Because Weather

"I know, summer doesn't officially start until June 21st, but it's been in the 90s for half of May already.  It may not be summer yet, technically, but it's already feeling like it."

- Me, on this blog, May 21, 2015.  

Three days ago it was 85ºF, and this morning when I left the house to go to work, it was 32º. 
(Insert obligatory "welcome to Texas" joke). 

Thankfully, all the new plants seemed to be perfectly happy despite the cold this morning. Thank goodness it wasn't also raining.

Although it DID rain two nights ago, and I'm pleased to report that the new mulch prevented the rain cascading off the roofline from digging a trench in the bed.  It wasn't a frog-floater, by any means, but that was the first test passed.  I imagine it'll be a month or two before we get a big, thundering gully-washer and I'll find out exactly how stable the mulch layer actually is.

Two Favorite Flowers

Columbines 

me, 2017

My grandparents lived in White Rock, New Mexico, which is a little bitty village about 40 minutes up the mountain from Santa Fe, near Los Alamos and about a thousand little ski resorts.  We drove up there several times a year when I was a kid, most often in the spring and summer.  I spent countless hours there wandering the little streets, gawking at all the alien trees and the huge mountains, and touching and smelling all the flowers that were planted within arm's reach of the sidewalks and streets.

One of the houses a couple of streets over from my grandparents' house had columbines.  And I mean, they had hundreds of plants, all over the yard and in the traffic strip, so that walking past that house you were surrounded by columbines in every color and shape.

Best of all was a tiny, cheerful sign with flowers painted on it, which said, "Pick some!"  I did, on every walk, and every walk ended high atop the tallest slide at the local playground, watching the evening thunderstorms roll in over the mountaintops, with fistfuls of graceful, cheerful columbines piled in my lap.

Clematis

 

also me

While I love all Clematises, especially Sweet Autumn, 'Romantika' is my absolute favorite, simply
because I have gotten to know one of them, and it's been a constant friend for nearly twenty years.

I bought it when I was 22, and grew it in a container where it clambered around an upside-down tomato cage for nearly six years, moving with me from apartment to apartment.  When I bought my last home in 2004, I planted the vine in the ground for the very first time, and there it stayed for twelve years, wrapping itself around the post on my back porch each year, each year growing longer vines and larger flowers.

I could always count on 'Romantika' to come back bushier and brighter, every time it was cut back for the winter - or if it got out of hand and I had to shear it back to the ground to start over, which I did at least twice a year.  This plant above all others, I wanted to bring with me to the new place - it had stuck by me for so long, longer than people, or places, or any other possession. It was part of me. So I cut it back one last time, intending to dig up the root ball once it recovered and started growing again; but it never did.  I was heartbroken to see it finally go, especially at a time I was letting go of a place I had anchored to and wanted desperately to keep a little bit of it with me.  I hope to find a new one soon (the original came from Joy Creek Nursery in Oregon). It won't be my same old friend, which sheltered me from the rain on the back porch, hosted many families of lizards and birds, and shone a thousand different shades of green in the morning sunlight -- but it'll be just as beautiful to look at and sit under.

"Unknown Variety"

I'm disappointed by how many of my plants didn't come with labels, or had labels with less than complete information.  I like to know what I'm growing.

So, I made a list!

Plants In the Front Beds as of 02-12-2017: 

SUN
Columbine, "Harlequin Mix" (Aquilegia vulgaris), some container, some in the ground
Lavender, "Goodwin Creek" (Lavandula x ginginsii "Goodwin Creek")
Lavender, English (Lavandula angustifolia)
Strawberry, unknown variety (Frgaria), container
Rosemary, unknown variety (Rosmarinus officinalis), container
Powell's Crinum Lily (Crinum powellii), from the old house
Iris, German Bearded, "Before the Storm" (Iris germanica), from the old house
Iris, German Bearded, unknown variety, pale purple (Iris germanica), from the old house
Garlic chives, unknown variety (Allium tuberosum), from the old house
Autumn Sage, white (Salvia gregii, unknown variety)

PARTIAL/DAPPLED SUN
"Serenade" Azalea (Rhododendron x 'Serenade')
Hosta (Hosta spp.) "Patriot" and something that was labeled "Old Glory" but isn't
Maidenhair Fern (Adiantum),  container
Louisiana Iris (Iris x spp.) "Full Eclipse"
Caladuim (Caladium x hortulanum) "White Christmas"

MOSTLY/FULL SHADE
Cyclamen, unknown variety, white (Cyclamen persicum)
Bird's Nest Fern, "Victoria" (Asplenium nidus x 'Victoria') 
Japanese Holly Fern (Cyrtonium falcatum)
Swedish Ivy (Plectranthus verticillatus), container
 

I'm sure I'll add to or change things around in these beds, depending on how things fill in (or don't), and as I learn which plants are happy in their new homes and which aren't. I may also end up planting some things in the yard, or scattering containers about.  I haven't decided yet.

