was right. The plant roared back, bigger than ever, although not with noticeably more flowers.

Maybe when (if??) we replace the arbor we can address the whole plant (which has trunks six inches in diameter) and bring it back under control. Or at least get the dead wood out and pull it back into some kind of boundary.

Clean-up, continued

2007-03-07T17:07:00.000-06:00

I've spent several more hours hacking through various portions of the upstairs bed. I've got everything cleared and then some.

First, can I just mention my lack of enthusiasm for Turk's cap. I actually love the little swirled flowers but, in my garden at least, Turk's cap runs rampant. When I'm at the garden store and see Turk's cap for sale I find myself rolling my eyes. When I moved into this house I was mildly excited to find the various outcroppings of the plant. Now, 13 years later, I'm considering Round Up. I've cut it back, tried to dig it up. Nothing works. It spreads, it doubles in size every year. It dies to the ground and comes back at twice the size. The flowers look good for a while and then the leaves go all crinkly and half dead and it quits blooming and all I'm left with are straggly, six foot tall stalks that lean every which a way. Okay, I'll stop babbling.

Today I chopped — and chopped and choppped — down the eight or so major clumps of Turk's cap in the upstairs yard. And found even more spots where it's doing its best to spring up. And then just for good measure I chopped down most of the misbegotten yucca from the corner of the long bed. I left a couple of pups in the far back but I opened up some serious space for something new. In the picture you can see the two trunks of yucca that I sawed off (as well as piles of various other debris waiting to be bundled up).

The space is backed by the wisteria (which is on the arbor in the downstairs yard but which tries its best to creep into the upstairs bed) so whatever I put in there needs to be able to fight that off or cohabitate politely. I have a Pride of Barbados volunteer seedling in the front yard that I may try to move. And then there's the question of the monster hamelia just to the right of the new bare spot (well, in three months it will be a monster; right now it's a few bare sticks poking up out of the ground).

On a happier — or at least less agressive note:

Here's the manfreda "Macho Mocha" that I bought late last summer. It's grown enormously and has now taken on its characteristic spotted coloration. And it's got at least three pups growing under the bottom fronds. The pot stayed out during the cold weather; we might have been able to move it but I decided to take the chance. I covered it during the ice storm and on a couple of other cold nights but the cold didn't seem to bother it at all. I'll give it a bit longer and then I'll try to remove the pups and repot them.

Treasure hunt

2007-03-05T16:13:00.000-06:00

Gradually I've been whipping the upstairs garden into some sort of shape. I've gotten all of the perennials that died or nearly died to the ground cut back (although a mountain of debris now clutters the yard, waiting to be tied into bundles by my able assistant).

Today I cut back the Pride of Barbados in the far back, along with the tecoma stans and the red hamelia, all big woody plants, some stalks probably nine or ten feet tall. When I started on the tecoma stans I was worried that it was completely dead but a bit more hacking revealed the smallest sprigs of bright green down at ground level. The same job revealed the vine — why can I not remember what kind it is; not crossvine, not coral honeysuckle; oh well, it'll come to me — that I planted several years ago, hoping it would cover the back fence and climb up the utility pole. It's never done that but last summer it did have a few flowers — trumpet vine, that's it, Madame Galena, I belive is the variety — and although it mostly looks dead as a doornail I spied one sprig of new growth today.

The Pride of Barbados shows no signs of new growth. I'm a bit worried about it but the hamelia I'm sure will be back, despite its current pathetic look.

Also revealed in the far back are numerous pups of the agave that last fall I identified as agave lopantha. It's the plant that outgrew its spot in a big pot in the front yard a few years ago. I've already got several of its pups in other places. I think I'm going to have to find homes — homes beyond my yard — for these new ones.

I also found sprouts on a yellow brugmansia I have in a pot in the downstairs yard but the salvia guaranitica "Black and Blue" in a big pot that was already resprouting before the last freeze isn't looking so good.

I'm feeling better about the garden than I was a week or so ago although there's still much to be done. I'm pondering removing the yucca that has long anchored the corner of the long L-shaped bed in the upstairs yard. It's the sole plant remaining from the barren wasteland that was the yard when we bought this house nearly 13 years ago. But I think it has to go. I may have said before that we actually tried to get rid of it a few years ago when it started looking particularly raggedy but it sprang back from a stump. If it was gone, I'd probably also get rid of the orange hamelia beside it. I much prefer the red version, both for the color of the flowers (or are those bracts?) and for the reddish hue of the foliage. That would leave a huge gap, ripe for something new.

Oh and the wisteria (on the miserable arbor) has shot out buds virtually overnight (just like all the elm trees in the neighborhood; one day to the next and suddenly tiny leaves cover every branch). I'll take pictures when it blooms in a week or so. Ugly arbor or not, it's usually quite a sight.

Spring cleaning (or kvetching)

2007-02-20T14:19:00.000-06:00

I'm in my usual pre-spring garden funk or at least state of garden indecision. I realized a few years ago that, about this time, before plants resprout, when bare stems are the only thing showing above ground, I start to wonder if the garden is worth the trouble. I look around and all I can see are the problems and none — or at least not many — of the rewards.

