Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone is having a great start to their Christmas morning!

I haven't put up a tree in several years, but yesterday I brought in a little living Christmas tree and decorated it. (My ornaments are packed away, so I was scrounging from wherever I could find stuff, including a bowl of Mardi Gras beads.)

The dogs were unimpressed.

It is an Italian stone pine, and will find a new home outside soon after Christmas.

The yard has lots of color thanks to a clearance sale on pansies!

Hard to tell, but there are 4 flats in there. All planted now, mostly in big pots and hanging baskets, some in beds, giving so much color to the front!

Lots of Christmas stuff to do - have a great day!

Not gardening, but something else I do - eLearning

My day job is done sitting in front of a computer, making eLearning. I am a Senior Course Developer. One of the things I have been doing recently is writing blog posts on that subject, so I want to cross-reference my blog activities. I have been writing about a trip I took this spring to California to speak at a national conference. Part 6 of 9 went up today, and a new one goes up every Tuesday and Thursday.
I am still going on about the presentation content, but soon there will be Hollywood pictures - the conference was held at the Beverly Hilton, and I presented from the same stage used to award the Golden Globes. Cool, huh?
You can find them here:
http://www.microassist.com/custom-e-learning/the-learning-dispatch

In other news, it's hot.
But, unlike other years, I have only had to devote my Saturday morning to moving sprinklers around once so far this year. But it will be routine for a while now unless my little part of south Austin gets rain.
The bog is doing great - no water shortage there, just fish poop water 24-7. The white butterfly ginger is starting to bloom, and I am trimming back mint a couple of times a week, but that makes for some yummy mint tea. Everything has gotten so lush I will have to thin out more cannas and gingers, too. And my Texas Star hibiscus has had flowers daily, as many as 8 at a time and more buds all the time.

That's all today, just checking in until I take some more pictures.
Ciao.

The Bog is Looking Good!

Here is an updated picture of the bog, grown back in from this spring. The very back corner is still a work in progress, as there are still old dead umbrella grass roots to be dug out of the rocks. But wow, it is almost a jungle again! I try to go out once or twice a week to make sure water flow does not get interrupted around the stones, thinning out the mint and pennywort. I had put purple stemmed taro back in, and while it is not the big problem the green is, it is still sending out runners, so I have to watch it. It has gotten quite large. The cannas are glorious, and soon the ginger should be blooming.

There is some string algae, but I figure it is cleaning the water, too, and as there are less open areas, it will recede on its own. Besides, it is easy to pull out. That's all for now about the pond...

I am happy to report, though that the couple of small rains that have hit my house in the last two weeks have my new rainwater collectors over half full. Yeah!

More later. Happy gardening!

Progress!

This was a good weekend. Actually, so was last weekend, where I got lots of yard cleanup, mowing and trimming done in small increments, as ,my sprained ankle would allow. I still needed to put it up in the afternoons off and on this weekend, especially on Sunday, to help take the swelling down, but progress nonetheless.

I showed a sneak preview of the wicking garden some time ago, and have a couple of new pictures to show Sunday's progress:

Here is the reservoir done. The perforated pipes are almost covered by the rocks. I am so glad I used those, since I still needed 12-15 bags of rocks besides. You can see the edge of 4 cinder blocks I put in the center, just in case I need a really sturdy place to step.

I put a double layer of landscape fabric, and then added 6 bags of sand for the next layer. It does not appear to be enough. So I added decomposed granite, which I had on hand, to bring it up to the top of the water level - I'll post a picture of that next time. Then I folded the fabric back around the edges to make a big sand pillow between the rocks and the soil which will go on next. More pictures once the last stage with the raised bed is done.

Meanwhile, while I was working at the wicking garden, I had a couple of guys installing the totes I got for rainwater collection. They leveled, placed a thick bed of decomposed granite and tamped it down, and leveled cinderblocks to raise them enough for some water pressure.

The next stage will be a new gutter and the piping to direct the water flow into the containers, and hook up the spigots to a pipe with faucets for a garden hose. I am excited at the prospect of 550 gallons of rainwater capacity!

Looking good, guys!

And of course, the dogs wanted to help...

Well, maybe Aggie did. Cassie seemed unimpressed.

He is my willing boy, though. He could be called Barkis, not only because of the bark pun, but Barkis is willing. Read your Dickens.

So there you are, progress on the home front. I did some repotting and work on the bog, too, but those pictures will have to wait for another time.

Just a quick post this evening to say that I am working on some posts but other parts of my life have been taking precedence over picture editing and writing. The bog is filling in nicely, although there is a good bit of string algae that I am not addressing yet. It is cleaning water, too, like the pretty plants. Some of the cannas are blooming, the frogs are jumping, the fish are happy and the water is clear. I saw a tiny baby toad - he couldn't have been more than a day or two past tadpole - maybe a quarter inch long.

The daylilies are still going, and other plants are blooming and I mowed so I can actually see them. Critters keep getting my tomatoes while they are hard green, and sometimes I wonder why I bother.