Small Steps, Into An Early Spring

Last week, three things happened:  a Texas Mountain Laurel in my neighborhood burst into bloom, I noticed that many of the trees around were budding and beginning to show new leaves, and a friend texted me a picture of a bluebonnet by the side of the road, fully open.  In early February.  I've lived in Austin all my life, and I've never seen a bluebonnet open before March!  The grasshoppers and katydids are already out and about; and it makes me wonder what the junebug population at this new house looks like. I detest those things.  More than anything, though, it all makes me worried for this summer - how bad is it going to get this year? La Nina is over, and NOAA tells us that we're in kind of a stable place for the moment, but how long will that last? When will the next El Nino pattern begin, and how severe will it be?

Well, whatever happens, for the time being it meant that I got to get my front garden up and running several weeks earlier than I'd planned.  While I'd intended to dig and prep the beds over the winter when it was cold, and let them sit for a while, I never got around to it (too much else to do, and too cold!)  So I ended up doing it all over this past weekend.

Thankfully, the soil in the front beds isn't bad at all - it was planted, once, and while it was then ignored for many years, it was full of good, black soil, a bit of red clay, and underneath it all, the remains of somebody's old rock garden, full of sand and red pumice.  No wonder it drains so well in the rain!

This was taken in December, but until Saturday it stayed about the same - though many more leaves had collected in the beds.  Between these two front beds, and what had blown into drifts on the driveway, I filled up my 96-gallon yard waste bin to capacity with JUST leaves.  Holy crap!

I broke up the soil here with my garden claw, and mixed in a blend of compost, planting mix, and peat moss; and covered the whole thing with hardwood mulch.

I'm hoping, by the way, since there are no gutters on this house, that the mulch will be proof enough against the rain that sheets off the roof, especially in the corner behind the post.  It's supposed to rain frogs tomorrow, so I guess I'll find out.

The next day, I started by disinterring all of the plant scraps I'd harvested from the old house, and which had been heeled into a plastic planter box all winter.  After cleaning them all up and dividing what could be divided, I ended up with 2 garlic chives, 3 pink crinums, and 15 irises! I have no idea which irises are which, by the way - some are light purple, and some are the purple-black "Before the Storm" that I've grown for years.

I also went plant shopping, for the first time in years.  I'd missed doing that, so much!  The nursery folks didn't bat an eyelash, but there was a gentleman at the Lowe's I visited who seemed to be enjoying the sight of a crazy lady petting all the leaves and smelling everything.  Maybe he thought I was stealing things.

And so, for the first time in over twelve years, I got to build a garden, and populate it, completely from scratch - from the ground up, if you will.  (I know, I had to dig deep for that one).  Where my front and back yards were in full sun all day, every day at the old house; the front yard here is almost entirely dappled shade, and the front beds only see a touch of full sun, for a bare three hours a day:

 

I reserved those spots for a couple of lavenders and columbines.  Everything else in the beds are part-full shade, which is an area of gardening I've never really gotten to work with before, so we'll see how it all turns out. 

Here's a direct view of the front entrance.  I matched up plantings right by the sidewalk - chives and azaleas, and blue ceramic pots that need to be planted (there's a fern thrown into one for now, but it isn't staying there).

Except for those matched plantings, everything else in the beds is pretty much only arranged by sun requirements.

New beds look so empty! I did a ton of work over the weekend, and yet this looks like not much is happening.  I can't wait to see it in a few months when everything's huge and fluffy. 

Most of the flower colors here are purple, aside from the pink azaleas.  They won't be up for a while yet, but the empty places in the bed are full of white caladiums, to fill in around the feet of the taller things, and to bring a little light to the shady places.