Last weekend I finally got out and started cutting back the plants that froze to the ground during the several unusually cold spells we've had this winter (the lowest we've seen here was about 22, I think): the salvia "Anthony Parker" in the downstairs bed, the big salvia guaranitica "Black and Blue" in a pot, several clumps of salvia leucantha, the zexmenia at the top of the stairs. Also the two big clumps of Mexican flame vine that hang down over the wall. Those vines have survived for years, in fact one of the two clumps sprang up where a long tendril of the original plant reached across the bed and rooted. I've been amazed by their hardiness over the years (I planted the original assuming it would die the first winter). This year may be the end though. I see no evidence of green, even right down at the ground. I'll wait a bit longer before I pull them up but I'm not optimistic. Still to be cut back are the tecoma stans, the hamelia and the Pride of Barbados in the far back. Also throughout the long upstairs bed are masses of purple heart in their slumped and slimy post-freeze state. And various salvia greggiis needing severe haircuts before they start setting blooms.

With some of the dead wood out of the way I can see things I'd like to change: remove the big yucca at the corner of the L-shaped bed and the orange hamelia beside it. Replace both with a new red hamelia set further back into the corner. I think the hamelia could hold its own with the wisteria that tries to creep in every year. Then, once the original hamelia is gone, I could move the salvia leucantha over to give the Maggie rose more space.

We had some of the scrubby trees along the north edge (and on the other side of the fence) of the upstairs yard removed when the tree people were here dealing with the branches downed by the ice storm. They took out a hackberry that was growing up into the wisteria and an insidious mulberry that will resprout in a minute — okay a few months — if I give it any slack. I'm thinking Round-up on the stump. Or boiling oil. Also removed was some kind of overgrown nandina-ish thing that was only served as mooring for errant lashings of wisteria creeping along the ground, looking for a way upward. The tree guys also cleared the wisteria off the power pole and, most satisfyingly, removed the four Trees of Heaven growing up between our house and the duplex next door. The trees were on the duplex's property and the owner had refused for years to remove them, even though they were clearly a menace to her property. We finally said we'll pay for it ourselves and then she said, oh, I'll be glad to pay half.

So the upstairs yard is looking a bit clearer but the downstairs yard is disaster. All of the grass, except for various odd straggles of Bermuda, is dead, the arbor is rotten and collapsing and the whole area has become a repository of cracked pots, old ice chests, and various other detritus. Depressing doesn't begin to describe it. In my brighter moments I envision a sort of terrace of large stones set in gravel, surrounded by plants rather than bare dirt, shaded by a new wisteria-covered arbor, with perhaps a fountain at the center. Then I look at what's actually there and start hacking at the mutant eupatorium of unknown variety that has sprawled randomly and unattractively out of its assigned spot. Or stoop to ponder the once lovely agave montana, now apparently dying a slow and undignified death. Can it be saved? should it be moved? taken out of its pot? put where?

Then there are the roses. To prune or not? And when? And how much? But that's another post.

Dodging the shards

2007-01-18T16:03:00.000-06:00

Life returned to something like normal this morning after two days of suspended animation. School was delayed by two hours, which meant we didn't have to get up until an oh-so-civilized 8 a.m. instead of our usual 6. I could get used to that.

By 9, huge chunks of ice were cascading from the magnolia tree. I kept stepping outside to make sure that the crashing sounds were only ice and not more limbs falling. As far as we can tell only a few small branches, in addition to the one big one that snapped off yesterday, are actually broken. The bigger limbs are still hanging low in spots but that seems to be more about the water still on the leaves than any damage. The tree looks much like it usually does after a heavy rain (except for the shards of ice piled underneath. A truly amazing amount of ice. Each leaf was coated and each piece fell, sometimes one or two at a time and other times one piece from the top starting an avalanche).

The orchid tree and the roses seem to have rebounded although Old Blush got pushed down and in on itself and is now tangled and leaning. I think once it dries out a bit and I can get in there and untangle the canes, it will be mostly back to its old self. It probably needed to be pruned anyway.

A number of things that hadn't frozen back will need to be cleaned up: the Mexican flame vine, the purple heart, zexmenia, purple fountain grass, and the Pride of Barbados and hamelia. It's supposed to rain for the entire next week so it may be a while before I get out there with my loppers.

I was sure this freeze would be the end of the big agave americana near the front door. Last year, in temperatures in the mid 20s, even covered it suffered considerable damage. We thought about replacing it but by mid-summer last year we hadn't gotten around to it and it had put out enough new fronds to look presentable again. On Sunday or Monday when I was bringing plants inside and covering things I didn't do anything about the agave. And, as far as I can tell, it's mostly okay. Maybe the thick coating of ice protected it? Or maybe the temperatures just never got low enough to damage it?

On ice

2007-01-17T17:59:00.000-06:00

We're near the end of our second day housebound because of the ice storm of 2007 (that should be in all caps with theme music, I think). Yesterday, we made it out of the house for some grocery shopping and a trip to get the expansion pack of World of Warcraft — but Mom, it comes out today and we do have the day off from school. The street doesn't really look icy, does it? — before the snow and sleet started to fall again mid-morning.

The garden — and everything else — is coated with ice at least a half inch thick. It's beautiful and strange.

