prairie point

bridal wreath

Spirea not only gives us this wonderful show, but it also gives us pain relief in the form of aspirin, although the willow plant is better known from ancient days as a source of the main ingredient salicin.

Many people today prefer other pain relievers to aspirin, but not me. I happen to enjoy the taste and always chew up the tablets and let them dissolve in my mouth.

spring

The weatherman was predicting rain but it never happened. There was a gorgeous blue sky on the first day of spring. Everything in the lawn was green and perky. Salvia greggi was blooming in several colors. The mutabilis and rouletti were covered with blooms. The white wisteria spread its sweet perfume over the west yard.

rouletti

We have our first rose of the season (actually several blossoms) on the Rouletti. It's a miniature rose we picked up at the Antique Rose Emporium on one of our annual road trips to South Texas. When I say miniature I just mean the flower. Although the literature suggests that it is good in containers, ours are quite ample in size.

It really felt like Spring today. It was pleasant to be outside even if it was a bit damp. Lots of daffodils and tulips in neighborhood yards and some of those early blooming white irises, or flags as my grandmother called them.

redbud

Lately we seem to have alternating days of rain and sun. Plants are slowly greening up, but there is still not much to talk about in the way of flowers. It's fun to look at the buds on the limbs though and watch them develop. These are on a redbud branch.

Today is Texas Independence Day. It used to be a big deal when I was a school boy; now you don't hear much about it. I guess the state employees and schools still get a holiday. Traffic was really light on my daily commute.

jonquills

It felt like Spring this weekend. The bright sun and warm air made us want to get outside and do things. Tricia cleared the garden and planted potatoes and onions. I even mowed the lawn.

I also planted two walnut trees and an esperanza bush. I debated a long time about where to plant the walnuts. In the end I decided that rather than leaving them in the containers it was better to just pick any spot and move them later if I changed my mind. Through indecision I have left many a plant in its container only to see it wither and die.

Such a contrast with last Valentines Day when we had heavy snow on the ground.

Today there was steady flow of deliverymen bringing flowers to the women at work. I stopped on the way home and got roses for my own sweetheart. It seems to me this is a holiday that is made more of than it used to be. I remember it mostly as a schoolchild's holiday. My parents certainly never celebrated Valentines. Perhaps teenagers may have though. Since I did not have a girl friend it may not have registered with me.

sunflowers

Maximilian sunflower stems are almost stripped of seeds and leaves. Their twisted stems pass for our garden in January.

rosemary

Our warm spell was brief. It's colder again and rainy, although well above freezing at night. We needed the rain but I would appreciate it if the sun came out for the weekend.

Tricia has been out of town visiting her Dad but she will be back tomorrow. Meanwhile I am having to take care of the cats on my own.

moss

Wouldn't it be fun to have a garden of rocks covered with moss and lichen. I wish I knew more about this form of life.

I have been reading Muck and Mire and my interest has been aroused. Now I am in the market for a book or field guide to tell me more.

quince

The bees are already buzzing around the quince. It has been warm and sunny but the weatherman says cold is on the way back. We are expecting below freezing night-time temperatures by Thursday.

I've also noticed flowers on the phlox and on the rosemary. And, yes, today is my birthday. Thanks Mary Lou for sending well-wishers my way, and a happy birthday to you too.

getting into the spirit

Roses are still blooming here this weekend. I was outside in my driveway this morning when my neighbor Cindy caught me and dragged me into her back garden to exclaim over this one. Don't know the name of it but it did have a lovely citrusy fragrance.

Sorry to say I am not yet into the Christmas spirit. Still have not even started to shop for gifts. But last night I brought down the tree and the ornaments from the attic and by the end of the day we should have our decorations up. Tonight we are going to a holiday show at the symphony.

So with this big a dose by tomorrow I should be on the right track.

first frost

Frost glistened on the lawn this morning as I stepped outside to go to work. The morning glory blossoms which expected to greet the sun as their siblings had been doing for weeks were pinched shut. The hollyhock was slumped over the driveway.

I had to scrape the windshield of the truck before I could make my commute. Who says we don't have winter down here in Texas?

martha gonzales

Another rose that is blooming now. It is very red and has a nice scent also. The flowers deteriorate very rapidly however.

This is only the second year for this rose and it still has not grown very large. The rouletti and the mutabilis have both grown very large however and are very profuse with blooms. We have two of each in the front yard and the air smells wonderful when ther is a slight breeze.

rouletti

another beautiful sunday afternoon

This afternoon was sunny and warm. I got out and mowed the grass in the front yard and trimmed around all the edges so it was nice and neat just the way all the other yards in the neighborhood are. I probably should have got out the electric hedge clippers and trimmed the privet hedges on both sides of the yard, but it's too late in the day now.

Most of the yard signs have been taken down now. In another week I probably will have forgotten which were Bush yards and which were Kerry yards. Without the signs there is nothing to give it away.

As I read in a post today at Tender Dirt, "We are far better off planted in our own lives." I feel so much better when I turn off the news and go outside to work in my own little garden.

valentine

We have lots of roses doing well right now. The Valentine has only one blossom but it may be the prettiest of the lot.

garden update

We had an invitation to drive out this weekend to visit our friends in Alpine but it looks as if it is just not in the cards. Too many thngs going on at home. We will have to take a raincheck.

Speaking of rain, we have had showers off and on all week. The moisture and cool weather have made changes in the garden. The sunflowers are all gone now, but the roses are revitalized. The Iceberg and the Mutabilis are especially full of blossoms.

I had to mow the front lawn tonight after work. I don't like to think about spending my time maintaining St Augustine but it is actually the easiest landscape to manage, except for concrete. It doesn't take much time and you don't even have to think while you mow. There are some people who love the look of a grassy lawn, and others who turn up their noses at it. I like to think of it as just the space between intersting parts of the garden.

morning glory blossoms

back in the garden again at last

Today was a wonderful fall day. A shipment of irises from Argyle Acres had arrived a few weeks ago. They should have already been in the ground.. It felt good to get my hands back in the dirt. I have been way too busy lately with work, with the responsiblity for my parent's care, and various other concerns.

After planting the irises I weeded the front garden, then just watched the clouds in the sky and talked with neighbors.

Blue is one of the best colors for the garden in my opinion and there is lots of it right now. Not only the eupatorium which is so popular with monarchs but also morning glory and the blue lantana. Next to the lantana in the picture above is another favorite plant of mine, four-nerve daisy or Tetraneuris scaposa. True, the little yellow daisy is not that showy but the plant has bloomed for me every single day of the year. It bloomed on the hottest day of the year in July and it bloomed in January when it was buried in snow.

eupatorium

maximilian sunflowers

With all the rain we have had lately, the maximilians are too top-heavy to stand up.

elusive butterfly

As soon as I saw this butterfly through my window I rushed outside into the garden with the camera. It was not quite like the usual swallowtails. The body was larger and there is that bluish cast to the wings.

I never did get a good shot though. It never stopped beating its wings even when feeding. It kept coming back to these bright red anisacanthus flowers interspersed with long graceful flights. When I got back inside I tried to find it in my field guides. Could it be the Spicebush Swallowtail?

salvia regla

Every year this salvia impresses me more and more. I remember the spring after I first planted it. It was just a bare stick with no life at all until just when I was about to give up on it, almost in summer, it sprang to life with very long vermillion blossoms.

Now it seems to come to life earlier but the late summer and early fall is still the season that it blooms the best. It blooms in time for the hummingbird migration and they seem to appreciate it. It's become quite a substantial plant too, about four feet tall and with a thick woody trunk. I wish I had chosen a better spot for it. It is not in a place where it is shown off to best advantage. But apparantly it likes it where it is and I doubt it would survive transplanting.

The name is said to come from the town of Regla, in the province of Hidalgo. It is native to northern Mexico and the Chiso Mountains.

esperanza

This is another plant from the southwest that has recently become very popular. The proper name is Tecoma stans, Another name is yellow bells. It is winter hardy in zone 8 and can make a shrub up to 5 or 6 feet.

Mine is about a year old and is in a medium-sized container. I intended that to be temporary, but when I tried to move it in the spring I found that the roots had grown out through the drainage holes and into the ground.

turk's cap

Turk's cap or manzanilla is another member of the hibiscus or okra family. The funny thing about it is that the flowers never open. It blooms almost all the time in late summer and early fall. It's a good plant for shady areas. It will grow in the sun but won't bloom as much.

lycoris

One of the great joys in the September garden is the sudden appearance of the Lycoris radiata. These were found in the garden when I moved here and I have divided them and spread them until I have quite a colony. They are dormant in the spring and summer, bloom in the fall and have foliage through the winter. Nonconformists like me. Perhaps that is why I am fond of them.

We will have houseguests today and overnight and then tomorrow there will be another trip to visit mom.

goldenrod

So many people think goldenrod is just a weed. It seems like such a perfect color to me.

redbud seeds

artemisia

After a morning rain, yesterday afternoon was great for working outside. I had a small household plumbing repair that had to be done inside first but when I finished there was a clear sky, the sun had dried things out and the temperatures were cool enough to work without getting all hot and sweaty. It felt a bit like a fall day in fact.

I cleaned up one of the front beds and then trimmed back an artemisia that was getting out of bounds. I dislike working with artemisia. The plant feels funny in my hand, too rubbery or something. And the fragrance is one I really don't like. It gives me the creeps.

I keep it because the color and texture makes a nice contrast to other plants. The kind I have is called "Powis Castle" and it spreads out to about 6 feet in diameter, almost making a tall groundcover. I've heard that this variety is a cross with the variety that was used to make absinthe. It seems to have somethng sinister about it.

obedient plant

Fall must be just around the corner. The obedient plant is blooming. It is called that because the stems stay in whatever position you bend them.

the garden at midsummer

It's just past the middle of summer but there are already hints of autumn in the garden. The obedient plants are beginning to open and all the lantanas are really blooming proficiently now. The Gregg salvias are waking back up too. Fall is my favorite season in the garden and I'm looking forward to it.

Most of the plants that love the hot summer will still be blooming in the fall too, like the zexmenia and the turk's cap.

I finally found the energy and time to clean up the back garden enough to make it seem presentable. The very back is still pretty wild and wooly but I am working my way that direction. A plan is shaping up in my head about how to redo the one corner that looks especially bad.

One of my problems in gardening is that I don't stick with a plan. I make plans all right but I keep changing them. And some of the plans I make don't work out the way I intended. The garden is just a place for playing around and having fun anyway. It is not as if it is intended to last or be a work of art or anything.

We got some bids on replacing the wooden fence separating us from the schoolyard but decided to pass on it for now. The question is whether it can stand up to the pounding it gets from schoolkids and their soccer balls every day. In the last couple weeks they brought in some temp buildings and partially filled up the schoolyard. Word is that they are going to do some renovation of the main building. It brings the kids closer to the back fence. Before they weren't even near our end of the playground except when they were chasing a ball.

gulf fritillary

A common butterfly of our area, bedding down for the night on a sprig of rosemary. I hope it is safe from spiders.

The camera does not do it justice. The spots that appear white in the image are really a metallic silver.

purple sage

Cenizo or Leucophylum frutescens may not be familiar to northern gardeners but it has become almost ubiquitous in Texas gardens. I can't remember ever seeing one when I was growing up though. It is not really native to this area, it's a desert plant from northern Mexico and west Texas, but it was introduced into the nursery trade and took off. It's silver foliage looks good in the landscape both summer and winter, and it is such a splendid sight when it blooms.

It is said to only bloom after summer showers. I have never been able to trick it with a sprinkler. They are blooming all over town right now. Rain is in the forecast but to my knowledge none has fallen here yet.

texas star hibiscus

One of the prizes of my garden is the Texas star hibiscus which each year has its first bloom just before Tricia's birthday. This year it was a little bruised and sun-scorched before I got to it with the camera but it still looks lovely.

mosquito repellants

One of the gardening groups I belong to has been discussing natural mosquito repellants recently. We can't go outside here for more than a few minutes without being attacked, and I have never liked putting the commercial stuff on my skin, so this is a topic of some interest to me.

Many of the natural repellants sold in stores use ingredients like pennyroyal that I don't grow, but one member of the group makes her own repellant by infusing horsemint in olive oil. Horsemint is a type of monarda with a citronella type scent. It is a common wildflower in this area of Texas and I have some in the garden. She puts the leaves and flowers in a saucepan and covers it with olive oil and gently heats it, then lets it sit overnight before straining. She claims it works great.

My own remedy is simpler. We have a couple of large rosemary plants, one near the front entrance and another out back. When I am outside and the mosquitos start to bother me I simply break off a branch of rosemary and rub the oil from the leaves all over my face and arms. The leaves practically ooze oil after sitting in the sun so a small branch will go a long way. It really works for me and it's so handy, not to mention being free. Another plus is that the fragrance is nice by itself.

the mortality of gardens

After dinner I got outside and worked a little at clearing up some more of the weeds that have sprung up from last month's neglect. I started to reflect on how fast nature takes over our feeble attempts to impose our will.

My worst enemies are the trees and the vines. Pecan, hackberry and redbud seedlings are so prolific that I would be living in a jungle if I let it go. Then there is the bindweed and the honeysuckle waiting to smother everything to the ground.

I wonder what will be left of my garden within a few years of my leaving. Actually I guess that would depend a lot on the next owner. Our house is practically ancient for this area of the country - sixty years old. We have fixed it up a lot. Tore the kitchen down to the studs and rebuilt it ourself. But many of the older houses around here are being leveled to build "mini-mansions."