Back in the corner is a Bird's Nest Fern which is about 2' across.  I've had it in a pot for several months in this corner, and it seems to love it here.  I've wanted one of these every since I saw Paul James with one on his show.  It's surrounded by Japanese Holly Fern, and hostas.  I love hostas, but I haven't been able to grow any for nearly a decade and a half!

The Tree of Things I Don't Know Where To Plant:
A rosemary that was once a Christmas-tree shape, now pruned into a ball wad; and my Earth Box, which is now full of baby Columbine plants that will one day go into the back yard (?).



I'll be back in a couple of days with a list of all the plants that went into these beds, and plans for whatever thing is next.

Cat tax.

"AAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!", an Ant Story

"Once upon a time there was an ant colony. They were industrious, ambitious little bastards, and they made a bed the entire length of a woman's house, and concealed it in leaves. 

 

One day, the woman, tired of seeing the garden hose coiled on the ground, hung a pretty metal hose hanger on the side of the house, and yanked up the hose from under the leaves and dirt.  Little did she know, the ants had made the hose their own: not only was it half-buried in their vast bed, they had extended their colony inside the hose itself, from end to end. When the woman picked up the hose, she showered herself with millions of ants - they were in her shoes, her clothes, even in her hair!  

 

The woman screamed and screamed! She threw the hose away from herself violently, and brushed off all of the ants, thankful that they were NOT the kind that bite. The ants panicked and ran all over her body and face, and all around the hose, inside and out. They must repair the hose colony! 

 

But, unfortunately for the ants, the woman hooked the hose up to the faucet, turned on the water, and blasted those little fuckers to kingdom come. Then she spread poison all over the bed, and went inside the house and showered and showered and showered.

The end".

 

So that was my weekend, how about you guys?  *shudder*  

That was what I posted on Facebook about it yesterday afternoon, just after it happened.  It's 100% true.  I knew there was an ant bed out there somewhere, because they'd been coming into the house by the thousands.  

Yes, thousands: 

(I feel I should point out that I'm not respon-
sible for this wall color, and it's changing soon)

 

This is just ONE short wall in my master bathroom, after not having vacuumed for a couple of days.  Yes, just a couple of days.  There are more on the other side of the bathroom, in the closet, in the master bedroom, and in my roommate's bedroom, which shares the same exterior wall as these other spaces. They're coming in and dying - I see maybe three or four lives ones per week.  This started about three weeks ago. 

I thought maybe it was the weather - it's been wet, so they're not coming in for water.  But it hasn't been wet enough for them to be coming in to get away from the water. It was super cold for about a week, but it's warmed up since, and they're still coming in. I really have no idea what's going on. 

 

What's killing them? Why are they coming indoors to die? WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM?  

Turns out the answer to that last question was outside where that hose was lying on the ground.  Ugh. As for the other questions, I have NO idea.  

 

Rest assured, that whole area outside has been thoroughly poisoned, and the entire foundation of the house, all the way around, has been dusted with diatomaceous earth to try to keep them from coming in.  I'm not usually big on the "nuke it from orbit" pest control philosophy, but...desperate times, you know? 

 

 

*

So, yes, anyway, I did hang a couple of pretty metal hose hangers.  I also put up some house numbers on the post on the front porch: 

For most of the long holiday weekend, I worked indoors, painting rooms and building shelves.  This coming weekend is another long one for me.  Provided the weather holds (and it's supposed to), this will be the first major gardening weekend I've had since I moved in.  I'm hoping that next week I'll have some pretty cool stuff to show you.  

P.S.:  thankfully, miraculously, none of the ants in question were fire ants, and I didn't get a single bite! 

P.P.S.:  a LOT of ants were harmed in the making of this post

The Last Day of Fall

It's going to be a while before I have spectacular gardens to show you.  I'm still deep in the process of cleaning up and fixing up the new house.  But something happened recently that took me completely by surprise:

Fall color!  No, no, see, I didn't have that at my old house.  Sure, the Mulberry turned a little yellow before it shook off all its leaves at once like the Whomping Willow at Hogwart's, but the Chaste Tree and Mexican Orchid just kind of died and defoliated.  The little live oak out front was evergreen - in fact, 99% of the trees in that neighborhood are evergreen oaks, so, no - no fall color for me for the past twelve years.  In fact, Austin in general hardly has any, at least, not on the scale that you see pretty much everywhere else in the country.  The whole city just seems to blacken and die in November, except for the oaks.  How boring.