We lost one large limb of the big magnolia in the front yard this morning. We were sitting in the living room chatting when this huge boom sounded from somewhere outdoors. I don't know why I hadn't thought about any of our trees losing limbs but somehow it hadn't occurred to me. We went out just to take a look around and there was a limb, probably eight inches in diameter, lying propped against our neighbor's house. Fortunately, it not only didn't damage their house but also seemed to have spared the mountain laurel that it grazed on the way down. So far that's the only limb that's obviously broken, at least on our property. A tree in our neighbor-on-the-other-side's yard split and half landed on our roof, again apparently doing no real damage although we'll have to get up on the roof to see if any shingles were scraped off. We called a tree guy this afternoon and, surprisingly, he said he could come out tomorrow and get it taken down and maybe do something about the ragged break in the magnolia as well.

The orchid tree in the backyard is bent nearly to the ground as is the Old Blush and Maggie roses. I'm worried about breakage in both of them although I think they'll survive the cold just fine. The coldest it's actually gotten here is about 28 but mostly it's stayed around 30 so I don't think much of anything will be lost because of cold (okay, I'm hoping since this is the most protracted cold spell we've had in a long, long while; who knows about some of the newer plants).

I tried to shake some of the ice off the orchid tree but the cracking sounds scared me. I couldn't tell if it was ice cracking or the tree itself so I gave it up and came back indoors. The orchid tree still had almost all its leaves (as, of course, did the magnolia and the roses) so they're in the worst shape with ice all over not only the branches but the leaves as well.

Not gone forever

2006-12-14T11:38:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted since Halloween. Every day I walk out into the garden and think, I'll go in there and write something. Just a few words. And then I get back into my office and get sucked into something else and don't do it. I think one reason I haven't been posting is that I feel like I must have a picture (I look at Pam's postings, with their beautiful images and feel even more intimidated). But getting the camera out is just one more thing and sometimes its one thing too many.

So, no picture today. Just words.

After the freezes of the past few weeks, the garden is in a crispy, limp place, at least most of it. The two hamelias were the first to feel the cold, the outer layers of foliage going a reddish brown and then, with even colder weather, actually crisping up and falling. Same with the yellow bells, the purple heart, the Mexican flame vine, and the Pride of Barbados. All semi-frozen but not down to the ground. I need to get in and whack things back but I'm always wary at this point of more of this 75, 80 degree weather that just encourages everything to send up new growth. Maybe I'll wait a bit.

All three roses made it through the freezes with no damage. All three were covered in buds before the first freeze and I was sure I would lose all those flowers but so far they're blooming away. Maggie is much happier with the various things — hypericum, flame vine, salvia leucantha — trimmed away. The flowers are as fabulous, both in looks and scent, as I remembered. Old Blush has been covered in blooms. I was out this morning examining it, trying to decide whether to prune back the stalks where the petals have fallen. Again the question of encouraging new growth. Hmmm . . .

Speaking of the hypericum, it's coming back with a vengence. I chopped it all the way to the ground and it's sending up new growth from every bare stalk. One tough plant. I think I'll dig it up and move it. If it's that tough even my manhandling style of transplanting probably won't kill it.

I brought all the succulents in, either to the screened porch or to my office, before the first freeze. Now I can't decide whether to move them back or leave them inside. Some of them are unwieldy but others look a little sad indoors. Sure as anything, the day I move them out another cold front will swoop down. The perils of Austin gardening.

I did leave the manfreda Macho Mocha outside in its pot, which was just too big to move. I covered it with a sheet and it's doing just fine. We covered the big agave Americana in the front with a couple of sheets too. Last winter it sustained serious damage, even covered. My theory was that it's reaching the end of its life (the mother plant, anyway) and was therefore more fragile. But so far this year it's fine. Maybe it was just colder last year.

Finally, some progress (I hope)

2006-10-31T10:52:00.000-06:00

Last Sunday I finally decided to take some action in the garden. I puttered around for a bit, trimming here, pulling a weed here, before I got up the nerve to chop down the overstayed-its-welcome hypericum/St. John's Wort that was blocking my view (and air and sun) of the "Maggie" rose that I planted a year and a half ago or so.

I planted the hypericum in March 2003 at the base of an orange Tecoma stans (we always called it the orange bells). I was looking for something that would look good in the spring when the orange bells was just sticks waiting to sprout (the lightest freeze killed it down to the ground). Whatever I planted needed to be able to survive being smothered by the orange bells when it reached its full height and spread (about 10 feet by 8 feet) later in the summer. Someone at Barton Springs Nursery suggested the hypericum, supposedly a dwarf variety, or daylilies. I've never been a daylily kind of person so I went for the shrub.

For the first few years it didn't do much but by 2005 it had grown larger than I expected, maybe four feet tall and wide and had bloomed a bit. I loved the buds, tiny balls that opened into clear yellow flowers. Unfortunately there weren't many flowers and the plant suffered in July and August. It didn't die but it didn't look great either. That wasn't so bad when it was covered with the sprawling orange bells but . . .

In April 2005 I decided the orange bells had to go. Unlike its yellow sibling (or parent?) it didn't bloom profusely, most years not flowering until late July or August, sometimes even later. And, although the individual flowers were beautiful there just weren't enough of them. And the plant itself was so ungainly and huge. It blocked my view of the upstairs garden from the kitchen window and smothered everything around it.