South of Ft Worth are the ruins of a fabulous garden built in the 1930's by a wealthy man. When we visited there a few years ago there were remains of creekside walks and a "ship" built of stone in the creek where glamorous parties were once held. But not much was left of the roses and other plants that once grew alongside those paths.

my gardening taste

After taking Chan's Taste Test and reading Kathy's comments, I started thinking about my gardening experience and decided I need to explain a little.

I grew up in Texas and have mostly lived here. I have memories of the gardens of my parents and grandparents and others but I did not have a garden of my own until I moved to where I am now about eleven years ago. I learned about plants from Sierra Club hikes and wildflower field guides.

When I finally had enough space for a garden my first thoughts were about plants that were familiar, namely wildflowers. I took a landscaping class taught by Sally Wasowski and joined a garden club specializing in native plants, both of which reinforced that point of view. I am not a purist though. I left anything that was still surviving in the old garden beds and have planted lots of roses and irises.

So not only has my gardening experience been confined to one region, I have even deliberately limited my plant selections (with a lot of exceptions, as I have to point out).

back in the garden

The summer heat and humidity is enough to make anyone feel a little wilted.

Actually this is a datura blossom near the end of its short life. I like daturas, also known as jimson weed, but a lot of people don't. The plant itself is mostly big and ugly and is poisonous. But the flowers are gorgeous at night when they first open and have a strong fragrance.

The garden is starting to bloom out again now that the rains have mostly stopped and the sun is back out. The roses especially have really come back to life and the summer flowers are starting to show themselves too.

I am still trying to trim back the rampant growth of weeds that took over during the rains. It is so bad that it is intimidating, but I just have to take a small section at a time and try to tame it.

sunflower

garden update

It's starting to get difficult to enjoy the garden. It's either unbearably hot and humid or else it's raining. There are tons of mosquitos. By the time it cools off in the evening I am too tired to get out and do much.

I've kept the front yard up but out back weeds and overgrowth are starting to get the best of things. The wisteria has runners that cross the path now. A couple times I've tripped over them on the way to the vegetable garden. Maybe this weekend I will feel motivated enough to withstand the conditions and cut them back.

There are still roses blooming but the blossoms are just not as numerous. The most prevalent flowers are the purple coneflowers. They look best in the shady areas where they keep their purple color.

So far the lantanas have had only sparse flowering and the flame acanthus is just coming to life. The ruelias are blooming but I don't get to enjoy them because the flowers have fallen off by the time I get home from work.

fennel blossom

vitex

When I was a student in Houston there was a large gnarled old vitex tree that grew next to the driveway of my rented house. In the summer I would have to sweep aside the branches to get into my car. I learned to like the fragrance of the foliage and I equally enjoyed the dark blue spikey flowers.

I was not familiar with vitex then so I had to ask my friend (who was also named Bill) about the tree. This other Bill loved trees and knew all that could be known about them. He had bought a piece of land outside town and gone into the landscaping and nursery business. He was planting trees on his land with the intention of making his living selling them and planting them on other people’s property. He lived frugally. His land did not have a house on it so he bought one of those pre-fabricated sheds like they sell at the big hardware stores. He had it set up on his land and that’s where he lived. There was no insulation in the walls and no plumbing. He had a cast-iron wood-burning stove that sufficed for both heating and cooking.

Eventually Bill met a pretty librarian who tamed his wild ways and they moved off to her native Oregon. But not before he transferred a little bit of his knowledge and interest in trees on to me. And of course he identified the vitex tree for me. It has become one of my favorite trees and I can’t imagine living without one now.

Vitex is a common plant in the South. You see it often in old neighborhoods. It likes lots of sun and is very tolerant of drought. Many people think it is native but it actually originated in south Asia. It can be either a large shrub or a small tree up to about twenty feet. It is naturally multi-trunked, but if you cut back all but one or two of the trunks it becomes more tree-like. The leaves look like marijuana, which gives rise to the nickname “hemp tree.”

Another common name is “chaste tree.” For centuries the legend has persisted that the fragrance of the flowers reduces passion. Some say that the tree was often planted around monasteries in Europe for this reason. The flowers are very popular with bees and I’ve read that some of the best honey comes from bees that feed on vitex.

echinacea

potatoes

veggies

The first tomatoes have just about ripened on the vine in our vegetable garden. The vines are heavy with green ones too. The trouble with growing tomatoes is that the harvest comes all at once. We'll soon be trying to foist them off on our friends. I have never tried fried green tomatoes but we know someone who professes to like that dish and she should be expecting a sack of the green ones this weekend.

Tricia collected a nice harvest of potatoes just before the rains started. I am not a big fan of those large potatoes they sell in stores. I don't really like french fries or baked potatoes. However I do like the little red-skinned potatoes in a cream sauce. Those are the kind we grow and they actually have a taste.

I've read that in the Andes where potatoes originate they have many varieties growing wild, even some that are red and some blue. One day I'd like to find some of those and see what they taste like.

mutabilis

garden update

For the record here is what is happening in the garden at the end of May.

We still have roses. The rouletii and the mutabilis still have plentiful blossoms. The Iceberg however which usually has the most is currently barren. All of the new roses we planted this spring currently have at least one bloom on them also. The Prosperity is really doing well now but the Ducher is definitely going to be my favorite of these, because of the fineness of the blossoms and the fullness of the foliage.

The salvia greggii are no longer as prolific, but the coccinea are now blooming and the regla is just starting to get a few blooms too. I acquired a sylvestris from a friend last weekend which is in bloom. The leucantha and the farinacea have yet to flower. Last week there were several penstemons in flower but none this week.

Lots of echinacea and yarrow. I love to walk in the garden in the very late evening when the yarrow heads seem to just be floating above the ground. Guara has an effect like that too. It's pale pink flowers look like little butterflies.

The pink and yellow lantana is starting to flower but the blue which is my favorite has not yet. Of the yellow flowers the zexmenia is beginning to flower and of course the four-nerve daisy blooms every day of the year. The red yucca has four stalks of flowers. Also avens, mexican hat, milkweed, mexican oregano, skullcap, winecup, pavonia and I'm sure I've missed a few.

mexican hat

caterpillars

The fennel out near the street is now over six feet tall and covered with caterpillars that grow into black swallowtail butterflies. We don't object to their eating the fennel. In fact it is mostly for their benefit that we grow it.

However fennel is a fairly nice plant to grow anyway. We started out by planting it out back in the garden. Somehow this one escaped and set itself up under a tree near the street. Like all volunteers it seems to do much better than any we have planted ourselves.

Being near the street it catches the eye of passersby. In the early spring when it is under two feet tall most assume it is some kind of fern. It is probably most attractive as a landscaping plant at that stage. At the stage it is now it has interesting yellow flowers and seedheads but is kind of rangy. The caterpillars tend to strip the soft foliage away and leave bare stalks.

I like to eat the seeds myself. They taste like licorice. They also make a nice seasoning.

But really all those are just extras because the real pleasure comes when you see the big black swallowtails floating gently in the breeze.

gratuitous peony photo

changing seasons

As I stepped out this morning to go to the car, I was greeted by the first daylily of the season. This is is the only one to even have buds on it yet, in fact.

My lantana is just beginning to bloom and there are a few pink flowers on the skullcap that I recently planted next to the driveway. The zexmenia has also had a flower or two on it. All these are hot weather plants that will really not look their best until July.

All signs of the changing seasons. The afternoons are starting to get hot and muggy. We are needing rain already and there is none in the forecast. I got out the hose and watered a little around the plants that I put in this spring.

annuals

Most advice I've read about gardening advises to plant perennials. That seems to be based on the assumption that annuals will only last one year. If that is true then perennials would be the better value not just for the dollar spent but for the labor of putting them in. They get bigger and better each year.

But if you plant the right annuals they return each year, and if they don't get bigger they multiply so that you get more and more plants. What's more they have this interesting habit of moving around in your yard.

These larkspurs originally were part of a wildflower seed mix that planted in a corner of the yard three or four years back. There are a few still in that location but they wanted a sunnier spot. I've found them here and there in various beds. There was even one that came up in a crack in the driveway. But this year the best display is right here alongside the walk across from the vegetable garden.

They look good here and they will have spend themselves by the time the other plants here are ready to show off.

Salvia coccinea is another annual that moves around and shows itself in different places each year. Neither of these is invasive, and if you don't like them somewhere they are easy to pull up. But you have to give up a little bit of control over your garden to really appreciate them

how to get your garden weeded

The vegetable garden has been invaded lately with spearmint. It escaped from a nearby shady bed under a juniper tree across a paved path into the area where we are trying to grow tomatoes and lettuce.

As weeds go this is a pretty nice one, providing extra benefits of fragrance when you pull it up. I've read that spearmint increases mental acuity. I had thought about leaving it to see if it would keep the pests off the tomatoes, but it was threatening to overwhelm the tomatoes.

But then we got volunteers to weed the garden. Our friends Charlie and Susan are planning to make mint juleps on Saturday for their "Kentucky Derby" party. We offered free mint for the picking and they accepted the offer. Now there are but a few traces left. I'm looking forward to the mint juleps tomorrow.

troublesome vines

Today I pulled out a bunch of Japanese honeysuckle with stems almost a half-inch thick. It had planted itself among a stand of nandina and I did not even notice it until the white blooms revealed themselves a few days ago.

I hate pulling honeysuckle out because it has a pretty flower and a nice fragrance. If only it did not spread everywhere. When I first moved here there was a whole corner of the yard completely covered with it. It still keeps popping up along the fenceline.

There is a coral variety available which is much less invasive. I would try it but I am not sure I could keep from confusing it with the Japanese variety.

I have another vine in my garden that is even worse. In fact it is one of the most troublesome weeds in my garden. It is a relative of morning glory which I call bindweed. It seems to pop up just about everwhere with thin twining stems and heart-shaped leaves. It strangles my roses and other perennials and can be very tedious to remove without damaging the other plants.

dogwood flower

Since I did not get to take any pictures of the dogwoods last Sunday as I had hoped, I am posting this shot of a dogwood flower in my neighbor's back yard. We don't have any flowering dogwoods ourselves but the limbs of this little one may someday extend over our fence.

first taste of the garden

We got our first small harvest from the vegetable garden today. Enough new potatoes for a meal for two, cooked with sprigs of rosemary and diced onion, both also from our own garden.

It feels good to have your own food growing just steps away from the backdoor, even though the vast majority of our diet is still processed foods from unknown origins. It would be satisfying in more ways than one to be even more self-sufficient.

I took the Ecological Footprint Test but found I did not do much better than average - mainly the result of living with only one other human in a (relatively) large house in a very hot climate. Fully half my result was housing.

china rose 'mutabilis'

trimming abelia

Something I haven't figured out is how to keep abelia trimmed down and have it look good. We have two big bushes of it that I would like to be just a couple feet shorter. One in particular is under a window. Or at least I would like for it to be under the window. As it is it obscures the window.

Some people try to clip these into a square hedge but that just does not look right to my eye. The plant has many stems that come up from the ground and fall over in a kind of fountain effect. If you cut the stem anywhere it branches from that point, spoiling the effect.

At one office where I use to work, the parking lot was surrounded by a hedge of this type that got too big. One day the groundskeepers came out and whacked everything down at ground level. They looked terrible for a while but grew back in looking just perfect.

I wish that I had thought of doing that in the winter. This late in the year I am afraid I might be looking at another whole year before they looked good again. Abelia is evergreen so one hesitates to cut it in the winter when not much else is looking good.

What I did instead today is crawl around under the bush trying to identify the longest stems and whacking them off at ground level. That method helped a little, but truthfully all the stems are too tall. I also made sure that I got the stems with branches that scraped against the windowglass in a breeze making my skin crawl the way it did when kids used to scrape their fingernails on the blackboard (remember that?).

poison ivy

Uh oh. I think I could have a rash from poison ivy. There is a small area near my right elbow that is red and itchy and a spot on my left wrist underneath my watch band where I've scratched the skin raw.

I always thought I was not allergic. In fact I sometimes pull out poison ivy with bare hands without giving it a thought. I've heard that you can develop an allergy to it at any time though.

Last Thursday I spied a small patch growing under the trees near the back fence and pulled it out. I was wearing gloves but I remember the vines reaching back and rubbing against my bare arms.

Did my immunity wear off? Looks like I'm going to have to be more careful in the future.

we visit an iris farm

A cold front moved in today. It was cloudy with intermittent light rain. It was not really good weather to work outside so we decided on a car trip. We headed up to a little place just south of Denton where the owners of an iris farm hold an annual garden tour at their home.

Forget what I said a few days ago about the lack of wildflowers along the road. On this trip we saw lots of bluebonnets and especially primroses along the right of ways. I still think the bluebonnets have not quite hit their peak yet though.

Our destination was Argyle Acres and it turned out that the demonstration gardens were in the front yard of the owner's log cabin style house. The setting was a Crosstimbers forest on a hillside, lots of small post oaks in a reddish sandy soil with natural underbrush and leaf mulch, and no lawn grass to be seen. Heavily mulched paths connected the iris beds within the woods. It was a completely natural and very simple landscape.

They claimed over 1200 varieties of iris in the gardens. No more than a third were blooming at best, but it was still an overwhelming sight. Of course I had my camera with me and if you are not already sick of seeing iris pictures you are welcome to visit my photo gallery where I posted some of the prettier shots.

With the light rain and the wind Tricia and I were rather chilled by the time we were ready to leave. Plus we were starting to feel hungry. We headed back through downtown Grapevine where we stopped and got lunch at an old favorite that we had not visited for several years.