This neighborhood, however, is brimming with color. I know what I'm doing, more or less, and I don't recognize half the trees I see around me most of the time, living here.  (Which is neat!)  This red-orange fellow above is some sort of plum tree growing on the property line between my house and my neighbor's.  And the Lace Bark Elm in my front yard carpets the entire lot with this: 

Which, yeah, it's messy, but it's beautiful.  Plus, look at this trunk:

Is that not amazing? It feels really weird.

Here's the whole Elm - still somewhat green, and with green live oaks behind it.  (You can see, a little, how big my yard is in this picture.  You're looking at less than half of it).

But enough about trees...wanna see my front garden?

Impressive, no?  Okay, so it's been fallow for several years. The soil is good - it's had leaf mould from the elm every year, so it's richly composted.  I had grand plans of tilling up the whole thing and mulching the heck out of it, then loading it with plants before the cold set in (see the bag on the porch?), but then...the cold set in about a month early.  The day I took these pictures it was a gorgeous, sunny, 65º day; but then it dropped to 25º  that night and hasn't risen out of the mid-thirties since.  Oh, well.  There's still plenty of time to get the beds in shape before Spring.

 

This, meanwhile, is my actual "garden".  Or rather, pieces of it:  irises, lilies, chives, and Australian indigo salvaged from my old house and quickly heeled into a box planter to await a time when I could put them into the front bed.  Looks like they'll be there a bit longer - at least until I can get another sunny weekend with a temperature that at least starts with a four.

Meanwhile:

With Confused Heart

I've tried to write this post several times over the past two months, and I think I'm finally ready to say this without breaking down:  I sold my house, and moved away.  I'm fine with it all, for the most part.  I never went through any weird nostalgia and regret phases - it was purely a financial decision, and I was SO ready for a change.

But the gardens...oh, the gardens!  My front bed, my "gift garden", populated for twelve years by plants given to me by friends.   My American White Mulberry, planted for me by the birds, grown from a wee stick to a ragged behemoth half the size of my house.  My Mexican Orchid Tree, given to me by a botany professor at the University of Texas ten years ago, which I can replace exactly nowhere.  The corner in the backyard, in Raven's favorite spot, where I buried his personal effects and planted his favorite flowers [to dig up and sleep on top of].  All gone...not yet, but I know it will be.  I'm sure once the new owners find out what a pain in the ass it is to maintain the Mulberry and the Mexican Orchid, they'll both be ripped down without a second thought.

I didn't even manage to save any of my bedding plants - I'd planned to devote an afternoon to bagging up an armload of things to take with me to plant at the new place - the black irises, the Amaryllises that my friend Lorrie gave me, the pink Australian indigo that I planted practically the first year I moved in and which once comprised about half of that front bed. The black Clematis 'Romantika' that I grew in a pot since I was 23 years old, and transplanted to the backyard in 2004 when I moved into the house.

It wasn't like the move happened out of nowhere; but it did happen fast, only two months between decision, and move, sale.  Before I moved 100% of my attention had to be on packing, and fixing up the house to put on the market.  And because I moved into a fixer-upper, 100% of my time since October 1st (the date I moved in) has gone to fixing up that house, and trying to arrange furniture and get things put away around an ever-changing schedule and constant parade of repair-people and contractors.

All of that being said...

Things are settling down a bit.  There's still a LOT to do at the new place (if you're interested, you can read about that here at my other blog). But things are calm enough now that I'm starting to turn my eye toward the new landscape...or rather, toward the inviting and promising lack thereof.  The new place, a rental, comes with carte blanche from the owner (a friend of mine) as far as the interior and the landscaping are concerned.  It's on an enormous corner lot filled with mature oaks and elms, as well as a pear of some kind,  and a Crepe Myrtle that, sadly, isn't getting enough light to thrive, sandwiched between two massive oaks, and will likely have to come down before it hurts somebody. The back yard is small, but there's space enough for a small vegetable and herb garden, and it's got a huge patio that's just begging for a container collection.  So, we'll see.

I was going to end this post with pictures of my beloved trees, which I'll never see again.  I've been missing them terribly, but in the past few days I feel like I'm getting over that loss.  But I grabbed a neat snapshot in one of the oaks the other day, and so instead, I leave you with this: 

HOPE.