After a trip to the Rose Emporium with a friend where we sniffed every rose that was blooming, I had my eye on a rose called "Maggie" that was beautiful and smelled wonderful. I came home and told my husband I'd decided to take the orange bells out and put in the rose and some other stuff.

Hah! We (mostly he) spent a week of evenings digging and hacking roots (some 4 or 5 inches across) and shoving the root ball back and forth trying to loosen it up. We talked about hiring someone with a stronger back and better tools but in the end we got it out of there. I dug in a bunch of compost and then went crazy planting what looked like an enormous space.

I checked my garden notebook on Sunday and saw that I planted the rose, a Mexican bush sage (one with solid purple blooms) that I'd had in a pot for a year or so while I tried to find a spot for it, a magenta salvia greggii, some purple and fuschia verbenas and some 4-inch cleome transplants. All in an area about 10 feet by 4 feet that was already home to the hypericum and a small agave as well as a zexmenia. And bordered by a hamelia patens (fire bush) that in April was also nothing but sticks and two clumps of freeze-pruned Mexican flame vine that always go out of control by mid-summer.

Even at the time I wondered if I was putting too much into the space and noted that I always underestimate the summer size of the hamelia. But, I wrote, the cleomes were annuals and the verbena would be easy to move. It's bound to be better than the orange bells, I wrote.

And that first year it was. The hamelia indeed got bigger than I remembered and it and the Mexican bush sage mingled together but that worked okay. The salvia bloomed and even the hypericum had a few more flowers than I remembered from the year before. The few blooms I got out of Maggie that first year were as beautiful as I hoped. The cleomes and verbena filled in the blank spaces while the other plants were growing. It was all a bit out of control but I generally like that kind of look.

But the changes we made to the house and the surrounding hardscape this spring changed my perspective, literally. That area of the garden is now viewed not only from my kitchen but also from the new sitting room. And the hypericum was at the most prominent point, right at the top of the reconfigured stairs coming up from the screened porch and the downstairs yard.

By August the bush sage had overwhelmed the rose, abetted by the rampant, twining growth of the flame vine. The hypericum and zexmenia (and the vine) had spurred each other on to ever greater heights, all intertwined and, in the case of the hypericum, browned by the summer heat. I kept pruning things back to try to give the rose some room but, in the end, something had to go.

Here's a (bad) picture of what it looked like before. You can see what a mess the whole area was and how it relates to the new porch.

So on Sunday I chopped the hypericum down. I still need to dig up the stump (I suspect it's one of those plants that will shoot back up, even from leafless, bare sticks) and, even though it looks a bit barren right now, I think in the long run it will be an improvement. I just have to resist the urge to fill up the space with whatever plants I have languishing in pots or some bargain I can't resist at the garden store.

My question now is whether to try to dig up the rose and move it over a foot or so, giving it some more breathing room from the bush sage. I've never tried to transplant a rose. I'm thinking maybe Maggie will sort of grow sideways to fill up the new vacant space, kind of like the bush sage does to stay out of the way of the hamelia.

I'm also thinking about digging up the agave (it suffered from years of being covered all summer by the orange bells; twice the crown of new stalks either rotted off or were eaten by something). I'll replace the agave with another slightly larger, more attractive agave I have in a pot. The magenta salvia has grown out over the edge of wall, pushed out of shape by the hypericum, but stilll blooming. I'll leave it and the flame vine even though the vine sends out tendrils that ensnare everything. But those orange flowers are hard to beat, especially spilling down over the wall.

Still pondering

2006-10-04T18:00:00.000-05:00

I haven't been doing any gardening, beyond watering and trying to contain some plants that have gone out of control. The salvia leucantha, blooming beautifully, has overrun the Maggie rose, which is threatened from its other side by the disappointing hypericum (St. John's Wort, supposedly a dwarf variety that's at least four feet tall and has never done much but sprawl and turn brown in the summer if it isn't watered; I've only gotten a few measly flowers every spring — but such cool flowers; I love the way the buds start as little balls before they open). Cool flowers or not, I think it's history as soon as the zexmenia that has grown up through it stops blooming and I can chop the hypericum down without losing a bunch of flowers. Then I may need to move the rose, although if I move it much it won't get enough sun (and I've never tried to move a rose; possible or no?). Then there's the Mexican flame vine in the same area that has responded to water and cooler weather with rampant growth (and even some blooms on the section that gets more sun).

I love the flame vine's buds, opening like little claws, and I like the way the vine looks trailing down the wall but — kudzu-like — it overtakes anything in its path.

Then there's the whole downstairs yard, something of a disaster area at present. The arbor needs to be replaced (without destroying the overgrown wisteria) and something needs to be done to give the whole area some sense of purpose. It's such a mishmash of dead grass and empty pots and mud. Oy. I say. One bright spot is the eupatorium havenese (I think that's what it is; definitely some kind of mistflower but tall with white blooms) is covered in buds; some start opening this week.

It's a cool plant when it's blooming but it's really not well situated. It's so sprawly that I think it needs more space to look it's best. Something else to think about moving.