No, we did not bring any irises back with us, but we did order some to be delivered in the fall.

irises

This does not seem to be a particulary good year for wildflowers. Most of the bluebonnet displays I have seen so far have been rather weak. But then I have been sticking pretty close to home lately. The roses and irises are what catch my attention here. Both are looking very good right now.

The latest edition of Texas Highways magazine came a few days ago and has an article about a big iris grower near here. The article says there is no true red iris. (Unfortunately the article is not online). That may be true but this one in my backyard seems awfully close to red. Perhaps a little rusty. An odd thing about it - the buds are a very dark navy, almost black, before they open. I don't know the names of any of my iris varieties. All of them were pass-alongs.

There are more pictures of this month's flowers in the photo gallery.

The magazine says that the iris grower is offering tours of their demonstration gardens over the next couple weekends. I may have to brave the crowds.

UPDATE: We visited the iris farm and saw one almost like this called Lady Friend. I think it is enough alike that I am going to assume that is what ours is.

garden maintenance

The predicted rain for the weekend never materialized, so I got to be outside working the best part of the day.

Mostly I weeded the various beds. A lot of my friends get the wrong idea when I tell them I like a natural looking garden with lots of native plants. They think a garden like this requires no care. I am old and lazy so I wish that were true. And there are some parts of it that do look like it has gone wild.

It might be true that a native plant garden takes a little less care than one with exotics. But the yard with the minimum care has got to be an expanse of lawn grass that you can just hire somebody to mow flat once a week. I really cannot understand these people who promote alternatives to lawns on the basis of easy care. On the basis of beauty and interest, yes. But easy care? Not unless I am doing something drastically wrong.

While I was weeding Tricia planted the tomatoes and peppers in the vegetable garden. We are little late setting these out. We will have Early Girl, Celebrity, Fourth of July and Red October tomatoes this year. For peppers, I picked out jalapenos, habaneros and serranos. We usually have some volunteers in the garden that come up from seed from last year's plants too.

Sable tended the potatoes.

garden update

The wisteria is starting to fade and the flowers are being replaced by bright green leaves. There is still a hint of fragrance though and the ground underneath is littered with the remains of the blossoms.

The irises are starting to show their stuff now. The white ones are blooming first. This colony by the path in the shadow of the wisteria has over a dozen large blooms on stalks so tall they topple over from the weight. Elsewhere in the yard there are yellow and blue ones soon to open.

The salvias are beginning to bloom too as well as the blackfoot daisies. Underneath the pecans there is a flower on one of the buckeyes (Aeschylus pavia). This is the first time I have seen it bloom and I am surprised to see that it is a pale yellow. I was expecting scarlet.

The pecans are still barelimbed but the cedar elms have fully leafed out now. It is surprising how they were transformed so suddenly in just a few days. I am so busy at work I have just spare moments to enjoy them. One day I look and there is just a bit of green and then the next time I look the tree is bright yellowish-green all over.

lessons

Daughter and grand-daughter were houseguests this weekend. While they went with Tricia to see "Monsters on Ice", I worked outside in the garden and played with my new Canon. It's got a lot more features than my old Olympus digital, but that added complexity means a lot more to learn and I seem to be a slow learner. On closeups especially I seem to be out of focus most of the time. At least I am not using up film while I practice.

Perhaps I need a tripod. It seems like the subject will go in and out of focus while I am aiming. I am talking mainly about photographing flowers here. Of course I got in a little practice on portraits this weekend too.

I also gained a bit of wisdom from grand-daughter Beth, "Rolly-pollies are nice to people." I bet you did not know that either. Actually I have suspected them of eating the lettuce in my garden; but I am willing to concede that they probably have no evil intentions toward me.

This weblog got a little extra attention over the last few days thanks to Burningbird and Reading and Writing. Just a little light-hearted kidding about my flower pictures. Hopefully my readers will bear with me while I enthuse about Spring. In a few months the sun will be burning everything up, and I will be looking at scorched earth while you northerners are enjoying your summer.

ducher

This is the first blossom on the roses I got last weekend. It has several more buds too, which have a tinge of pink around the edge. The flower is small.

I've read that Ducher is the only white China rose. It was introduced in 1869. It is not supposed to get very large. I've planted it in a space between my driveway and a tall privet hedge at the edge of the property. It will get good sun in the morning through early afternoon but be shaded in the late afternoon.

Nearby is the Valentine which has buds already too. I'll post a picture as soon as one opens.

white wisteria

The white wisteria has a stronger fragrance than the purple one. It will perfume the air over an area of at least half an acre when it reaches it's maximum bloom a few days from now. Standing under it is almost intoxicating.

first day of spring

We celebrated the first day of Spring with a drive in the country. This time we headed northwest for a change. We skimmed across the northern edge of Fort Worth to Highway 199. It had been a long while since I had visited this corner of the world and I was dismayed to see how suburbanized it had become - all chain stores and fast food.

We headed north on the Jacksboro Highway but it was not until we got past Springtown that we finally escaped the urban traffic and settled down into a relaxing drive. Jacksboro turned out to be a pleasantly sleepy little town.

We had heard about a new rose nursery opening up there and that was the ostensible excuse for our trip. All we had to go on was a street address and no map but it was a numbered street. I resisted the plea from Tricia to stop and ask directions; eventually we crossed a "Fourth Street" and from there it was easy to get oriented. The nursery was a modest operation right at the edge of a residential area.

It turned out that we arrived on the very first day that the nursery was open to the public, although they have been selling wholesale for several years. The owner and his wife were on hand to show us around and offer us a Dublin Dr Pepper from a washtub full of ice. They sell "antique" roses which are plants grown on their own rootstock, as opposed to grafted roses.

We picked out five to bring home - Ducher, Buff Beauty, Prosperity, Valentine and Zephirine Drouhin. All of them have strong scents, which is the quality we were after.

We took another route home through Bridgeport trying to get as far as we could on country roads before hitting the city traffic. The countryside was greening up but there was little sign of wildflowers that far north yet. At least it looked better than this however.

spring flowers

Lot's of new flowers in the garden and more just days away.

That is spirea in the picture below. We also have candytuft, phlox, roses (rouletii, martha gonzales and mutabilis), four-nerve daisy, and salvia greggii.

The first blooms are appearing on the white wisteria and in a few days we will have blooms on the purple one also.

Click for a larger image

redbuds

Tuesday I had to mow my lawn. We've been having so much rain lately that it was starting to look out of control.

Today it actually seemed warm. Redbuds are at the height of their glory all over town. We have roses too. I saw several blooms on the Rouletti this afternoon. The salvia greggii are just starting to open up. Irises and daffodils are blooming in gardens all down the street.

It's affecting my mood. I feel more optimistic, cheerful, like starting new projects.

daffodils

Daffodils are everywhere this week. Why is it that I have never planted daffodils? Strange oversight. They are undeniably a pretty flower.

All week long though I have not been able to get a rhyme out of my head. It's something I read in MAD when I was a boy.

I wandered lonely as a clod,
just gathering old rags and bottles.
When onward on my way I plod
I saw a host of axolotls.
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
A sight to make a man's blood freeze.

iris

A few days ago I was talking about "rescuing" plants. This iris was rescued a couple years ago from an abandoned garden at a property that had been donated to our church. Eventually the whole site will be bulldozed for a new building. For now the garden is just a hindrance to the grounds crew who have to mow around it.

This plant bloomed the first year after I planted it and then I decided to move it again. I read in one of Scott Ogden's books that it preferred a damp shady environment. Last year it did not bloom at all, and I was afraid I had made a mistake in relocating it. I was very surprised to look out the window this afternoon and see the flower.

It's the first of my irises to bloom. The flower like the foliage is slender and delicate. The fans die back all the way to the ground in the winter.

plant rustling

Saturday, I "rescued" a few native plants from a site in Plano doomed to be scraped clean in the near future to make another road. I did not have any definite idea of what I was looking for when I set out. There were about fifty people there when I arrived. I spied a few I knew who were more knowledgable than me at identifying plants and attached myself to them.

With their help I found a few wild orchids and some prairie verbena and an aromatic sumac, all of which have already found a new home in my own garden. Many of the people were digging the prairie grasses, but I passed on that for now.

I am most curious about the orchids. I can't wait for them to bloom so I can find out what kind they are.

independence day

Wow. I had to be reminded that yesterday was Texas Independence Day by someone who doesn't even live in the state. Thanks to Hands in the Dirt. Time was this was a well-known holiday. Or was it only recognized in the schools?

There are unmistable signs of Spring now. Gazing out my office window I thought I could detect leafing out on the row of big trees on the far side of the parking lot. We have a little bit of lettuce already in the garden, holdovers from last year. Enough for a very small salad. And the seeds I planted have sprouted.

the garden in february

I saw a white iris blooming as I was running an errand this morning. According to my mother the old-fashioned white ones are the first to bloom. She calls them "flags" instead of irises. Mine always bloom much later, even the white ones. But the foliage is always interesting to look at even when they are not blooming.

It was cold and damp today. They are predicting rain for tomorrow. It was very late when I got home from work last night and I was still recovering this morning. At first I did not even want to get out. Finally I decided to fertilize the front lawn. It is something I always do about this time each year with an organic fertilizer. It always annoys Tricia because it is made of chicken manure and has a smell. She claims I always put it out just when she is expecting her friends over. The activity warmed me up a little and took my mind off my "office work."

There was a hike scheduled for this morning that I intended to take. Looking for "trout lilies" in the Trinity Forest. I seem to always miss seeing these woodland flowers. But today I seemed to just need a morning of doing nothing more than anything else.

starting the vegetable garden

Another sunny afternoon today. We worked in three inches of compost in the vegetable garden. Then Tricia planted potatoes and onions and I set out seed for lettuce. I suspect we spend more money on this garden than we would spend on buying the vegetables in the store. If we counted our labor cost I am sure that would be true. We like the idea of being self-sustaining but there is no way we will ever come anywhere close to that ideal. We do it partly because we think the vegetables we grow ourselves taste better than the ones in the store and because we know exactly how they have been grown. We do it partly just because we come from families who always had gardens. I don't know if it makes sense but it is satisfying.

I have a small flower bed near the front walk that I would like to make some changes to. Last year I put some salvia greggii in the back which have a color called "pink flamingo" along with with a red hibiscus. Along the front are blue trailing phlox and candytuft and there are daylillies of several colors interspersed. In the middle of this bed is a large zexmenia. It does well there but it is too tall for the salvias that I planted behind it. I have another location in mind for the zexmenia but I can't decide what to replace it with. The area is in full sun around the middle of the day but is shaded morning and late afternoon.

sunny afternoon

Sunny and in the low seventies. You could not ask for a more perfect day and I had the afternoon off. First I got out the chainsaw and took care of the split live oak that met its demise in the snowstorm. It's funny how trees on the ground seem to have so much more bulk than they do when standing. I cut a little of it up in the right lengths for firewood and added it to the wood pile. But mostly it was too small. It will have to go out to the curb for trash pickup.

Next I went to the vegetable garden. We don't have a tiller and we usually just rent one for jobs like this. But the ground still seemed very soft and it's not really a very big garden. It's a raised bed and the soil has been heavily amended. I got out the garden fork. When I held it a couple feet off the ground and dropped it the tines sank in all the way to the wooden shaft. I decided to try turning the ground by hand with the fork. That wound up being a little more of a task than I was really in shape for, and by the time I was finished I was ready to sit down and have some tea.

There still is not much blooming yet in the flower beds. The quince blossoms seem to have survived the snow rather well and the bees were out visiting them again this afternoon. The only other flowers were the candytuft (Iberis sempervirens) which also survived the snow.

snow day

Woke up early this morning with an inordinate amount of whiteness shining through the bedroom window. The weatherman had predicted snow and it looks like he got it right this time. It's still falling and we already have a soft blanket covering the ground and clumping on the trees and bushes.

For the benefit of the northerners who may be reading this, we get snow maybe once or twice a year here and when we do it is a BIG DEAL. At least it's Saturday so no attempts to get to the office.

I was talking to my Dad on the phone Thursday and he wanted to know if we had our potatoes planted yet. He reminded me that Lincoln's Birthday is when you need to have them in the ground. The answer was no; it's been too wet and cold every weekend. I don't think I am going to be in the garden today either unless it's to build a snowman.

dream garden

Last night I dreamed I stopped overnight at a hotel in the big city with some traveling companions. The weather being bad we didn't want to venture out so we decided to entertain ourselves exclusively within the hotel during our short stay. There was a night club there vaguely like one I had just seen in a movie and a magic store and of course a restaurant.

It was a restaurant within a garden, with tables set between beds of flowers and herbs. Due to the mystery of dreams it was inexplicably sunny as well as being in the basement of a hotel. Fragrant roses and climbing vines divided the area into "rooms" and there was a wide border around the whole place with banks of rosemary, thyme and oregano, as well as iris and other flowers. Beyond the border a stone wall encircled everything.

I woke up wishing I could go to a restaurant like that. The closest I can think of is one at an herb farm, which is not actually al fresco even though you can appreciate the garden through the windows.

advice from the past

I am sure I could never make it in the north. Even the weather we have this time of year in north Texas gets me down. I hate the grey sky and the way I cringe from the cold wind under my coat.

In search of some diversion I headed to a used bookstore. Whenever I am in any bookstore I always check the gardening section to see what I can find. This time I came across a slim spiral-bound paperback called Dallas Planting Manual. According to the forward it was orginally "compiled" by Mrs. Edward Belsterling in 1941. This was the Eleventh Edition, published in 1981 by the Dallas Women's Club.

