Some Pink Things

Loropetalum foliage in the morning light, front garden

The first rose on the new pink double rose bush in the front
garden (no cultivar name, generic plant from Waldemart)

:)

Aside

I really love the way my Chaste Tree grows.  When I planted it in 2011, it was about a foot and a half tall.  Now it's up to ten feet, and will reach twelve or more by the end of this year.  How can I tell?

See the long, thin branches sticking practically straight up from the top?  The rest of the overall form is fairly rounded, but every Spring, a few whip-like branches streeeeetch out higher than the rest of the tree, and throughout the remainder of the year, the rest of the tree catches up.  It actually tells me how tall it's about to get.  

Hee. 

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I did three new things with the Chaste Tree this spring.  Firstly, I finally caved and lopped off the "extra" trunk that it had in previous years: 

2013, at two years old

See the little guy on the left?  When the tree was small, it contributed to the whole plant looking fairly balanced.  But as the tree has grown, that extra trunk on the left side grew unevenly, ending up tilted far to the left and much weaker than the rest of the tree.  It also isn't attached to the rest of the tree - I think this may have originally been two saplings in the same container, and I didn't realize it when I planted it.  Anyway, I cut it off to allow the main tree to grow, and it looks far more balanced and sculptural now.  

The second thing I did was to remove the little ring of stacked [cement] stones that I placed around it in 2012, to keep a certain black fuzzy dog from digging it up.  In the picture above, there was a good 3-5" of space between the trunk of the little tree and any one side of the stone ring (you can see the whippy branches on top in this picture, too; the tree doubled in size in 2012 and in 2013!)  But this year, the trunk of the tree has gotten so wide that a couple of the stones were nearly touching it.   Time to let the tree free! 

Lastly, I nabbed a little Texas Gold Columbine plant on my last trip to The Natural Gardener, and planted it a few feet away from the base of the Chaste Tree, to sort of anchor it in the growing landscape (pun intended) and to add more color and more native plantings to the yard.  You can kind of see it in the first picture - a little blob of green with a couple of those stones placed around it to keep it safe while it gets established.

It's part of a larger plan, but before I launch into what should really be its own blog post...

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Backyard Progress In Pictures

Some stuff:

Most of the backyard, as seen from the west side behind the Mulberry tree

Morning Glory seedlings, yay!  I don't remember if they're blue or purple.

I love Yarrow, as long as it isn't the Yarrow taking over the front garden. 

Another view of the whole (mostly) yard from the other side of the tree, from the SW corner. I stood in dog shit to take this. 

The Mexican Orchid Tree, with a pair of little lavenders flanking it. 

The Chaste Tree, with a wee columbine in front of it, Yarrow and compost bin behind. 

The first flowers on my Citronella geranium, potted, on the back porch. 

Cosmos and Cypress Vine seedlings! Squee! 

new leaves on the Chaste Tree (Vitex agnus castus)

One of the wee lavenders near the Orchid Tree (Lavandula dentata)

More soon.

News From the Front Yard

Texas Bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis) in the front yard

Slightly less exciting when you see them from a distance,
LOL.  But the patch is growing!  

Magenta African Daisies (Osteospermum) and red Cyclamen in the front bed

My yellow roses, now five years old; and my purple irises, some of which have grown under-
neath the rose bush and mingle with it. :) 

Leafminers on my culinary sage. 

More African Daisies.  Have I mentioned that I LOVE the camera on my new phone? Wow. 

The whole front yard scene - again, less exciting in its entirety.  I'm working on it. :) 

That big bush by the electrical box (and let me tell you how utterly overjoyed I've been about its
presence for eleven years...) is the only plant that I still have from the original builder's plantings
in front of the front porch.  I think the very first thing I did after I moved into the house in 2004
was to remove ALL of the builders' plantings, five each Nandina (which I detest) and these
things.  I potted them all up and put them on the curb with a sign that said "FREE PLANTS"

 - all except for this guy.  And in eleven years, this is all the growing it's done.  It has little dirty-looking white flowers in the spring and early summer, smells like oven clearner and gym socks, and I can NEVER remember its name.  I tried googling for it, but nothing comes up when I search for "fugly generic bushes nobody actually plants intentionally."  Except for the four people who took the FREE PLANTS within like two hours after I put them on the curb. Suckers! 

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