It's Time For Another Round of What's! That! Plant!

No, seriously, what the hell is this?

Here it is on my desk at work, planted in some plastic cups.   I liberated it from the landscaping.

NO, I didn't STEAL it from the landscaping - it was a "volunteer" plant, not supposed to be there, not a single other one on the building grounds.  It would have been cut down by the landscapers, if they ever bother to show up again.

Soft, floppy leaves with serrated edges.  Medium, regular, plain-ol' green.  No fuzz or hairs or spikes or anything.

Nothing interesting on the undersides, either.

Pairs of opposite leaves;  the pairs alternating from each other.  I don't know what that's called.

There's some axillary budding here - it looks like they're going to be more leaves?  But I can't tell yet.

Also the stems are a bit...not really fuzzy...they look almost as if they've been dipped in very fine sugar.  But it doesn't look like something that's happened to the plant, it looks natural to it.

There are new branches/leaves sprouting opposite each other, from the "trunk" of the plant;  as well as bark forming on the lower/oldest portions of the trunk and branches.


At first I thought this was a Hydrangea, but I'm confident it's not.  When I looked into trees, I thought maybe a Texas Ash...but it's not.

What IS this?










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No Groundhogs In Texas

People up north have Punxatawney Phil, that odd-looking round beast who pokes his head up in February to see if it's still too cold to go outside, or if the sun is finally out.

'Round these parts we hide on our screened porches and our fan-cooled solars, sipping iced tea, and long about this part of the year, one of us walks out to the yard for a sec, to see if it's still 105º goldurned degrees out.

Okay, so, maybe it's not quite that romanticized.  In fact, August is basically "Fuck Texas Month," at least for everyone I know.  You can forget trying to get anything done in the yard, for damn sure.  But now that it's September, and temperatures are finally only in the upper nineties, life resumes:

The front garden lives! Yay!  -1 lavender

Look, I got plants for the baskets on the front porch, finally!!   (variegated Lilyturf
(Liriope), and some Vincas to trail downwards; both on clearance for $1/plant) 

Love!  I hope I remember to water them this time.  I'm
horrible with these baskets. 

Experiment: two tall silver florist's buckets as cachepots - love it, but not
HERE.  I ended up moving them in front of the garage, at opposite sides.
The Sansivierras came from a $5, 3-gallon "plant" which actually held like
seven or eight individual plants.  So I split them up into these two buckets,
a pot on the front porch, and a pot for the house.  

One of the other Sans, along with my Jade Plant,
and an extra Lilyturf that I forgot to plant. 

Over the weekend I also mowed the grass, trimmed back a huge rosemary bush, and trimmed up all of my trees to get rid of suckers and low-hanging branches, including the oak in the front yard.  Pics of that, and stuff in the backyard, later this week.  :)


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CRAAAAAP.

Well, the lavender plant that I put into my front bed has grown big and strong - it's like two feet high now, and three feet wide. Yay!

Oh, and also, it's dying.  I saw a wilting couple of branches in the back, snipped them off, inspected the rest of the leaves for signs of whatever (found none at all), and then watched it for a few days...more and more of the plant is wilting.  Over half by now, in like two weeks.

Oh, god, I thought, the Martian Death Fungus is STILL IN THE SOIL. I don't think that's it, though.  After thinking about it for a while, googling around, and still failing to find any evidence of pests or diseases on the plant itself, I've come to the conclusion that it's just basically drowning.

Where did I plant it?  On the east corner of the front garden, where there was a great big open space in need of a giant, pretty lavender plant!

Wait, wait - let's try that again, shall we?  Where did I plant it?  Right next to where the gutter downspout drains...the wettest part of the front garden.  What the HELL was I thinking??  ARGH.  NOrmally, I doubt it'd be a problem, but it's been a wet year.  I guess my first clue should probably have been that I *never* have to water the front bed anymore, because we've had such good rains.

WAY TO GO, LAURA.

Plantkiller.

@#$%^&*!!!

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I Just Blogged To Say I Love You...

Just a note to say that I'm sorry I haven't been blogging this month.  I've been:

• extremely busy out of the house
• not feeling well, physically or emotionally
• spending a lot of my free time sleeping, and trying to heal

Back soon as I can.

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It Was An Ambush

Let's see...

• roomate moved out, been focusing on the house mostly, not the yard
• yard grew to like nineteen feet high, and
• became overrun with these weird, indestructible weeds that went from "what is that cute little thing?" to "WE'RE SURROUNDED! RUN!" in like half a day
• oh, and also, like half the damn yard is suddenly covered in spiders mites.  What??  AUGH.  
• Plus all the veggies died because I quit smoking and forgot to water them. 
• best part: the yarrow has taken over the front beds so thoroughly and rambunctiously that I got a letter from my HOA about it.  FML.  

Sigh. 

Update soon...

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

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Oops + Spider

Well, the aforementioned non-smoker's veggie garden has officially died.  That tomato I was so proud of ripened before the plant died - mind you, it was supposed to be as big as my fist but it was the size of a regular cherry tomato - was completely nasty.  So we'll try again in the Fall.

The rest of the yard is going well.  The back is completely overgrown, because I cannot seem to get the dogs to mow the lawn, try as I might.  The front garden is huge and fluffy and green, and I love it!   I haven't been doing any actual projects in the yard of late (mostly been working on house stuff; see other blog), but I do have a couple of photos:

A juvenile Green Lynx Spider on my roses in the front garden

Front porch with new light fixture (what I've been working on this week),
and the aforementioned rose + spider on the left 

☼

@_@

I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING.

That's not a camera trick.  I'm not holding the yardstick like a foot in front of the plant between the plant and the camera.  HUGE flowers, omg!  YAY!




Yeah, that's all I've got.  I'm a terrible blogger.  Look at the flowers again!

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