It includes a "monthly calendar" with gardening tips. For February the advice includes, "start a garden diary. It will be your most valuable reference book. Keep records of time of bloom, combination of bloom occurring at the same time and of what is blooming in other gardens that you would like to have in yours. FEED THE BIRDS." Sound advice.

The things to plant this month: potatoes and onions, larkspur, poppy and dahlia seeds. "Bare-root roses should not be set out after the 15th."

When I first started gardening the only books I found were written for the north. They were totally out of sync with the seasons in Texas. There are plenty of books written about gardening in Texas now, but even those are not always relevant. Texas is a pretty big area and what works in Amarillo does not necessarily work in Corpus Christi. So I am happy to find a book that is specifically for my area, especially one written by an amateur whose voice I've never heard.

Besides the monthly calendar there are sections on soil and bed preparation and descriptions of the most popular plants. I am looking forward to reading it.

rosemary flowers

Our cold front is still with us. The days are sunny and pleasant enough for those fortunate enough to have the leisure to enjoy them. Once the sun goes down the temperatures drop however, and we will have another freezing night tonight.

I am reminded of my schoolboy days when I would bundle up for the morning walk to school and then forget and leave my coat in the locker when I left to come home. How many others remember doing that?

There is a big rosemary plant between our driveway and the front door. It's about three feet high and at least four feet in diameter. I like to brush against it as I walk by. Sometimes Tricia picks a branch to cook with the chicken or with potatoes. Last week she made sweet potatoes with rosemary that were especially good. This rosemary bush has been blooming now for several weeks. They are small flowers and tend to be buried down in the shadows of the leaves where you don't see them much. I haven't seen many insects around them. Rosemary tends to repel a lot of insects I hear.

garden update

Saturday was rainy but today we had a clear sky and temperatures in the 70's. It was a perfect afternoon to spend outside.

We cut back some of the roses and pulled weeds out of the flower beds. Tricia and I tend to disagree about the attractiveness of the dead stalks of perennials and annuals. She doesn't like to look at them. I think they are attractive in a stark sort of way and I like to leave them standing through the winter. To compromise we cut down the ones in the front on public view and left some in the back that I can appreciate.

The quince which opened its first blossoms just a couple weeks back now has many blooms and the bees are buzzing all around them. There are other signs of spring too. I have been playing with a new camera and I tried to catch the first buds of Aeschylus pavia as they start to open. Red buckeye, as it is popularly called, is an abundant small understory tree or shrub in east Texas which is known for it's bright red flowers of early spring.

cold

We are finally getting a taste of winter here. It got down to 19 Monday morning and only got as high as 36 yesterday. It's only a little bit warmer today.

That may still seem warm to some of my readers in the northern climes, but I think it all depends on what you are adjusted to. It felt mighty cold to me.

In general I don't worry about freezes in the garden because I mostly use plants that are natives and can stand the cold. I do take care in the vegetable garden but right now there isn't anything there to be concerned about. But I forgot about the twin planters of mother-in-law tongue that were sitting on the front porch, until I got home and found the "tongues" trailing on the ground. I quickly put them inside hoping they weren't complete goners. I think some of the spears on the inside of the bunches may have survived.

Tricia and I are terrible with house plants. We invariably put them outside and forget them until they freeze or if they are inside we forget to water them for months. On my office desk now I have an African violet that someone gave me. It has stayed really pretty with dark blue flowers for over a year now. But just wait. I'll manage to kill it somehow.

flowering quince

First plant to flower each year is the quince (Chaenomeles speciosa). At a time when there is so much grey, it cheers me up to see the bright spots of red appear at the very back of the yard.

Quince looks its best in winter and early spring. Once the weather starts to get hot it loses a lot of leaves and turns yellowish. For that reason it is good to mix it with some other shrubs that stay green in the summer. Ours has remained green longer since we constructed a high wooden fence behind it that protects it from the western sun.

The shrub tends to look rather wild. The limbs are long and somewhat thorny. They were here before us so I can't say how old they are or what variety they might be. We don't trim them back at all and they are about six to seven feet tall and about as wide. They are practically indestructible.

Quince comes in a variety of shades of red and pink. A house a few blocks from us has a wonderful bright red one in the front yard that gets a lot of sun and blooms profusely. I will be looking forward to seeing it in a week or two.

Later there will be small fruits. I've heard they make a nice jelly. The birds and insects get to ours before we've had a chance to find out.

garden update

On the last day of the year there is very little blooming in our garden. A week ago we had roses on several plants. Now only the Iceberg has a few withering blossoms, although several others will probably produce a blossom or two from time to time.

There are tiny blue flowers on the rosemary bushes and we still have a few blossoms on the lantana, although the leaves have turned really dark on it. The paperwhites continue to bloom. The four-nerve daisies which have been consistent bloomers through past winters have been dormant all month.

Except for those few bright spots the garden is fairly bleak and seemingly lifeless. In the vegetable garden we have only a couple of herbs - oregano and cilantro - and lots of purple vetch, which we grow as a cover crop.

the shakespeare gardens

Kaylee likes butterflies. We did not have anythng to show her in our little backyard city garden this weekend so Sunday we rounded her up along with the rest of the youngsters visiting in our house and went on an expedition to Fair Park to the Texas Discovery Gardens.

I thought we would find butterflies in the Tropical Conservatory but we were disapointed. There was only a display of mounted specimens, which was somewhat interesting in itself. Likewise the Butterfly Gardens was devoid of the insects too, and the plants there were as bleak as the ones in our own gardens.

But we hit gold in the Shakespeare Garden. It's an iris garden, overplanted with Mexican milkweed. The plants were covered with Monarch caterpillars, moving sluggishly. After a moment or two we realized that many were in various stages of building their cocoons. This delighted everyone, even the kids.

From there we walked over to the roses, many of which were blooming. We even found a pair of live Monarchs there.

To fill out the afternoon we went on to the Natural History Museum so the boys could see the dinosaur bones. It was a good break from the kid's regular diet of videos and games. The weather was cool and a little damp, but still not bad enough for a coat. There were a few other families in the museum, but we had the gardens all to ourselves, so the kids could run all they wanted without bothering anyone.

mistletoe

Most of the leaves have fallen from the cedar elms in the front yard. I can now see how much the mistletoe has spread since last year. We have three trees along the street and there are heavy accumulations in the two on each side. The big tree in the middle is still fairly clean.

Elm trees and oaks are two kinds of trees that mistletoe infects. Hackberry is a kind of elm and being a very weak short-lived tree in the first place is also especially affected. We used to have a row of old hackberries along the fence line on both sides of us. That's probably where the mistletoe got its start here. The berries tend to stick to the fur of squirrels. Birds eat them too and spread the seeds.

Tree experts have told me there is not much I can do to prevent the spread of the mistletoe, except to try to cut off the limbs where it grows. It is a parasite and will eventually kill the tree. Most of the limbs though are large and well beyond my reach. In other words about all I can do is slow down its spread.

If I can cut off some nice-sized pieces I will hang them over my door in time for New Year's. The custom began with the Druids.

paperwhites

Now that we've had a freeze and its warmed back up, the paperwhites have started to bloom. This usually happens later like in January, but the weather in Texas tends to trick flowers in this way.

Narcissus tagetes 'Papyraceus' is one of the earliest bulbs to bloom. These are naturalized in a woody border near the garden shed. So far this bunch are the only ones to bloom. They have a really strong fragrance like candy.

We have lantana and echinacea still too, as well as all of the ever-blooming roses. There was even a lone blossom on the morning glory vine today, though all of the foliage has shriveled up. It is still not really winter here yet. The leaves have not all fallen from the cedar elms nor from the big oaks on the other side of the road.

No pecans are falling either. Usually they make their aerial bombardment the last couple weeks of November, but this year we had practically no crop. It's okay, they are native pecans - very small and hard to open - so they are mostly just a nuisance. The squirrels are disappointed though.

garden update

Today the sun is out and it is shorts and t-shirt weather. The freeze did not hurt much. I did not protect anything except the outside water faucets. It looks as if the morning-glory vine pretty much bit the dust, which I could have predicted. The mountain sage lost all it's flowers but the leaves are mostly still green. I had thought about covering it in order to keep the flowers going another few weeks but decided to let nature take its course. The lawn grass is still green though.

My one regret is that I did not do anything to keep my pepper plants alive. If I had thought about it I could have put up the "water walls" and maybe kept them alive through the winter. We have a pretty good supply stored away though.

possible freeze

Saturday was a little windy but warm and sunny, just right for working outside. I mowed the front lawn for what I expect to be the last time for a few months and raked up my leaves.

Luckily I don't bag my leaves so I can't have the same experience with vandals that Kurt did. I like to chop up the leaves with the lawnmower and then either add them to the compost pile or use them as a winter mulch. At one time I used to drive around the neighborhood and "steal" the bagged leaves on the curbsides, but this year I am going to make do with the produce from my own trees.

Saturday night the temperature started falling and it may get down to freezing tonight. There is a brisk wind blowing too. I probably should have chopped down these goldenrods. The wind may blow the seeds everywhere. But I like the way they look. The leaves are still green but that may change tomorrow if we get the freeze.

Usually I try to post once a day even if I don't have much to say. However, my brain has been so fried by pressures at the office lately that I haven't been able to string two coherent sentences together. The opportunity to work outside yesterday was refreshing.

echinacea

Today was a cleanup day in the garden. I raked up pecan leaves in the backyard, chopped them up with the lawnmower and transferred the remains to the compost bin. I cut back the maximilian sunflowers which were just dried leaves and stems now and also the eupatorium which is spreading way beyond where I wanted it.

While I worked dogface butterflies danced around the red salvias, while overhead geese were flying south for the winter. It was a grey day but warm. The predicted rain never materialized.

The Echinacea were making a small comeback. I cut the tall stems down long ago and there are just short stems now with a few flowers.

martha gonzales

The last couple days we've had sunny afternoons sandwiched between dark and moody mornings and evenings. I walk about in the garden in the late afternoon and watch the clouds roll in as the sun sets. The air feels soft and sensuous against my skin.

There is still a lot of red on the mountain sage and the flame acanthus. I even saw a Monarch today. The lantanas are at the height of their glory. Some of the roses are doing well too. The Martha Gonzales that we planted last winter struggled through the summer, but now is looking very healthy even though it is small. It has had a small burst of blooms this week. The flowers deteriorate very rapidly so it will be nice when it gets large enough to have more than a few at a time.

Now another cool front is moving in. As I sit typing in front of the open window the wind is picking up. It's blowing away the cloud cover and I can see the almost full moon shining through the treetops.

pepper harvest

We are still getting a good harvest of peppers from the garden, in spite of the shorter days and cooler temperatures. I pulled these off the vines this afternoon. The small skinny ones at the lower left are my favorites.

It's still cloudy and a little rainy here today, although we got a bit of sunshine in the afternoon. I got home in time to enjoy just an hour or so of it today. Nothing damaged yet in the garden from the wet and cold. I am sure missing the display of the morning glories though. It had not occurred to me but I guess they don't bloom if the sun does not come out.

getting colder

Another cool front is moving in tonight. The temperature has been dropping all day and a light rain fell for awhile in the afternoon. Building services failed to keep up in the temperatures in the office and I had to put on my jacket to keep from shivering.

It's time to do something about the furnace at home too. I turned it on to test it and then Tricia reminded me that the AC man had turned off the gas to it when he was here doing some maintenance in the summer. Seems he had found something wrong with the vent stack. Probably the roofers had taken it apart when they were doing their job and didn't assemble it right. I had forgotten all about that. It didn't seem very important in July. Now I need to go up in the attic and determine whether this is a job I can do myself or whether I will have to call in the professionals.

That's Lindheimer's muhly blowing in the wind. This is the season it looks it's best. It's one of the few successes I have had with grasses. I have tried seep muhly and love grass also, which have stayed alive but don't seem to look as nice in my yard as they do at the nursery.

garden update

The sky is overcast and grey. We had a few cold days the early part of the week but now it is warm enough again to be comfortable in shorts and a t-shirt. A light mist was falling in the morning. The cats love to drink rainwater and when they come out of the house with me they immediately head for the spots where they've learned that little pools of it collect.

The limbs of the trees are not bare yet but they have lost their healthy green color. Little eddies of dry hackberry leaves have started to form in front of the garage door and along the edging of the flower garden border. The cedar elms have started to drop leaves too. Their leaves are so small that they are only noticeable on the pavement. There is a long berm of them in the gutter, with a clear space about four inches wide separating them from the curb, where the runoff from the rain cleared a space.

The butterflies are still making whoopee out back with the Eupatorium and the milkweed. Several salvias are blooming and the pavonia. The lantana is just now starting to look good and we have a small resurgence of purple coneflowers. The big show though is the morning glories by the driveway. Every morning as I go to my car they cheer me up with several dozen bright blue blossoms.

The Iceberg rose still has multiple blossoms although not so many as a month ago. The Rouletti and the Mutabilis are also blooming reliably. The Mutabilis is one of my favorites. The simple five-petal blossoms open a creamy white and then slowly darken. They always seem slightly bruised and damaged.

a change in the weather

Working outside this morning I did not believe the weather forecasts. It was warm and not a cloud in the sky. I went inside for a lunch break around one and when I came back outside things had changed! The wind had picked up and temperatures have been dropping ever since.

I transplanted a Mexican mint marigold and a lantana and a few other things. Then I trimmed up the rosemary that keeps encroaching on our driveway. I came inside smelling good for a change, and I brought in a few of the bigger rosemary boughs to make the house smell better too.