I want to write about passalong plants. Some of my favorite plants have history, and it adds to their charm. More on that coming up.

I have been hauling bags of rocks and sand and decomposed granite. You would think that would make me strong instead of tired, wouldn't you? It is a process, I guess, like everything else.

I will sprinkle some pictures along from the pond tour, too. That was last weekend, and it was wonderful and exhausting. So many beautiful and creative gardens and ponds to spark your imagination!

OK, it has been a long and busy day, and I am signing off for now. 'night.

Rain, glorious rain!

The sun may be shining now but the rain isn't quite over. Big regret: not getting my new rainwater collection totes set up in time to take advantage. They would be full now. But everything else in the yard is pretty darn happy.

Like the daylilies by the driveway. Happy happy, and me, too, when I walk by them.

I did manage to backwash the pond filter before Monday's rain, so the pond could top off with rainwater, and boy, did it! The fish seem pretty happy, too.

Someone posted a 100 days of happiness challenge on Facebook today. It asks if you can be happy for 100 days. (I haven't checked to see if it means happy all day, or just going 100 days where you are happy at least once a day.) I don't think happy all day is an option for even the most determinedly positive individual, so I can try it. I can try to be happy at least once a day for the next hundred days. There is no downside.

Happy gardening!

Not the Bog!

OK, I will skip bog and pond pictures this time, and show you the colorful strip beside the driveway. It is a narrow strip, and I have gradually been adding raised beds and improving the terrible clay dirt, and it is rewarding me with lots of color. The first picture is looking up towards the street, and you see red-leaved Swiss chard, cannas, daylilies, larkspur, artemesia, poppies, and cactus. It sort of fades off into the strong afternoon sun on the street.

Going toward the street, there is a poppy plant which today had over a dozen blooms open. In the past, I have had many poppies, but I let them reseed as they will with the larkspur, and this year there was only this large plant and a couple of tiny ones. From left to right the artemesia, larkspur, a few pansies at the end, yarrow, poppies, cactus, widow's tears, and the four o'clock that I finally have a name for. Last year I got a tiny plant at our pond society plant swap, and never knew what it was - annual, perennial, frost hardy or what. After it was almost eaten up by snails in a pot, I planted what bare remains there were in that still clay-heavy bed, and it prospered.

It gave me lovely little flowers that were yellow, red, and striped mixtures of the two. I really hoped it would come back, and so it did! large and robust, with two more beside it. It is covered with tiny buds, and I should be able to take some colorful pictures soon.

I love daylilies. As the larkspur gradually begin their decline, the daylilies are starting to open up. As you can see, there are many to come!

Swinging back to the side, I do enjoy the color palette of this bed of larkspur, artemesia, and yarrow, the soft colors and feathery foliage with that little punch of yellow. It always looks light and cool.

I am going to have to plant more poppy seeds for next year, just in case. I'll try to save seeds from this one. I love that red with the black center. I have a packet of California poppies, too, that was given to me by the owner of the B&B I stayed at in San Diego. I will have to write about that soon and show some pictures. It is amazing. If you love courtyard gardens, Mexican and vintage folk art, colors and tiles - check out Vintage Sol. 

And a teaser - my current progress on the wicking garden. It went on hold when I went to California to give a talk at a conference last month, and remained so with all the catch-up that happens when you go out of town for almost two weeks. And the bog took precedence. Now I am trying to rotate tasks a little more.

I need to buy more bags of rocks. I am using perforated drain pipe and river rocks in a hole with pond liner. I am leaving the middle cinder blocks, and the others are to keep the pipes submerged for now, until the next layer goes on. Once I fill in with some more rocks, I will put a layer, doubled, I think, of the landscape fabric from that big roll. Then something I picked up at the wicking garden talk at Emerald Garden nursery - a layer of sand, then another layer of landscape fabric. Then I get to shovel all that dirt back and build the raised bed sides. It is coming along slowly. I have limited energy and time. But there is progress nonetheless.

Garden on!

Well, the bog is slowly coming back together. I have planted cannas and ginger and lizard's tail, and mint and black-stemmed taro in pots. (black-stemmed is not as invasive, but still gonna keep it in a pot!) There are a few cannas and other plants in pots waiting their turn to be washed free of dirt and planted. I have had to build up rock walls around the stems to keep the wind from tipping them over, sometimes several times. If I keep that after they are well rooted, it will make for a bog of hills and valleys. That might be interesting. I saw a few tiny tadpoles in the bog, as well as the pond. Since the water doesn’t flow evenly over all surfaces back into the pond, I worry a little that they might get swept into a dry area and die. I may experiment and put some mosquito fish up there after I finish planting. There would be deeper holes and a shallow plain for them.

The red leaved canna does seem the most hardy, as that is almost all of the ones that survived. I have a very few others, but only one of the striped leaf that has the red and yellow flowers I so like, and a few green leafed ones. The ginger did pretty well. I have one tightly matted mass in a low plastic container that has holes all around the side that I have not managed to remove. I did soak and wash it carefully to remove as much dirt as possible, and then set it down into the rocks. I read that they do well rootbound. We’ll see.