Another plant I need to deal with is the red yucca between the Old Blush rose and the Climbing Pinkie on the steel teepee.(You can see it in the picture behind and to the right of the pots, up against the fence.) It hasn't bloomed in a couple of years (not enough sun?) and I'm tired of it. I need to figure out what to put in there: something tallish but not too sprawling, something that looks good even when it's not blooming, maybe something with some interesting foliage rather than blooms? I put the yucca in there originally to give the whole area some structure instead of just sprawling randomness. Maybe something else along those lines.

Hummingbirds

2006-09-25T11:24:00.000-05:00

I don't know if this is an exceptional year for hummingbirds or if I'm just spending more time in the garden this year but I don't think I've spent more than five minutes in the upstairs garden over the past three or four weeks and not seen at least one hummingbird. I think the most I've seen in the yard at one time is four.

They perch on the telephone wire that still runs above the upstairs garden (darn that SBC who wants $500 to move the line to the other side of the house) and the spiraling branches of wisteria shooting out from the telephone pole, their delicate chirps calling me out onto the porch. Then they're off, sipping from the yellow bells, the hamelia (that's what's blooming in the picture, minus the birds themselves, which I've been unable to catch in a picture) and the Turk's cap, but also trying out the various salvias and even the small blooms of the Old Blush rose.

I have no idea if they're all the same species but they do seem to be variously colored. This morning I caught a glimpse of irridescent green swooping across the yard but most have been less colorful grays and browns, at least in the brief peeks I've gotten as they flit here and there.

Any idea how long they're here? I assume they must be migrating and are fueling up for a long flight somewhere to the south.

Enjoying the breeze

2006-09-21T17:26:00.000-05:00

I've been sitting out on the porch, watching the limber branches of the pecan trees to the north of us swirl in the shifting breeze. I got up the energy to water the three roses deeply (okay, I just stuck the end of the hose at the base of each one for twenty minutes or so while I contemplated) but I still haven't figured out what to do with the purple fountain grass or the plumbago that I bought a couple of weeks ago. I did get the manfreda "Macho Mocha" into a pot last week and I'm quite excited that it seems to be developing its characteristics purple spots. I'll post a pic (once it actually does something you can see in a picture and once I get the camera back in action; I was just making some progress figuring out some of its more advanced features and I ran out of battery power).

The salvia "Anthony Parker" is starting to bloom and the salvia guarantica "Black and Blue" in the pot that I chopped back severely a few weeks ago is springing back to life, although there are no signs of any buds yet. The salvia nemarosa under the Old Blush rose has perked back up (it kind of hibernates during the summer) and one of the plants has sent up a bloom stalk. The yellow bells is still blooming wildly and so are the raspberry salvia greggiis the pavonia and the Mexican bush sage, both hamelias, the globe mallow and the zexmenia. The berries on the volunteer chile pequin are turning red.

The Old Blush is also blooming but the blooms are little wimpy things. I have no idea whether its stunted by the heat of last month or whether there's something else I need to do to it. When the camera gets fixed I'll post some pictures and maybe someone will have some ideas. Feed it more often? Water more regularly? The plant itself looks good and its sending up a lot of new growth in this cooler weather but the blooms are still so small.

Now that the upstairs yard is so much the center of my attention everything else has been languishing. I need to think about the downstairs yard and the front bed. And we've been talking about getting rid of a lot of the grass in the front yard (mostly dead anyway) and converting it to some kind of other planting. I'm still afraid of the return of hot weather so maybe I'll give it a few more weeks before I try digging things up and moving them. I'll just sit and contemplate for a bit longer.

Impulse control

2006-09-11T15:16:00.000-05:00

Now that I'm working in the garden again I couldn't resist a visit (or two) to the garden store this weekend. First I stopped in at the Great Outdoors (conveniently located within 5 minutes of our house). I have sort of hit-or-miss luck with the place but on Saturday I bought an agave I'd been wanting for a while, an agave bracteosa or squid agave. Its leaves are fleshy and pale green, with no spines on the edges or tips. And supposedly, unlike most agaves, it doesn't die after it blooms. I planted it in one of my favorite pots, empty since I left an aloe "Blue Elf" out in one of last winter's freezes (and it was just about to bloom; I was completely bummed).

I also bought a one-gallon Laura Bush petunia, just to put in a pot for some more color (I'm a sucker for that fuschia color on any plant; check out the salvia greggii in the background).

Then on Sunday D and I ran out to Barton Springs Nursery to pick up some cotton burr compost for the extension of the far back bed and to use as mulch and, even with him there as a moderating force, I couldn't resist a manfreda called "Macho Mocha" that I'd read about on the Yucca Do website (Barton Springs has a huge one in a pot up on a pedestal just at the east edge of the main barn, if you want to check it out). The one I bought is small and the leaves are all green but supposedly in sun it will develop a purplish color with brown spots. And then in the spring it's supposed to send up a huge, tall bloom stalk. I've had a manfreda (I think it's manfreda maculosa) of a more sedate nature in a pot for several years trying to find a spot for it in the ground. It actually does fine in a pot so I think I'll put the new one in a big pot as well for now.

At Barton Springs I also bought a couple of odd little succulents; one I'm sure is an aloe of some kind but with a strange pyramidal growth habit I've never seen before; the other one looks a bit like the echevarria "Jelly Beans" I got last week, but in miniature form. I also bought, mostly because D admired it, a dark blue plumbago. The flowers aren't really all that dark blue but they are darker than a plumbago I had years ago. I'm not sure where it will go. It's not really a color I have anywhere in the garden but I'm sure it will work in somewhere.