While I was outside I noticed the Texas betony was still blooming. It is a sprawling plant related to lambsear and has the same soft fuzzy feel to the leaves but the leaves are small and not as grey. Also they do not have a pleasant smell. The Latin name is Stachys coccinea. Now that it is finally cooling off this is probably the last bloom until spring.

invasion of the alien insects

The back yard is teeming with insect life these days. to my delight there is now practically a swarm of monarchs on the blue Eupatorium. When I make a small disturbance near them, a dozen or more will take to the air at once.

More dismaying there are at least four species of insect on the Mexican milkweed seedpods with which I am not familiar. One is a large beetle, most resembling the Labidomera clivicolis in my Audubon field guide, although the markings are a little different. There are also some extremely large red ants and a colony of some other kind of bright red insect, smaller than the ants. The latter two of these seem most interested in the seedpods, but the beetles are eating the leaves.

Where all this insect life comes from I have no idea. The milkweed we bought during the spring at Texas Discovery Gardens. Could the insects have been brought in with the plants that long ago and just now be making their appearance? Ordinarily I ignore insects but I don't want our plants ravaged by something I've brought in. I am going to need a better field guide to identify them.

herb planting

On our trip to the Hill Country we brought back a few four-inch pots from the Fredricksburg Herb Farm. Today after I got home from work I planted some of them.

Cilantro is supposed to reseed itself but it doesn't seem to do so very reliably for me so I put a couple of those in the garden. It is one of my favorite seasonings and it is impossible to have too much of it anyway. Next to it I planted something called "vietnamese cilantro" - just for the curiousity of it.

We picked up several new mints. Chocolate mint, apple mint and, for the cats, catmint. We've had the last one several times before and it usually gets dug up within a short time.

We already have a couple of good patches of thyme, but I like to fill in spots in my flower garden with it so I got more of that. Also another low-growing plant called skull-cap, with small purple flowers on it.

morning glory

It certainly is a glorious morning here and these guys are celebrating it. They are growing on the hedge between our yard and the neighbors. She planted them and I can't tell you much more about them. We are on the sunny side of the hedge so we get to see most of the flowers. I hope that does not discourage her from leaving them.

I have always had a bit of prejudice against vines, Im afraid. They always seem to be too unruly. But I have also seen so many vines in the wild that are smothering the plants they grow on. Since I haven't yet learned much about differentiating the species yet, I can't tell the good from the bad. A couple of the pests I fight in my garden are bindweed, which is a kind of wild relative of morning glory, and Japanese honeysuckle. Either of these will quickly cover a shrub or small tree in our back yard in a season if I let it go.

I've got to make a trip to the bank and attend to a couple of honeydos and then I have the rest of the day to myself. Oh boy!

garden update

The garden has never looked better. We've had great cool weather and the flowers have responded. All the roses have been blooming, but the Iceberg has been especially prolific.

The goldenrod is still brightening up the dark corner of the garden, but now there is also frostweed blooming there and Turk's cap. The Turk's cap is really loaded with flowers too. The sedum and the mountain sage that I wrote about recently are still blooming but the big attraction for the Monarchs has been the blue Eupatorium next to them. During the afternoons we've seen it practically covered with them. On the other side of it is the Mexican milkweed and the flame acanthus with red flowers.

In the front gardens we have several colors of ruellia, and salvia greggii, blackfoot daisy, obedient plant, lantana, zexmenia, pavonia, four-nerve daisy, salvia coccinea, bachelor buttons, abelia, and datura. I'm really excited that the gayfeather is blooming, even though it is only six inches tall and barely noticeable. I've tried to take a photo but it is pretty inconspicuous against the mulch.

On the other hand the Maximilian sunflowers are anything but inconspicuous. They have just started their bloom andfrom the number of unopened buds they are going to be brightening up our lives for some time. We now have a little grove of them, all from one plant I first put in the ground three seasons ago. They are adjacent to the vegetable garden where they get plenty of sun and water from the overspray on the vegtables during the summer.

two beauties

Those lavender pincushions in the foreground belong to Sedum spectabile a fall-blooming plant that was in the garden when I came here ten years ago. I've noticed the very same plant in several other gardens on this street, a testament not only to its popularity at one time but also to its hardiness. I've also heard it referred to as "Autumn joy." The flowers are very popular with the butterflies.

In the background is Salvia regla or mountain sage. Betsy Clebsch reports in A Book of Salvias that in its native Chisos Mountains the large red flowers are an important food source for hummingbirds making their return migration to the tropics. Here the timing is off for it just started its bloom this week and the hummingbirds are already long gone.

This salvia doesn't put out leaves until quite late so it can seem dead in the spring. The stem is very woody but still can barely hold up the lush foliage, so the plant always seems in danger of falling over. It continues to bloom through November.

spider lilies

Suddenly the back yard is ablaze with vivid red lilies on bare stems. I found these Lycoris radiata bulbs under a wisteria bush where they could barely be seen when we moved here ten years ago. When I dug them out to divide them I was amazed at how many there were. Since then I have divided and moved them several more times and they just keep proliferating.

They are amazing because the stem comes up from bare earth in late September, and the foliage appears after the flowering is finished. The foliage usually burns away by mid to late spring here.

These flowers are sometimes called "guernsey lilies," but according to Scott Ogden in Garden Bulbs of the South they are are not the true guernsey lily at all, which is really a similar looking plant called Nerine sarniensis. The true guernsey lily is from the Cape of Good Hope and legend says that it arrived on the island of Guernsey, in the English Channel, as a result of a shipwreck. The bulbs took hold there and became a staple in the English flower trade. The confusion apparently goes all the way back to Linnaeus, and it was not until 1936 that someone pointed out that this bulb, which comes from Japan, is different from the one from South Africa.

Lycoris has been planted in gardens throughout the American South since the early nineteenth century. The bulbs found in old gardens are said to be a different variety than the ones available in garden centers today, hardier and more vigorous.

zen of weeding

From an interesting blog I just recently noticed, North Coast Cafe, comes this link to an article on the zen of weeding:

Weeding gives me the satisfaction of bringing order, however momentary, to one small corner of the cosmos. With pruning shears in hand, I can even reshape that corner, trimming an overgrown bush, balancing a lopsided flowering tree. If I have time and vision and fertilizer enough, I can create my own backyard arboretum.

Besides weeding I have been dividing the irises lately. Many of my irises that I planted years ago are now getting shaded out by shrubs that have grown up. I enjoy pushing my fingers down into the soft soil and pulling the bulbs out by hand. I've got a new bed alongside the driveway waiting for them. While I am at it I have been cutting off the old decaying leaves from the irises I am leaving behind.

People who have gardeners are missing out on the best part of having a garden. It rests my mind to do these little repetitive tasks, like pinching off the deadheads on the roses. I even enjoy getting out the lawnmower on mild afternoons like we are having now.

goldenrod

The first few years this tall plant showed up in this corner of the garden I pulled it up, having no idea what it was. Luckily some escaped my hand long enough to bloom. Now it is an annual delight for a week or so every September.

I don't know what species of Solidago this is or by what route it came to my garden. It is supposed to be a sunlover but here it is in an extremely shady area, under pecans and cedar elm. This is also a low area of the yard, although it doesn't get any additional irrigation from me so it is dry except during the rainy times of the year. This area may have once been considerably sunnier in the late afternoon, as evidenced by the crepe myrtles whose foliage is just visble in the upper right. But before my arrival on the scene the neighbor next door had planted an eight-foot high row of photinias which obscures the slanting sun. You can see the photinias forming the backdrop in the photo. Regardless of how it got here or why it is in an such an unlikely spot, it seems to like it, and the dark gold really livens up the gloom on moody fall afternoons.

Many people mistakenly believe that goldenrod causes hay fever. Actually it's pollen is too heavy to be easily windborne. It just happens to be very visible so has become the obvious suspect when allergy season arrives.

The Latin name means "to make whole" and refers to the herbs reputed curative powers. According to Geyeta Ajilvsgi in Wildflowers of Texas, the Cherokee made a Solidago tea for digestive ailments and the flowers were also a source for natural dye.

blue

Blue is my favorite color for the garden. Perhaps that is because I don't see some other colors quite right. I have red-green color blindness like millions of others, mostly males. I can see both red and green as distinctly different colors but when they are together the red seems to disappear. I am never really sure that I see anything that is red the way other people do.

Blue seems to stand out brighter than red or any other color to my eye. In a garden the blue flowers are the first to catch my eye. Maybe that is why I tend to have more than the usual amount in my garden.

This blue is Salvia farinacea. The common name is mealy blue sage, which doesn't sound very appealing. I don't really know where the "mealy" comes from. It blooms somewhat all summer but seems to do best when it turns a little cool. It may have too much shade where it is I suppose for it has gotten leggy and is reaching out over the sidewalk to get more light. Cutting it back a little last month would have made it look better too.

At a presentation recently, the garden writer Bill Welch commented that you could do a whole garden in nothing but salvias. There are some people who have. I have at least seven different kinds myself, more if you count the color varieties.

boneset

It's not hard to get a picture of a butterfly around this plant in the early Fall. They tend to flock to it. Eupatorium greggii sprawls across wet, shady areas like the one here. The blooms occur mostly in September.

Popular names for the plant are blue mist-flower and blue boneset, although the color is more lavender than blue. The name "boneset" is applied generically to Eupatoriums and comes from the fact that a tea made from the leaves is said to be a cure for "bone-break" fever.

Mrs. William Dana Starr, in "How to Know the Wild Flowers," published in 1900, said, "To one whose childhood was passed in the country some fifty years ago the name and sight of this plant is fraught with unpleasant memories. The attic or woodshed was hung with bunches of the dried herb, which served so many grewsome warnings against wet feet, or any over-exposure which might result in cold or malaria. A certain Nemesis, in the shape of a nauseous draught which was poured down the throat under the name of 'boneset tea,' attended such a catastrophe."

Perhaps if I had lived in the country 150 years ago my memories would be different. To my mind though it brings memories of mild sunny afternoons with butterflies floating in the air above it. This plant is located outside our breakfast room windows, along with some red and white salvias which are also blooming iright now.

rainy days

There has been a good soaking rain here for the last two days, cooling things off and really making it start to seem like fall. The rain has provided me with an excuse not to work outside, but still I can't seem to get going on any projects inside either. Nor have I been able to write much. I just haven't had a lot to say.

We have a busy weekend planned. In the morning we are going to the Kimball in Fort Worth to see the Egyptian exhibit, and then we are expecting houseguests to arrive in the evening and stay through Sunday.

The plants outside are really enjoying the weather. Everything has really perked up. The roses are starting to bloom again. This plant is sometimes called rock rose but it is actually related more to hibiscus. The proper name is pavonia. The flowers open in the morning and close in the afternoon. It's had blooms off and on all summer but now they are profuse.

the garden at night

Once again I am joining the group who write a regular series based on the book A Writer's Book of Days. Today's topic is the time between dusk and dawn.

Our cat Sapphire likes to sit under the bushes across the street from our house in the evening. Sometime after dark I will step outside to fetch her. There are times she comes immediately when I call but other times she waits until I make eye contact. It's a little like playing hide and seek. I enjoy strolling out in the night air like this. Even the mundane looks magical in the moonlight filtering through the tree branches. The streetlights are dim and I like it that way. About the only sounds are insects and a distant far-off hum of traffic. I am the only person about, although sometimes I am surprised by a jogger appearing out of nowhere or a pair of headlights barrelling down the street.

The garden can be interesting at this time of day. White flowers can almost be luminescent in the night and the cool night air brings to the nose the fragrance of magnolias blooming down the street. Scott Ogden has devoted an entire book The Moonlit Garden to the subject of gardens at night.

Much as I would like to linger I am not a night person. I get tired early and almost always am in bed by 10 pm, usually with a mystery novel or a magazine. Tricia stays up later watching the evening news, a practice I gave up years ago. By the time I wake in the morning the sun will be coming up and it will be dawn.

hummingbird moth

This guy looks a bit like a hummingbird, but it is really a moth. In the picture you can barely tell he has wings. If you look closely you can tell that the background is blurred. In motion the resemblance to a hummingbird is more apparent. I usually see him on the abelia bush outside the window where I work at my computer, where he never seems to get tired. Today I saw him on the blue lantana and luckily I had my camera in hand.

I think this is Lantana montevidensis. Besides being blue, or rather lavender, it is more prostrate than the native variety. It's been coming back from the roots every fall for many years. It starts to bloom in late August or September and continues until frost.

five pm

Joel at Pax Nortona and some others write a regular series based on guidelines set out in A Writer's Book of Days. I decided to join them for today because I liked the topic: write about your neighborhood at 5 pm.

When I drove through the neighborhood today at five o'clock it was raining even though the sun was shining. There was one small dark cloud passing directly overhead and a few big drops of rain were hitting the windshield. The streets are very quiet at this time of day. Soon they they will get busy with the cars of commuters and shoppers returning home. An hour later the joggers and dog-walkers will make their appearance.

Some people a few streets over from us completely re-landscaped their yard in late August. It seemed foolish to me to do it when it was so hot and dry but the rains came early and their timing turned out to be good. I slow down to give it an appraisal. It's doing well and looks pleasantly lush and up-scale. But too many evergreen shrubs and not enough flowers for my taste.