The fish are ravenous this time of year, with the water warm but not hot, and spring in the air. Last year I had dozens of baby goldfish, although I have never seen baby koi. There were 6 or 8 baby shubunkins, which I was very happy about since they are favorites of mine. There is only one left. Three I found in the pre-filter, the rest have just disappeared. The rest are comets and comet crosses. A few have the deeper red of the one or two sarasa goldfish I had, and most are a mix of white and orange. The colors keep changing, though. There were a great many with black, and that has been fading away first, fairly typical of comets. Now the red patterns are shrinking so that I cannot tell them apart from week to week. I have a half dozen or so bronzy-black ones, quite vigorous and ranging from deep olive green to one that is almost black. All are hard to see, reverting to the wild coloration. However, there are one or two visible in this picture, on the left of the cinder blocks, along with a larger black koi.

You can see the approximate size of the fish by the cinder blocks stacked there as a plant stand, for a now defunct plant. Defunct after I got it off the bottom, anyway. Many of the bigger gold ones are large goldfish I have had for many years. I feed them and do a roll call, because if I can tell it apart from the others, it has a name.

The pond as a whole is clear, except when I am netting muck out of the deep end. Soon the water will be warm enough to get in and swim around with the fishes, collecting the empty pots and remaining water lilies that are on the bottom from the times the raccoons dumped everything off their supports. I am planning to tie pots down this summer so they can’t make such a mess without really trying hard. Meanwhile, it is clear to the bottom and I can watch the fish as long as I want. Or will let myself, between all that has to be done. Still, progress.

Bog filter renovation

The bog had really gotten out of hand. I know it was because I had not kept up with cleaning it out, in combination with the previous winter's mild temperatures that left everything green and growing. This year's 24 degrees and other cold periods took care of that. In the upper left you can see the dead jungle of plants 6 feet high, hanging over all sides, and blocking access to the stepping stones. The dogs hunted in it, and I expect at night the raccoons did, too. You can see Cassie wondering where their playground went.

The three worst areas were the umbrella grass island, the green taro peninsula, and the willow tree. Never put these in your bog. At least not bare root and out of a pot. No, wait, not even then. They jump the pots and break them apart and totally disregard them. After all, they have fish poop water going over their roots 24-7. I mean, they are great plants if you can keep them contained. I didn't.

The green taro just sends runners everywhere and new growth pops up like that whack-a-mole game. It had made an intertwined mass several inches thick along with the cannas and other plants. The umbrella grass had made it's own island of decomposed plant matter and what turned out to be the most amazing three foot long red roots. It was such a solid mass that it took 2 guys with power tools and a pickax to get it out. Actually I hired them for a total of 4 hours and most of it was the bog cleanout. They were fromWellspring, and did a great job.

Here are a few pictures of the process. 

 This is the taro area. You can't see rocks or water - all is masses of entwined roots and muck. So much muck. 

 Here we have the umbrella grass island.  It was beautiful in the summers, over 6 feet high with huge circles of leaves like umbrellas, building it's own dirt with all the leaves from my neighbors' huge (female) Arizona ash that hangs over the pond, dropping thousands of seeds and leaves.

The guys are working hard. That stuff does not want to leave.

 The red roots from hell. These were at least 3 feet long, some up to 4 feet. And half as big around as a pencil. That umbrella grass is amazing. And gone from my bog forever. Bwa-ha-ha.

Three years ago I put a pencil sized willow seedling in the bog. Compare the trunk to the pipe fence post beside it.  Three short years of fish poop water.

That was all done a couple of months ago. I have twice since rented the pond society's pond vac and used it to remove a few bushels of muck. Well, before that I removed a few more bushels with my hands, mostly with roots and tubers in them, and spent hours teasing them apart to rescue cannas and butterfly ginger, and a little lizard tail and iris as well. I kept the as-yet unsprouted tubers in wire baskets in the bog where they made it through the 24 degree night that came a week or so after, but the ones I put into another shallow pan of sand and water froze. :( 

I need to take some more pictures for the next post, because last weekend I spent Sunday putting cannas, ginger and lizard tail back into the rocks of the bog. (Along with continuing to dredge muck from the pond proper, with nets. Ouch. Just call me the muckraker.) It was breezy, and the poor plants kept flopping over, so I had to build rock walls around each one to hold them up until the roots can take hold. Note that all of these plants have roots that are not too difficult to remove as needed. I placed them in drifts with room between, and have put a few potted plants in as well. A few black-stemmed taro which are not nearly as invasive as their cousins are in pots, and will stay in pots! I did buy some hydroponic slotted pots for water flow. There is some mint in pots as well, and I will need to keep an eye on that. I may add some corkscrew rush, but I will research any plant type before I use it.

Wow, all that and just about the bog. I will have to talk about the rest of the garden another time. I do have tomatoes and onions doing well, lavish displays of larkspur, and still lots of weed grass to pull. Life goes on in the garden.