I also bought another purple fountain grass, a gallon this time. I think I'll dig up the two small fountain grasses I bought a week or so ago and put them into a pot to stick somewhere else sunnier than the spot I've got them in now. Then I'll put the bigger new one (which is already blooming) in the place of one of them at the top of the new stairs, next to the stand with the succulent in a pot. It will be next to the eggplant-painted steel columns on the new porch and should blend together with the zexmenia that's blooming there. I think that spot gets enough sun to keep the grass happy.

I did resist the lure of a bougainvillea and another one of the salmon-flowered globe mallow plants that I already have in the far back bed, as well as a couple of other plants that were calling my name (has anyone tried a plant called melochia tomentosa? I saw it at both Great Outdoors and Barton Springs; supposedly it's a native but I don't remember seeing it before. It's also called pyramid plant and Yucca Do has something similar listed as melochia pyramidata or anglepod.) And then there were all those beautiful roses. Oh well, there's always next time.

Survival of the fittest

2006-09-07T14:30:00.000-05:00

In her post on Digging, Pam wondered how my garden survived not only the record heat of August but also the neglect imposed by our recent construction project (not to mention the insult of the construction itself). My first thought was good karma, some kindness from the gardening gods. But the real answer I think is more related to survival of the fittest (with a little luck thrown in for good measure; we had a wonderful architect and contractor — a design/build firm — and subs who were more careful with the garden than I ever could have imagined).

Some background (skip ahead to the end if you'd rather avoid the long-winded details):

The heart of the garden is a long L-shaped bed in the upstairs part of our back yard (our lot is on two levels with a four-foot-tall stone retaining wall separating the two levels. The original house is on the lower level and the new addition is on the upper level). When we moved in 12 years ago the only thing living in the upstairs yard was a large yucca and a straggly rose bush. We had several dead trees removed and I pondered the emptiness for six months. The next spring I hired someone to dig the L-shaped bed; the long leg — about 30 feet — is on the south side of a stockade fence, while the short leg — about 12 feet — runs along the top of the stone wall. Both parts face south and west, with almost no shade. The new beds were amended with quite a lot of compost and in at least some parts (behind the retaining wall) the soil is quite deep. Elsewhere it's maybe 8-12 inches over limestone.

I had done some gardening on a small scale at our previous house (someone gave me Wasowski and Ryan's Gardening with Native Texas Plants for a wedding present 20 years ago) and I knew I wanted native or at least drought-tolerant plants. So the original planting had clumps of red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora), lantana "Irene," purple coneflower, coreopsis, salvia leucantha, fall obedient plant and calylophus. The ends were anchored by large clumps of salvia "Indigo Spires" and pink salvia greggii.

All that remains after 12 years is one clump of the red yucca (oh and that original yucca; we tried to dig it up once but it refused to give up the ghost and made a comeback from roots the next spring; it lives on). Some things reached the end of their natural life, some I sent to an early grave either through miscalculations regarding care or because I got tired of them for one reason or another.

I tremble to think of the plants that have poured through that bed (not to mention other smaller beds I've added since) in the last 12 years. In looking back through my sporadically kept garden notebook I can see one trend: If I had to water a plant to keep it alive it was history. I've moved more and more in that direction over the years. I'm willing to water plants in pots but (at least until recently) the upstairs garden only got water irregularly, maybe once or twice a month. (I usually add Back to Nature cotton burr compost from Barton Springs Nursery as mulch in the spring but I didn't get to do that this year.)

I've lost (or given up on) a lot of plants but those that remain are tough. I don't think there's a single plant in the upper back yard that really needs to be watered to live (to thrive and bloom is another story). The beds up there haven't changed since last year (my usual spring plant-buying frenzy was thwarted this year) and last summer — admittedly nothing to match this summer — everything survived.

This summer our experience of the upstairs garden changed dramatically. We moved into a new addition to our house in July that opens directly onto that garden. Both our new sitting room and bedroom, as well as our offices (my husband and I work from home), have views to the garden. So I have a newly vested interest in keeping that part looking good. Starting in mid-July I watered each section deeply once a week or so with my favorite small sprinkler (I've always meant to put soaker hoses in but every spring I wait too long and it gets so overgrown I can't push the hose through).

The yellow bells, Pride of Barbados, Turk's cap, hamelia, and zexmenia probably wouldn't be covered in blooms if I hadn't watered but I'm fairly sure they would have survived. I know the salvia greggii wouldn't be blooming again yet without the extra water but the salvia leucantha would have survived and bloomed anyway, I think, water or no water. The roses are the one thing I'm not sure of (I'm new to roses but I have three: Old Blush, Climbing Pinkie, and Maggie. One interesting thing is that all three did better than ever this spring and early summer with no supplemental watering, no fertilizer, nothing. Is there a lesson there?)

Other parts of the garden don't look so good right now (I haven't put up any pictures of those parts!). Some of the problems are a result of the construction and some a result of neglect. But not much, if anything, has died outright. I think the key was that everything that might have died has been gradually culled out (if I'd had a chance to add things this spring no doubt some of them would have died). As I said: survival of the fittest.