This is a neighborhood of homes seemingly in constant need of improvement. During the day the largest demographic group to be observed is workmen. Now they are finishing up their tasks and putting their tools away in trucks and vans. A few houses down from us a plumber's van is in the driveway of a house being restored after a fire last spring. At Cindy's place next door some bricklayers have been constructing a new brick sidewalk and now they are putting away a wet saw and hosing down their work.

A light mist has started to fall as I get out of the car in my own driveway. It feels good to walk in it actually and I stroll through the front garden to see how my flowery friends are doing. It's a purple day - the Salvia greggii along the front foundation have bloomed out following the Labor Day rains and are really looking good. This is a color called grape. This plant is one of my favorites. It is evergreen and has two long blooming seasons in spring and fall. We've got several other colors of it around the yard but it is the grape that is blooming the best today. The blue lantana is looking good too. It must have something to do with the light and the rain that makes purple and blue stand out.

september

And thus, without a wing,
Or service of a keel,
Our summer made her light escape
Into the beautiful.

Emily Dickenson

garden update

We've had Mexican petunias (Ruellia brittonia) for years but recently I got these dwarf Ruellia species. They have the same flowers but only get a few inches tall, which makes the foliage look denser. I like the way the flowers look against the dark foliage. Another plus is that they are not as invasive.

Also blooming in our garden on Labor Day weekend: esperanza, blackfoot daisy, salvia greggii in several colors, zexmenia, pavonia, lantana in blue, gold and the pink and yellow, turk's cap, bachelor buttons, sunflowers, four-nerve daisy, mistflower, flame acanthus, gaura, salvia coccinea, mexican milkweed and jimson weed. The only rose blooming is the roulettii near the front walk.

rain lily day

The first chapter of Scott Ogden's wonderful little book Garden Bulbs for the South is about the amazing day in late August or September after thundershowers have drenched the parched land.

The electrical storms bring nitrogen from the atmosphere in the spattering drops of rain. Rain lilies know the difference between this thunderstorm water and the bland effluent from the hose. They have patiently reserved their blooms for the real thing.

These miniatures have sputtered in flower all summer, but nothing like what is to be. Five days after the deluge comes a miracle of the floral year: rain lily day. On this prodigal morning every unspent Zephyranthes and Hebranthus in the garden explodes in blossom.

Ogden's book is arranged chronilogically through a year in the garden. I like it that it begins with rain lily day. Here no doubt there are still a few hot afternoons to come, but the evenings have started to cool and the garden is coming to life again.

bachelor buttons

This is turning out to be a very busy week for me. We have some deadlines to meet at the office and I've had to put in some extra hours. That always drives up the stress factor. Luckily there is a long weekend ahead. We don't have anything special planned but I sure need a break.

Here's a plant that seems to be able to deal with stress. Gomphrena globosa is popularly known as bachelor buttons or globe amaranth. The one-inch wide flowers come in purple, orange, white and various shades in between. It is also one of the easiest plants to grow there is. Save the seed heads and plant them next summer. It thrives with little or no water in the heat of August in Texas. It is actually an import from Europe I believe but has been a staple of American gardens since colonial days.

sensible lawn care

There is some sensible lawn care advice described over at Zanthan Gardens. I have mixed feelings about lawns myself. On the one hand they are unnatural and wasteful of resources. But I have a wide expanse of St Augustine across the front and I plan to keep it. Grass is the easiest thing to maintain. All you have to do is mindlessly cut it all to a certain height. I have known quite a few people who have taken out all their lawn grass and put in plantings. I just don't have the time to maintain that much garden. I would wind up being one of those hauled into court for violating weed laws.

purple sage

Cenizo (Leucophyllum frutescens) is beautiful this time of year shortly after a rainfall or even when it is heavily humid. That is the only time it flowers and it is difficult to trick it by watering. We've had a few scattered showers lately so maybe that's why suddenly they seem to be blooming all over town today.

This is another example of a plant that is native to a drier, more alkaline environment than we have here in North Texas, but it seems to be able to make the adaptation as long as it gets sufficient drainage. The late horticulturist Benny Simpson promoted the use of this plant for landscaping and now it is becoming quite common to see it. It's silvery grey foliage makes a nice contrast to traditional landscape plants. It is evergreen (or ever-grey) and can even be sheared into hedges if you are inclined that way.

This one has grown larger than I expected it to. It was advertised as a "compact" version, but it is nevertheless about six feet tall. I do shear it once a year in the winter to help it stay in shape and keep it out of the driveway.

cedar elm

This is one of the cedar elms (Ulmus crassifolia) lining our street which are dropping the golden leaves I mentioned yesterday. They are really pretty nice trees. More vertical than horizontal so they don't produce a great deal of shade. Unfortunately they are infested with mistletoe and there is nothing that can be done about that.

This is actually the view directly south from our front porch. Across the street behind that other foliage was a very large wild area when we first moved here. Rumor was that a house there had burned years ago, killing the inhabitants and that the heirs intended it to remain unbuilt on forever. I am not sure any of that was true. There was an old foundation there; but the property was sold to a builder a couple years ago and now there is once again a very fine house there. It faces a different street so we can't really see it from here.

When it was a wild area it was popular with neighborhood kids. There were huge shrubs you could hide under in spaces as big as a small room. There was also a very nice stand of Eves' necklace, one of my very favorite small trees. They left a few of them standing.

golden coins

Looking down at the front sidewalk this morning you could almost be excused in thinking that it was Autumn. Actually the evenings are only beginning to hint at Autumn and the afternoon temperatures are still in three-digits. What is happening is that stress is causing the cedar elms to lose their leaves.

One of the many good things about cedar elms is the size of their leaves. They are scarcely larger than pennies. Someone once called them "golden coins." Just sweep them into the grass and they disappear.

Further north though it really is starting to seem like Fall. Kathy at Cold Climate Gardening was talking about maple leaves turning and goldenrods blooming in her last post. I am used to things blooming down here in the south before they do up north. I had to remind myself that this time of year the order is reversed.

fritillaries

The temperatures are starting to climb again. For a brief wonderful period it felt like Autumn. Now the ground is already dry and the plants are starting to wilt again.

This Gulf Frittillary (Agraulis vanillae ) is one of the more common butterflies, but nevertheless beautiful. She seemed to be posing for me as she opened and closed her wings in sync with my flash. There is a swarm of them that seem to make their nests in a dark and low part of the yard among coralberry, white avens and red buckeye, in the shade of pecan trees. Neither their larval nor nectar plants are there, so I assume that they go there for shelter or for the moisture.

amaryllis

At lunchtime today I stopped at a sandwich shop where I had never been before and talked a bit with the man behind the counter who was from South Africa.

I came home and walked out into the garden and discovered another import from South Africa was blooming in the garden. This is Amaryllis belladonna, sometimes called 'naked ladies' because they bloom on bare stems that just shoot out of the ground a day or two before the blooms appear. When I moved here I found a mass of these big bulbs growing in a very dark corner where they did not bloom. I moved a few of them here and later some others to diferent spots. These are the only ones that have done well, possibly because they are in a raised bed where they can stay dry.

More bulbs come from South Africa than from anywhere else. Bulbs are possibly the most inert of plant forms, which enables them to conserve energy in hot, dry conditions.

birdbath

lazy rainy afternoon

Just what the doctor would have ordered. A slow drizzling rain has been replenishing our parched garden all day. From inside we watch the birds frolicking in the mist and splashing in the birdbath.

Our cats keep demanding attention. They go to the door and want out and then they turn away and follow us and get in the middle of whatever we are doing. About fifteen minutes later we do the same routine over again. If it was a sunny day they would just curl up and go to sleep. I seem to remember that we acted the same way as children on rainy afternoons. We would never know how to entertain ourselves. Mom would suggest activities, bring cookies and try to referee the arguments that would inevitably break out.

The hummingbirds are active too. They don't seem to be coming to our feeder but they are enjoying the flame acanthus (Anisacanthus quadrifidus). I would love to get a picture of a hummingbird but with this digital camera I think there is not much chance.

The numerous long red trumpets of flame acanthus are ideal for hummers. The three-foot tall shrub itself is shaped somewhat like a flame, and this time of year it has so many flowers that it does seem to be a burning bush. It's native to a more southwestern part of Texas but does well in our yard. The first winter after it was planted it froze to the ground and I thought it was dead. But by summer it had come back.

heat wave

Yesterday's high was 108 and today is not far behind. All the tender green plants will soon be brown if they are not already. All we have left in the vegetable garden are the peppers.

Luckily we have a lot of native plants in the flower beds that can endure the heat, but we still need to water. For one thing we have favorites that are not native. We are also willing to feed a little water to the lawn grass too to keep it alive but a few more days of this and that will become a losing battle.

We still have flowers though. The lantanas and the flame acanthus are doing their part to draw butterflies and hummers.

esperanza

Yellow bells or esperanza (Tecoma stans) is a plant native to a drier and sunnier part of Texas than where I live, but I've heard it does somewhat okay here. It's become a popular nursery plant and it's easy to see why.

This is my first time to try it. I saw this display in the nursery and had to take it home. Many times the problem with trying to grow a plant like this is keeping it sufficiently dry in the winter. For that reason I'm thinking about putting it in a large pot instead of planting it in the ground.

It may turn out that it only works as an annual here. If so that's okay too.

interlude

Late evening yesterday we got clouds and lightning but no rain. But the cool front did lower the temperatures by 7 or 8 degrees.

I spent time outside this evening without feeling like I was in a furnace. Got the clippers out of the shed and trimmed off some of those long tendrils that snake out from the wisteria in the summer and wrap themselves around everything within reach.

Then sat on the front porch swing for a spell and leafed through a magazine while listening to the crickets until it got too dark to see, and then I just watched the fireflys for awhile.

hedges

Our house came with privet hedges on each side of the front lawn. I am not really a fan of privet and seriously thought of taking it out, perhaps replacing it with something more interesting. But both my neighbors at the time liked it and I decided to let it stay as long as it was understood that I had no intention of keeping it clipped. It isn't completely out of control though. A couple times a year the top is cut at around 6 foot high, which is tall enough to provide a nice privacy screen without being overwhelming.

The hedge also make a great shelter for the birds and our cats like to hide in it too.

This past winter one of the plants died and left a gap. Once again we talked about what to do with the hedge. Replace the missing plant. Tear the whole thing down and replace it with roses or wax myrtle. In the end we did nothing.

Then our neighbor installed an antique garden arch in the opening and planted some vines on it. We like it. She is a gardener too and we get along well with her. We still have most of the privacy, but we are not walled off.

turk's cap

Turk's cap (Malvaviscus arboreus) looks good in the shade this time of year. I've been planting it as a forest understory kind of plant, along with coralberry and white avens.

It's small red flowers bloom through October on a plant that gets about three feet tall and about as wide. According to the literature they are pollinated by ruby-throated hummingbirds, but I've never seen any on it. Actually I have only seen the black-chinned hummingbirds locally anyway and never on this plant.

The broad dark leaves seem kind of tropical. They remind me of hibiscus to which turk's cap is related. The flower does too. Sort of like a hibiscus flower that doesn't ever open.

july flowers

As we begin summer in the garden, let's take a survey of what is going on. Texas betony is starting to fade. The winecups are still producing every day but have fewer flowers. The Mexican hat and the blanket flower are about finished. The day lilies in the front bed still have one or two more blooms yet to open.

Salvia greggii are still producing occasional blooms. Like the lantanas which are just beginning to bloom in our yard, their best season will come in the fall. We have three types of lantana - the blue, the gold and the pink and yellow varieties.

Zexmenia and turk's cap are in full bloom as is the abelia. They are heat lovers. The flame acanthus is covered with red. The Mexican oregano continues to bloom steadily. Four-nerve daisy is always in bloom. The globe amaranth we planted last year has come back very strong. So far the ruellias have not bloomed as proficiently as in years past, however. Gaura is also not doing as well as usual.

Pavonia greets us cheerfully in the morning with bright pink flowers, as does the weedy widows tears with their bright blue flowers that we allow to persist here and there. Morning is also a good time to catch Jimson weed with its flowers fully open. They open just at nightfall and last until mid-morning.

We also have blooms on many of the roses. The iceberg in particular is doing well, but the rouletii also continue to flower steadily.

And of course the sunflowers.

hailstorm

Just at nightfall yesterday we had a dramatic storm. I had lingered outside to talk with a neighbor as the clouds built up and had just got inside as hail started to hit. Most of the hailstones were about the size of marbles but a few were as big as golfballs. It was as if somebody were throwing ice cubes from the roof. They were hitting hard too and making a lot of noise bouncing off the roof and driveway. I was worried about window glass breaking.

Hail has always been a feature of the weather here although it seems to be more frequent nowadays. That's a purely subjective statement on my part, but it also seems to be the position of the insurance industry. I'd like to see some statistics to back it up. No damage at all to our garden. All the plants perked up today from the generous rain that followed the hail.

I snapped this morning glory on a trellis at the entrance to our neighbor's garden. I am not sure what kind it is. We have blue-flowered ones and pink-flowered ones climbing the fence, both with the lighter star-shaped centers. The flowers are pretty and I don't mind it on the fence as much as I do the Japanese honeysuckle. We've also got some stuff that looks a little like morning glory that gets tangled up with the plants in the flower beds. I call that "bindweed."

zexmenia

If you hear plant people talking about a "sex maniac" in their garden they are probably talking about Zexmenia hispida.

Zexmenia is hardly a maniac though. It is in fact very well-behaved and is quite welcome in our garden. It's a perennial here although I hear it is evergreen further south. It has grown into a bush about 2 feet high and about a yard in diameter. It is supposed to grow in sun or shade but the ones I have planted in the shade have not performed well. Of the two that I have now the one that gets the most sun has the best shape and the most flowers. The other which is in partial shade is larger and somewhat leggy. The flowers are orange-yellow daisies about an inch across. It flowers continuously from May through early Fall.

I was surprised to read in Sally Wasowski's book Native Texas Plants that it is related to horseherb (Calyptocarpus vialis). We have horseherb too but I had never before noticed that it looks like a miniature version of zexmenia. It's only a few inches tall and has the same little yellow flowers only they're only about one-fourth of a inch wide.

smilax

Every year the back of our property gets a little more wild. Partly this is due to my laziness, but I rationalize it in many ways. We don't really need to use the space ourselves for any other purpose; it provides a haven for birds, insects and other wildlife; it serves as a buffer between us and the property behind us; it's fun to watch what happens there; and I'm sure I could think of more reasons if I tried.

I haven't totally let go of it. I clear up poison ivy and any invasive species I just don't like. I never really thought I would allow greenbrier to grow there either, but this year I decided "why not," as long as it doesn't get too far out of control. The kind we have is Smilax bona-nox, which is the most common type in this area.

I can't say that smilax has a lot of benefits. The fruits are eaten by birds, but that's all I know. I believe it is native to the area and I have always see it in the woods when I go hiking, so it seems natural to me for it to be here.

fennel

Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) is a fun plant to add to your garden. If you are not familiar with it you might be surprised to learn that it gets to be six feet tall.

Personally I happen to enjoy the licorice-like taste of fennel. I even brush my teeth with fennel-flavored toothpaste. So it's convenient to have these seeds right at eye level so I can pick a few and chew on them as I stroll through the garden. A few years ago Tricia made a soup using the bulb which was pretty tasty also.

Black swallowtail caterpillars appear to like them too as the fennel plant never fails to produce a crop of them. I counted five this afternoon.

The seeds are poisonous to many insects which makes fennel handy to keep insects away from a part of your garden where they have been a bother. You can cut up the stems and foliage and spread them as a mulch to keep snails away.

weeding

It's the gardener's responsibility to decide which plants will be permitted to stay in the garden. Those that exhibit bad behavior, the ones that are in the wrong place or are simply too homely must be forced out. Some don't go easily though and it's hard to find tools to get the job done.

I have an especially hard time getting rid of bermuda grass in my flower beds. I dig it out when I am creating new beds, but I have found that bermuda roots go deep and eventually it will show back up. When that happens, I usually take a steak knife that I keep with my tools and cut the roots off as deep in the soil as I can. I use the same tool on hackberry and pecans when I let them get too large to just pull out. The steak knife lets me get down deep with minimal disturbance to the soil and other nearby plants.

Many of my gardener friends are using roundup these days to kill grass and other weeds. I have not had that good of luck with roundup. It seems to take several applications and I have had some bad experiences. I know that it is supposed to only kill the plants with which it comes into direct contact. But despite my best precautions some of my favorite plants have died that were close to where I was spraying weeds.

Another reason I don't like it is that we grow food in our garden. Considering the amount of chemicals that are probably in the food we eat in restaurants or buy in groceries, it is probably silly to try to keep our small garden organic, but we do.

first tomatoes

Yesterday's rains cooled things off. After I returned from taking the cats to the vet for their shots I was able to spend a little time outside working. The cenizos were in bloom, as they always are after a summer rain. In the afternoon I sat on the porch swing in front and read the new book by Elaine Pagels. There was no one on the street; only a workman a few houses down banging something out of his van and the mailman on his rounds.

We have two almost ripe tomatoes, with no puncture wounds. I picked them before the birds could get them and brought them inside to ripen on the windowsill.

texas star hibiscus

The first year we had the Hibiscus coccinea it bloomed on Tricia's birthday. Now the flowers come a few weeks earlier but it serves as a good reminder for me.

It will continue to bloom as long as it stays warm, then it will die down to the ground with the first frost. Right now it stands about four feet high, but I've seen this plant get to be six feet tall. It has narrow five-petaled leaves, which leads to jokes from friends and neighbors about the type of gardening we are doing over here.

garden tourism

It was 95 degrees here this afternoon. Too hot to work but not too hot to tour gardens.

The Water Garden Society sponsored a tour this afternoon with dozens of gardens open. Too often this tour is a disapointment to plant people because the water gardens can turn out to be little more than big outdoor aquariums plopped in the middle of a suburban backyard lawn. We've done this tour before and been burned. This time we plotted a small group of five in a tight circle and set out.

One had landscaping by a friend of ours, Carol Feldman, so we definitely wanted to include it. A second happened to belong to the ex of one of Tricia's close friends, so if nothing else, that might provide a topic of conversation in the future.

We started out with the landscape designed by our friend and it was delightful, with lots of lantana in several colors, cigar plants, cotoneaster, a mexican plum tree and a tall hedge of martha gonzales roses. It was the front yard of one of those big new houses that are rapidly replacing the older ones in inner-city neighborhoods nowadays. The pond itself, which Carol did not design, is separate from the landscape and inside a small courtyard, so that you must walk over it on stepping stones to arrive at the front door.

Our second stop turned out to be the least interesting of the five. Described as a meditation center it was a 12-foot diameter pond in one corner of the backyard, with a high waterfall on one side. Not a lot for a plant person to see here, but at least it was constructed of real stones and not the fiberglass ones we had seen on our earlier tour. There were some great dragonflies though and I had fun trying (without success!) to get a good photo.

Next we came to a real garden which happened to have a stream and a pond in it. This is actually what comes to my mind with the phrase "water garden." This large garden had a sunny side and a shady side, separated by an archway covered with passionflower vine. The sunny side was a series of massive wood-sided raised beds about 2 feet tall, with grassy paths between them. The shady side was mostly ferns and hostas under an oak and a hackberry. There was a short stream flowing over a couple of short falls into a calm pool. The owner/builder said that she wanted the stream to seem natural and since the yard was flat she kept the maximum elevation to 18 inches.

Fourth was the house belonging to Nancy's ex. This busy backyard felt a little like a New Orleans courtyard on one end, with old brick paving and second-story balconies overlooking it. There was a large pond with many fish and a winding stream descending from a small earthen hill in the middle. A narrow path managed to cross the stream several times over footbridges. As the path descended the other side of the hill the yard transformed itself into a country garden with little rustic bowers set into two different corners.

Our final stop was a house we had passed many times and admired. It's an older home, possibly from the 40's or earlier but recently remodeled and in a beautiful setting on a hillside under huge trees. Here we saw two "water features". The first was large and splashy and helped to keep the adjacent patio and swimming pool isolated from the sounds of a street just a few feet away beyond the shrubbery. The other was a small fountain in an isolated side garden with a table and chair. What great writing I would surely do sitting at that table.

It turned out to be a enjoyable tour. We've talked about adding a pond to our garden, but so far we've not been willing to do the necessary work. Seeing the ponds this afternoon though made me wish I had one.

missing lettuce

Regular readers here may remember my lamentations over the lack of a lettuce crop. Well it turns out we could have lettuce after all.

I needed to pot up a large plant a couple weekends ago that was a gift. Being out of potting soil and not wanting to go shopping, I decided to "borrow" some of the best soil I have. The corner of the garden that was devoted to the lettuce was bare so I took a few spadefuls of dirt from there to top off the pot. When I checked the pot this morning, I saw several little lettuce plants were thriving. I guess the seeds must have been planted too low originally or something. Luckily the pot they are in now is probably large enough to hold them.

new bulb source

Tejas Native Bulbs is a new resource for native plant enthusiasts that I learned about this week. They have a small selection and some of them are not that hard to find in nature. I may splurge and order some celestials.

still no tomatoes

The tomatoes keep getting bigger and there are plenty of them, but they are all still green.

Next year I want to plant some of this dwarf corn.

martha gonzales

This little guy has almost as many flowers as leaves right now. He's only about 15 inches tall. If it keeps a proportionate number of flowers when it gets big it will be stunning.

It looks better in the larger version you get when you click on the thumbnail. I am kind of color-blind in the red spectrum myself, so if it looks weird then that is my excuse. Pictures of bright red flowers never look quite right to me.

rose geranium

We have a new addition to the path between the driveway and the house. It is a rose-scented geranium. I looked it up in my books and it is actually not a true geranium but a Pelargonium graveolens. The foliage smells like rose-scented soap. We put it in a container along the path which also has a large rosemary, thyme and oregano. A very fragrant path. Actually there is a salvia along there too. But no parsley. That's in the vegetable garden.

lots of rain this week

We've had lots of rain this week. That's made it difficult to work outside in the garden, but it's also kept the temperatures down. So when it's been dry enough to get out, it's been rather pleasant.

The rain and cooler temps have breathed new life into the roses. We've had many blooms on the Martha Gonzales and on the Mutabilis. Those are the two we planted this spring and they are both still fairly small plants. The two Rouletti roses also have a lot of new flowers. The lantanas are just beginning to bloom. Our vitex trees are still full of blooms which I believe is later in the season than usual for them. This has been the best season I can recall for them. On the other hand, we had almost no flowering on the stand of monarda we have out back. There was a little flowering on a smaller stand in front, but not what there usually is. One of the nice things about keeping a journal like this will be the opportunity to refer back to it in future years to see just when the plants did bloom.

We also have our first sunflower of the summer. I just realized how nice it is to photograph sunflowers. They are just about the same height as I am, so no need to crawl around on my knees and get my trousers all wet and muddy.

This weather has not worked to advantage with our driveway project. It's been so cloudy and cool that the grass under the plastic has mostly stayed alive so far. I pulled up the plastic yesterday afternoon, mowed the grass down to the lowest setting that the mower could go, and then put it back down.

jimson weed

The dramatic purple-tinged trumpets of my Datura wrightii bloom only at night. They are big flowers that fill the air with their fragrance. You've probably seen some famous paintings of datura by Georgia O'Keefe.

Gardeners tend to be sharply divided over daturas. The foliage is large and ungainly and worst of all it is poisonous. Some people get a rash just from touching them. The infamous jimson weed or Jamestown weed is a datura. On one of my gardening discussion boards recently I learned that it can also be used as a treatment for asthma. Native Americans used it as a medicine and as a hallucinogen. It was one of the plants Don Juan used in the Carlos Castaneda books. I've never tried it but I suggest staying away from it. If you are interested you can learn more about it here.

I enjoy seeing the big white flowers in the late evening but I keep the plant trimmed to a small size and hidden behind other plants, so it is less visible and less likely to be accidently touched.

cinderella story

Are these guys eating your parsley like they are eating ours? It's okay, they grow up to be black swallowtails. Just be sure to plant enough so you'll have some too, because they eat a lot. They also like dill and fennel.

You can learn how to grow your own butterflies with this book by Judy Hominick.

We planted some mexican milkweed this weekend to attract some Monarch butterfly larvae too.

we tour some gardens

Tricia and I have just returned from a xeriscape garden tour. Some of the members of our garden club were included on the tour, so we plotted a route that would take us past each one of those and then added a couple more that were conveniently along the route. We couldn't possibly see all of the gardens on the tour but five made a nice day's outing.

Several of them were front yards that had recently been converted from lawn grass into installations of native wildflowers and drought-hardy shrubs. They were definite improvements over an expanse of St. Augustine, but more what I would call exterior decorating than gardens. They did not seem like places I would want to spend much time in.

The two that appealed to me were both small backyards, private spaces rather than public spaces, and both were shady. Those are features that I appreciate but they were not the main reasons I liked them. One was a simple stone courtyard extending the length of the backyard surrounded by garden beds with mature plants chosen by the owner who was a landscape designer as well as a gardener. It appealed because it was such a comfortable space for outdoor living and entertaining.

My favorite though was behind a tiny cottage. Beneath a giant cedar elm, certified as the largest in Texas, was a fairyland of ferns, groundcovers and small understory trees and shrubs. There was a winding brick path and interspersed among the plants was a variety of small sculptures and old musical instruments. It was all very quaint and whimsical, but every one of the woodland plantings seemed so naturally to belong where it was that you could easily believe that it had just grown up that way by itself.

It had not just grown up that way, however. This turned out to be the only one of the gardens that had not been designed by the owner. In fact it was designed by the well-known author Sally Wasowski, although the owner had added the musical instruments and made other changes.

freshening up

Yesterday was rainy and the garden has been freshened up. We have new buds on the ever-blooming roses and we are starting to get a few flowers on the summer bloomers. The monarda and cenizo are hinting at more to come this weekend. We have lots of coneflower and yarrow, the zexmenia looks great; we have winecups, four-nerve daisy, mexican oregano, abelia, pavonia, day lilies and indian blanket. The blackfoot daisy and the salvia greggii have revived and produced a few flowers in response to the coolness. The vitex still looks pretty but is past it's peak. The lantana is building up a mass of greenery but there are no flowers yet. In the vegetable garden there are lots of tomatoes but all still green.

daylilies

Daylilies, like irises, are a plant I've never actually bought at a nursery. Every one here either came with the garden or it was obtained by gift or trade with another gardener. That adds to the fun, especially if there are stories that go along with the plants. But there is a drawback too, because I usually never get to know the variety name. Also I tend to move the bulbs around so after a few years I even lose track of which ones came from where. Both of these fall into the unknown variety and origin category.

That's too bad because it might help me understand more about them. One thing I would like to know is why there is such a difference in when they bloom. The photo on the left was taken almost a month ago and that plant finished its blooming weeks ago. The lily on the right just opened its first blooms this morning. I would have expected them to bloom about the same time.