(The picture at the top is some of the toughest stuff in the garden, although it's in a newer bed, at the far back of the upstairs yard. From the top left: red hamelia/fire bush, tecoma stans/yellow bells, purple heart, and a silver-leafed, reddish salmon-flowered mallow I got at Big Red Sun a few years ago.)

Out of hiding

2006-09-07T13:50:00.000-05:00

I was astonished this morning to find comments on several of the (few) entries in the blog. Entries from people whose blogs I've been reading for several months. And then I went to one of those sites, Digging, and found an entry about my site. Pretty cool. And thanks so much, Pam, for the kind words.

When I started writing here I mostly thought of it as something for myself, a way to keep better track of where I am and where I'm going with the garden. Since I was banished from most of the garden from January until July while the construction was going on, the moment when I got back to it seemed a good time to start something else new. And since I sit in front of a computer most of the day (in my fabulous new office that looks right out into the garden; am I lucky or what?), a blog seemed like the thing to try.

Anyway, even though I never considered that others might be interested in it, it's exciting that someone is.

A couple of years ago my fabulous next-door neighbor moved. She was my garden confidante. We shared plants and tales of woe and eventually the gardens between our two houses merged, her poppies and larkspur seeding themselves into my bed and my Copper Canyon daisy finding a happier spot on her sunnier side. My new neighbor is also a gardener but we have different tastes (she's a bit tidier, more orderly than I) and, sadly, I've all but abandoned the bit of my garden that adjoins hers as well as the sense of garden companionship. So having some kind of gardening community again is welcome. Thanks for the welcome.

(Oh, and I have changed the Blogger settings so that I think anyone can post comments now. Let me know if it doesn't work.)

A glorious day

2006-09-06T15:46:00.000-05:00

The temperature this morning was 66 degrees. Can I say that again? 66 degrees. And now, at 3:30 the temperature is still in the mid 80s. Certainly it will be hot again before we can count on more than one of these days at a time but just the hint is enough to tide me over for another few weeks or even a month (more than a month and I'm getting cranky again).

A damp morning

2006-09-05T12:02:00.000-05:00

When I woke up this morning the ground was wet and rain water was dripping from the eaves. The dripping has continued all morning, just a light sprinkle but continuous. Probably not much in total inches but a pleasant change, especially with the temperature in low 70s. Almost 30 degrees cooler than last week this time. Oy!

The blooms on the Mexican bush sage are opening, either just because it's their time or because they're celebrating the cool and damp as well. I noticed bloom stalks on the salvia Anthony Parker (why do I always want to call it Arnold Palmer?) too but they haven't opened yet. That's the salvia that I saw in luxurious bloom at the nursery Alisa and I stop at when we're on our way back from Port Aransas, along Highway 183 somewhere north of Goliad (or maybe closer to Gonzales? I'll have to pay better attention next time). They have a great selection of plants, especially shrubby things, along with a couple of huge basset hounds. Anyway, I saw the saliva Anthony Parker, which has dark blueish purple blooms, and admired it but they didn't have any for sale (I did score a Mexican bush sage, maybe even the one that's blooming now, with solid purple flowers, which I've always prefered to the white-tipped variety). Some time later, maybe the next year, I saw the Anthony Parker at Barton Springs Nursery and bought it. It's never been as dramatically beautiful as the one I saw on the way back from Port A but lovely at this time of year nonetheless. I'll post a picture once it starts blooming.

The day after

2006-09-04T17:22:00.000-05:00

The new house and the garden stood up to the inspection by the multitudes yesterday. Well, not quite multitudes but the upstairs porch was certainly crowded for a while last night. The predicted cold front never quite arrived, although the afternoon was overcast and a fine mist fell for about 20 minutes — enough to cool things off a bit but not enough to drive people off of the chairs and bench out in the garden. Mostly though, everyone gathered on the new porch, sitting on the wide steps just as I'd envisioned during all those months of construction.

Here's a view of the garden D took before anyone arrived.

And here's a lovely little succulent Lauren brought me, carried home with her from a recent trip to Los Angeles (next to an agave of unremembered origin and variety, in a pot it's outgrown; I'm afraid I'll never get it out without destroying one or the other, plant or pot).

Of course, despite all my best intentions, I spent most of Sunday rushing around, trying to whip the garden into shape (or at least to camoflage the problem areas). I pulled the raspberry salvia gregii out of the big pot in the front yard, where it has languished since we stopped parking out on the street (once the carport was finished). Since I stopped walking past it every day about the same time it stopped raining, it's gotten more and more bedraggled. I had thought of putting a big bougainvillea into the pot, just for the party, but instead I pulled up one of the larger agave americana pups from the big mama plant (which has recovered some from freeze damage suffered last winter) and stuck it into the pot where it at least looks better than the salvia. I've got the salvia in a pot under the arbor along with the salvia guaranitica "Black and Blue," which I pruned back severely in the hopes of some kind of recovery. Also in the recovery ward are the yellow columbine the foundation crew had to dig up when they were putting in the french drain and the verbascum (I think that's what it is) that I bought several years ago on a trip to the Antique Rose Emporium with Alisa. Maybe with the weather a bit cooler and rain in the forecast they'll all perk up.