They are both beautiful though and as far as I'm concerned they can bloom whenever they like.

vitex

Vitex is a common sight in older neighborhoods hereabouts. I started this one from a cutting taken from a tree in my parent's back yard. It makes either a small tree or a big shrub depending on how many trunks you allow it to develop. This one is kind of in-between because I couldn't quite decide.

I have another one which I started at the same time which has only one trunk and it is now definitely tree-like. Unfortunately it is next to the house and in the front yard so to really appreciate it you have to see it from the street. I usually try to plan my garden the opposite way - so that it looks good when seen from inside through the windows.

Vitex is said to have been widely planted around monasteries in Europe because the seeds were supposed to reduce sexual desire. That is why it is sometimes called chasteberry or lilac chaste tree. The leaves are very fragrant. They are shaped somewhat like hemp leaves and more than once I have been accused of growing that instead.

heat

What a difference a week can make. Last weekend the weather was so cool and mild; today it was hitting the triple digits. The forecast is for it to be a little cooler over the weekend though.

The heat is beginning to make itself felt in the garden. The cilantro has been flowering all week and this afternoon I saw that it was beginning to go to seed. When it flowers it looks a lot like Queen Anne's Lace. Cilantro is one of my favorite tastes. It always seems such a pity that it is already gone by the time the peppers and tomatoes are ready to make salsa.

We've picked a few peppers already and there are more coming along. There are tomatoes too but they are all still green. We had some more potatoes from the garden last night and we've been eating carrots too.

Of course the oregano stays green all year but I noticed this afternoon how tall and healthy it looked. Time for some spaghetti.

cactus flower

Most of the plants I have tried on the south side of the house have not survived. The conditions are harsh. There is only a narrow bed between the brick wall and the concrete driveway and no shade. It's a good place for a cactus though.

This one came with me from Houston, where I had kept it in a pot on a windowsill. For years it had stayed exactly the same size in that pot. It took a year or so for it to take hold here and since then it has grown exponentially. In addition it has started to reward me with these blossoms, each of which lasts only a day.

I never was all that good with houseplants and this may be the only one left of the collection I once had. That makes it the plant that has survived the longest in my care.

garlic flowers

The weekend was mostly cloudy and cool, and thanks to the fact that it's been pretty dry up till now, relatively insect-free. Ideal for being outside and we took advantage of it to grill some steaks and invite a few people over.

We did get some rain though along with the cool spell, which will likely bring out the mosquitoes. They don't bite me as much as they do Tricia, perhaps because I eat more garlic than she does.

We decided to wait to hear more opinions before seeing the new Matrix movie; instead we went to see The Man on the Train which was a good decision.

mexican hat

Click for a larger image. This and Echinacea are our predominant blooms at the moment. The larkspur has mostly gone to seed and I am trying to collect some of the seeds so that I can redistribute it.

blazing star

I've been reading up on liatris. You may recall my mentioning that I brought home one of those from the native plant sale last week. I've never planted one of those before and I didn't know much about it. It's sometimes called gayfeather and sometimes blazing star and was apparently a common sight on the native prairie hereabouts around 150 years ago.

According to the book Pasture and Range Plants the roots of this plant can go down as much as 16 feet! Pretty impressive when you consider that the above-ground portion only gets to be 2 to 3 feet. It also mentions that the roots were eaten by Indians and the leaves were used as a medicine, but it doesn't say what ailment it treated.

Sally Wasowski lists numerous species native to Texas but says only a few them are good for "black gumbo" soil, which is what I have. The one I bought was not labeled but I am hoping that it does work in my soil. Most of the specimens at the plant sale were grown by members of the local plant society who generally live pretty near here.

This plant does not bloom until Fall and from what I read does not always bloom until its second or third year, so unless I am lucky enough to have one that is right for my soil I won't get to see it bloom. The kind of black clay soil I have does not drain well, so in the wet months of winter a lot of dry soil plants will just rot.

With a name like blazing star it's sure got me expecting a nice flower, so I hope I get to see it.

yarrow

I like the way that the white flowers of yarrow seem to kind of float above everything in the late evening. Yarrow has a nice clean smell to it and the foliage is so lacy and ferny.

I got in my truck to drive home after work today and something seemed different. It was several blocks before I realized what was wrong. There was no rearview mirror. I looked around and found it on the floor; it had come unglued from the windshield. When I got home I found some glue in the garage and stuck it back on. Hope it stays on.

saturday

Put my three new plant acquisitions in the ground this morning, refilled the bird feeder and then did a little weeding. The soil is very dry even though we had rain showers several times this week. It's looking as if more rain could be in store for us today. It's cloudy and there are cool breezes. I opened the house windows and let the wind blow through.

Last night we met some friends for dinner after work and then went to see a show at the Dallas Theatre Center. My expectations were not high, but it had some good moments. We used to have season tickets but gave them up because the plays just did not seem to have much life to them. Fifty years ago they had quite a reputation and enough of a budget to build a theater building by Frank Lloyd Wright on a choice wooded creekside setting. The theater is still nice but a little threadbare.

I've got several projects that need to be done around the house this afternoon but I will have to go to the hardware store first. Tomorrow my mother's side of the family is having a family reunion which will take up most of our day.

we visit a plant sale

Tricia and I went to a plant sale this evening held by the local native plant society. We were both actually hoping to find some trees. I wanted to find an Eve's necklace to replace one that failed to make it through the winter in my yard. She was looking for a desert willow for a friend.

We didn't find either of those but we did bring home some liatris, coralberry and sweet autumn clematis. There was also a good presentation by a man named Mark Chapin, who lives on 20 acres near the town of Argyle. He is basically letting it go wild and documenting with a camera all the changes that take place on it through the seasons. It's a project that would seem a natural to me for a web blog but he doesn't have a web site of any kind. He did have lots of slides though of wildflowers. Although it has only been a few years since the land was grazed by cattle and he has not brought in any plants himself he already has dozens of different wildflowers and native grasses coming up in his prairie.

rain

We finally got some rain. It has been very hot and humid and many of the plant leaves were starting to get mildew on them. At the same time the soil has gotten hard and dry. I have been afraid of watering much though, except for the vegetable garden. Then Sunday it cooled off and since then it has been really pleasant.

I wanted to post some pictures of the wildflowers but I am having technical trouble. I don't know if it's the card reader or the software, but I can't get anything to transfer. Usually this is practically instantaneous but nothing at all is happening.

garden blooms

Here's some of the things coming into their own in the flower garden now: zexmenia, four-nerve daisy, shasta daisies, black-foot daisies, primroses, wine cups, yarrow, mexican hat, echinacea, day lillies, penstemon, mexican oregano, larkspur, and gauro. We still have a few roses and salvia greggii blooming too.

One of my favorite kinds of tree is the Eve's necklace and I had put one in the back yard a few years ago. Unfortunately it seems to have unexpectedly died. I am going to try to find another. There is a native plant sale coming up this Thursday at one of the garden societies and I might find one there.

veggie garden

This is our vegetable garden. Those are potatoes in front. There is a row of carrots behind them which you can't see. That is rebar sticking up in the back with 2-liter soda bottles hanging on them. There is a tomato plant at the bottom of each one. Later we will use the rebar as tomato stakes and tie the plants to them with twist ties. We don't need the soda bottles any more but we were using them as mini-greenhouses to keep the plants warm at night. The peppers are kind of interspersed with the tomatoes this year. There are a few other things in there too. You can see some onions at the extreme left.

We started the garden about five years ago using a series of 6 by 6 foot boxes built with cedar fence pickets. Then it evolved into this. Tricia likes to walk out barefooted to pick the veggies before dinner, so she wanted a paved path to walk on. Building the path around all four sides of the garden was a chore in itself.

larkspurs and primroses

This is the view out our dining room window. Click on it to see a bigger image. Five years ago it was a bermuda grass lawn. Then while I added a wall of windows to what we now call our "sun room" this area became a repository for lumber and construction debris. That was when the sunflowers moved in.

Several years before that a sunflower came up in a nearby shady bed. It had probably been a stowaway on a plant we had received from a friend. It only got a foot or so tall but there was always another one or two every year. But when I stopped mowing around the construction debris, lo and behold we had a whole crop of sunflowers springing up around it and they got to be 8 feet tall! They provided lots of entertainment during the hot summer. Insects loved them. Birds loved to dive down and pick the insects off. There was a big grasshopper invasion that year and we were thankful that they preferred the sunflowers to anything in our nearby vegetable garden.

This area is one of the sunniest spots in our yard. It also has a slight drainage problem when it rains. So I got the idea of developing a dry creek bed there that would help carry away the rainfall. The next spring I pulled up the sunflower seedlings, dug a trench for my creek bed and planted native plants around it. We still had a few sunflowers come up there but they had now spread to every corner of the yard. We always let a few survive in one place or another.

Now these larkspurs have moved in. They came from a seed mixture that I had sowed in the back part of the yard. There are a few back there now too but I guess they have decided they like it here better.

late bloomer

This will probably be the last iris of the season. We went around to all the beds this afternoon and cut off the stalks with the withered flowers. The roses are beginning to diminish too, especially the ones with the most sun, and the annual wildflowers are starting to come out. Afternoons are getting hot now, although they've been tempered a little with some clouds and showers.

In our vegetable garden we've got a lone tomato and quite a few peppers. The potatoes are thriving and the carrots are coming along, but somebody is eating our lettuce.

peonies

This is the time for the peonies. One of the things I like about living in a 57-year-old house is the things that come up in the garden that were planted by previous owners. The first year I was here I did not know what was happening when bright red shoots suddenly erupted from the bare ground. Now I know to look forward to these pink and white displays. Unfortunately there are only a few flowers and they don't last long. And why do they always have those ants on them?

Click on the thumbnail for a bigger image.

one more rose

Here's one more rose that I just had to post. This is another one whose name I do not know. We rustled it from a neighbor's yard after she moved away and left it. (We just took a part of it - not the whole thing). You can't really tell from the picture but the petals have a velvet like texture. And the flower is so big and heavy that unfortunately the weight causes the canes to bend over so that the flowers seem to usually be facing the ground. This rose is very fragrant also. Tricia and I are partial to plants with fragrance.

This was a good year for roses in north Texas. All our established roses have had a lot of blossoms and they are still blooming. Even the ones we planted this winter have bloomed well.

Be sure to click on the thumbnail to see a bigger image.

roses

The white roses are Iceberg and the pink ones are Rouletii. Both are from the Antique Rose Emporium. The pink is an especially prolific bloomer and has a delicate fragrance. It grows between our driveway and the front door so we pass it many times a day. The blooms are very small. The red rose was in our garden when we moved here, although it was in the shade and did not bloom much. We moved it to a sunny spot and now it blooms a lot more. The flowers are beautiful but they have no fragrance.

irises

Roses and irises are my two favorite flowers. And they are the most prominent ones in our garden right now. We also have a lot of Salvia greggii of various colors, and they are another favorite of mine, although they have really small flowers so you have to be up close to appreciate them.

backyard gardening

We were lucky to be far enough south to miss the hailstorm that got so much of North Dallas over the weekend. It flattened quite a few flowering bushes in addition to doing more serious damage. The combination of cool temperatures and light rain have really filled out our Rouletti and Mutabilis roses with lots of blossoms. I'll try for a picture when the wind dies down. Our iris and bluebonnets are just now opening their buds. Zanthan Gardens has been reporting blooms on theirs for a couple weeks now in Central Texas. This white wisteria has been filling our backyard with fragrance for the last week. The more common purple does not have nearly the fragrance of the white one.

One warm Saturday last month Tricia rented a tiller and tilled our little backyard garden. Now we have tomatoes, jalapeno and serrano peppers, onions, carrots, potatoes, lettuce, and cilantro all coming up back there. Of course all these things cost us more to grow than it does to buy them at Albertsons, but they taste better. Did I mention that this is a 100% organic garden. We have been doing this for about 5 years now and have never used any pesticides or herbicides in the yard. The bed is raised about 12 inches above ground level and filled with Greensense compost.

I see that Samantha has also got her vegetable garden going up in McKinney. She's got more variety than we do.

the return of winter

It looks great outside today as long as you are inside looking out through the windows. The sky is a clear blue and the sun is shining bright. But step outside and there is a brisk wind and a temperature in the 50's that sends me right back inside.

The white wisteria is sending its perfume all over the back yard. We have a rose blooming and buds about to open on several others. The tradescantia are starting to open and so are the iris and various salvias. The cedar elms in front are fully leafed out in bright green although the pecans in back are still bare-limbed. I wish I could post photos here of some of the blooms.

There is a slight chance of a freeze tonight but we are hoping it doesn't hurt anything. I worked on taxes all morning; then tried to get out a little to brighten my mood in the afternoon without much success.

spring has sprung in Dallas

The weather was great this weekend. I mowed the lawn for the first time this season and pulled weeds.

I enlarged one of the flower beds a little to give us some planting space in the sun. We have a large yard but a lot of trees too, so we don't have many sunny spots in which to plant. I put in a couple of roses, a Martha Gonzales and a Mutabilis, in the new bed along with some irises that should have been in the ground long ago. We've had the roses over a year planted in some large containers.

I also changed up the beds on either side of the steps leading up to the front porch. We did have a row of salvia greggii on the left and a large artemesia on the right. I took out the artemesia and moved a couple of the salvias into its place. Then I slipped a second Mutabilis in between the remaining salvias. It looks more balanced now and maybe we will have some flowers through the summer from the rose.

I mulched both beds with pine straw that I picked up at Mom and Dads house last weekend.