I also neatened up the stacks of pots that have found a temporary home under the arbor and managed to wrestle the old hot water heater (such a wonderful garden ornament) a little bit out of sight. I found a varigated agave that someone gave me a few years ago languishing back in the stacks of pots and moved it into the upstairs garden, up on a pedestal in the far back, next to a pot of succulents discovered under the tumbled-down stalks of Turk's cap growing out of the old fireplace.

And then I finally had to stop and sit down for a few minutes before people started arriving.

Getting ready for some visitors

2006-09-02T13:18:00.000-05:00

On Thursday I noticed that the weather forecast for Sunday predicted highs in the 80s. We'd been talking about having some people over to see the changes to the house and cooler weather — even the possibility — seemed like enough reason to make a plan. So we've invited quite a few people over for Sunday evening and it looks like, even on such short notice, quite a few will be able to make it.

So, of course, I started worrying about the state of the garden (not to mention the many unfinished projects inside the house). The garden actually looks surprisingly good, given the lack of attention it received this spring and early summer and especially considering the time of year. I usually completely abandon it in July and August, returning in September or whenever the first cold front blows through to pull out or cut back everything that hasn't survived and to try to restore some order. But with our new accessible, even unavoidable, view of the upstairs garden, I've been watering more and plucking weeds, cutting back some of the overgrowth.

But with the idea of people actually coming over and seeing it all, I couldn't help indulging in just a bit of the plant shopping I avoided — or was denied — all spring. I stopped by Gardens on my way to Silk Road (fabric for curtains in D's office) and bought an echeverria "Jelly Beans," that I've had in the past. I think I let it freeze one winter. I potted that up in the square zinc pot that's been empty for a while and set it up on a galvanized bucket on the steps.

I also bought a couple of 4-inch purple fountain grasses at Home Depot that I stuck at either end of the new bed in front of the covered porch. They're looking a little lonely (and I think Buddy laid on top of one of them or peed on it or something because it's looking a bit limp). But that will have to be it for now, I guess. Other than a bit more weed pulling and trimming. And maybe a bougainvillea I saw at the Great Outdoors yesterday to replace the quite drought-stunned salvia gregii in the pot out by the front steps. Nothing more. Really.

A few drops

2006-08-29T08:59:00.000-05:00

This morning, a little before 7, as I was fixing the kid's breakfasts, I heard the the pinging sound of raindrops on the stove vent pipe. The rain, steady but not drenching, fell for 10 or 15 minutes and the temperature dropped 5 degrees or so. The sky to the north and west stayed dark for an hour and rumbles of thunder in the distance continued but so far no more rain.

Here are some pictures of the garden after the rain fell. The far back with the blooming Pride of Barbados, yellow bells (Tecoma stans), and red hamelia, as well as masses of volunteer Turk's cap and purple heart; the bench with Climbing Pinkie on the teepee behind, a glimpse of the terra cotta pig Laura gave me at the party a couple of years ago behind an out of control patch of bulbine along with a few blooms of pavonia, and my Mother's Day urn in front of Old Blush.

Back to the garden

2006-08-28T14:28:00.000-05:00

About six weeks ago we moved into the new space added in our backyard and I rediscovered my garden. Before we built the addition, the only real view of the garden was from the carport. I could catch a few glimpses from inside the house, depending on the time of year and how overgrown various plants were, from the kitchen window and from the dining room, looking through the screened porch. Now the new sitting room opens onto a covered porch and, from there, directly into the upstairs garden.

Since January the garden had been hidden by piles of construction debris and building materials. The hose bib in the upstairs backyard was demolished along with the old garage apartment and the long hose disappeared at the same time. I managed a few times to pull the short hose from the downstairs hose bib up and over the wall and watered the closest plants but mainly the garden was ignored. Despite the dry spring, it handled the lack of attention better than I had hoped. Fortunately, the builders were more careful than I expected. Even the plants along their path around the corner of the new building and into the yard were only slightly damaged. The Pride of Barbados and the yellow bells were shoved around a bit but are blooming as wildly as ever in these hot August days. Even more miraculously the mallow plant with the silvery leaves and pinkish salmon flowers that I bought at Big Red Sun a few years ago survived being stepped on, crushed again and again, covered in piles of plywood. A few branches broke off but it has recovered and is still blooming.

Once the water was turned on I started sprinkling, more than in past summers, both because I hadn't watered all spring so I felt justified in splurging on water and money and because the garden is such a bigger part of our life now. I've spent some time pulling weeds -- damn that Bermuda grass!! -- and pruning a few things. The only plant that had to be cut back completely was the Jerusalem sage, which suffered some kind of heat stroke and never recovered even with deep watering. A stub of it remains with a few forlorn leaves. I'll wait and see what happens when -- if? -- the temperatures drops one of these days. That spot is directly on axis with the big sliding door in the sitting room so I want something dramatic there and the J. sage just wasn't cutting it. Maybe I'll move it? To the new space at the left side of the far back bed?

Today I pruned the volunteer chile pequin out of the Old Blush rose which is blooming — tiny pitiful blooms — despite the heat. I fertilized all three roses — it and the Climbing Pinkie on the steel teepee and the one-year-old Maggie — last week with Lauren's favorite Rabbit Hill Rose Food. They all look okay. The Mexican bush sage and the St. John's Wort are crowding Maggie, though. I think the St. John's Wort is going to have to go or be moved this fall.