Islands of Pretty

Big excitement this morning!

2012-01-07T10:32:00.000-06:00

I was just starting to head outside for the morning perambulation with the dogs through the backyard - Aggie had preceded me through their own door, and Cassie was following me - when I heard the yelping, the dog door slamming open, and be the time I turned around, a dark shape streaking through towards the back bedrooms. Cassie went hysterical, and tried to figure out where to go for a moment, then followed her brother.

Oh boy. I realized that Aggie had chased something into the house through the dog door, and followed them to the back bedroom, where he was wedged under a table trying to get behind some boxes of books. Cassie was frantically trying to wedge in with him, and both were in full cry. Such excitement! Well, for them.

I just thought about what he might have chased in.

I called a friend whose cat had brought a (live) rat in to play with and lost it for awhile in her house. So a rat was my first thought, and I wanted moral support. I had not actually seen anything but a dark streak when I looked around before, so no visual on the prey. We discussed setting a trap closed into the room with something wedged under the door. I thought about where the trap might be. Meanwhile the dogs had whatever it was pinned down in a corner behind the boxes. Loudly.

I left the room to start looking for the trap or something... after a few minutes, when I had left the field of battle and was in the entry hall, the sounds changed, and I looked towards the living room to see a largish dark shape at full speed through the living room closely followed by the pack in full cry. Out the doggie door to freedom! Although I still never got a good look, it appears to have been a longish-haired dark cat. Whew! No rats! And a cat is more likely to understand pet doors. It didn't run like either of the similarly sized wild animals it could have been (coon or possum), so I am fairly certain cat it was. I don't think it will choose to roam my backyard in the future, poor terrified thing. Not that the dogs would have hurt it - more likely the opposite. Aggie's only close encounter with a cat left his ear bleeding profusely, and he was just trying to say hello. But the chase! If it runs, they will chase it, without thought of what to do if they catch it.

They are still, hours later, roaming the house on patrol, just in case. It is good to feel so protected. :)

Meanwhile, I have tiny seedlings starting to show, probably the radishes, but bits of green nonetheless. I am so glad I planted last weekend, with this nice warmer spell to let things get started and rain Monday to really settle them in. Lots to do this weekend in leaf cleanup and so forth. I planted a couple of 6-packs of pansies also, some where the daffodils have just started to show in a couple of places, and a few around otherwhere. My confederate rose is leafing out again, confused and vulnerable to the next freeze. The little one in the front has never dropped it's leaves. They all had such a hard time of it over the summer. I don't know what reserves they have if we have a bad winter on top of it. At least this nice long wet spell has brought many of the plants back to life.

I had better stop writing and get outside!

2011-12-31T10:51:00.000-06:00

So, the pond. This is from a couple of months ago. A little willow tree, a tiny sprout, went into the bog in a pot last spring. It liked the 24-7 fish water, and either wind or one of those pesky coons knocked the more-than 15 foot tree over so it hangs over the pond. Cassie and Aggie are checking it out. Anyone want a willow tree?

The light freezes we have had so far have killed the cannas and taro and are working on the umbrella grass, and I hope soon to be able to whack most of it out, and have some maneuvering room to do something about the tree. Maybe this winter I can take an ax to the umbrella grass island and get it out of there for good. I love the bog but it has become a jungle, and needs renovating.

Another lovely day, back to the garden - planting and leaf mowing come first, since the weather is changing tonight. I may not get to the bog whacking today. (oh darn.)

Hey, long time no post!

2011-12-30T16:04:00.000-06:00

But I am finally back. What incredible weather today - I have cleaned up the veggie garden and planted the winter crops. I put garlic in at Thanksgiving, late, but it is coming up nicely. Half is from some local garlic from the farmer's market, and the other half some good hard red garlic I bought at Sam's.

It is kind of a cleanout garden this winter. I had so many old and new packets of seeds, so for most of them I mixed them all together into ziploc bags. A bag of long carrots, radishes and parsnips, one of short carrots and radishes. A bag of six kinds of chard. Another of all the lettuce based mesclun and one of the Asian green mixes. Bigger seeds that need to be more carefully spaced I left in their envelopes, but all of them were sown with abandon, since some of the seeds are old and I don't know what will come up. It will be a surprise. And if I have to thin a lot, yeah! salads! If they don't come up well, I have lots of mesclun seed still, and assorted greens.
I still have a couple of raised beds to work on, still a bit shady since the ash trees still have about half of their leaves. I will plant chard and parsley behind the daffodil bulbs, and mesclun among them. Giant red mustard and kale in the other bed. It is nice to have decorative things to eat.
The dogs do try to help, so besides the inadequate fences I am laying coated wire grids on top of the seeds I am planting to discourage digging. (Yes, Cassie, I am thinking of you!)
Next, raking some more leaves and bagging for later composting. Maybe mowing them up first, that shreds them nicely and it is easy to empty the mower bag into the paper one. Sort of. I feel good about today's gardening, though. Last winter's garden did well, so I am hoping for more yummy spinach and arugula and greens.
Enjoy the day.

So really, what has there been to say all this summer? It's hot. I watered. Repeat.

2011-08-24T10:59:00.000-05:00

Today we break the record from the twenties - longest stretch of triple digit days, and at least 10 more days of the same. *sigh*
Twice a week I water. Since my yard has so many little bits and pieces, I do about half at a time, so once a week for the whole yard, and some spot watering of pots and such in between. It is focused on trees and foundation, and some of the grass benefits. The little pots of bog plants around the pond dry out daily, but they are also wildlife (and dog) watering stations. My frog population has been decimated by the coons which hunt in the bog at night. The dogs go in there, too, and the other night they chased a baby coon out of the bog into the pond, where it was swimming around pulling over all my floating containers (laundry baskets) of floating plants. By the time I got them in the house and went back out with my camera it was gone.

Here is Cassie finding a cool spot on the edge of the bog.

And both of them getting a drink from a baby water lily nursery pot.

So soon I will only be watering once a week when the schedule changes. I already miss gardening classes because I don't want to miss my watering time, now it will be my only watering time. I know - automate. I like the idea but find it too hot out to work on it! This is survival time as far as I am concerned - not innovation time. Some day fall will come, and it can't be too soon for me after this summer.

Stay cool. If you can.

btw

2011-03-08T12:20:00.000-06:00

Just to update a little from a previous post - the daffodils have just finished blooming, and the potatoes I planted in January are about a foot high. Lots of the seeds I planted before the freezes survived under row cover and germinated, but now I have tiny winter veggies where I am about ready to plant summer ones. Baby greens salads are on my menu - I can plant little summer things between and as they get bigger, harvest the greens and such. More later, back outside now!

Ah, spring!

2011-03-08T10:06:00.000-06:00

I drove up from south Texas yesterday, and the roadsides down there are flush with banks of pink evening primrose, the first wildflowers I have seen this season. They are so pretty, and one of my favorites, but I have been pulling them out of one of my beds. The ones that come up with roots are being moved to some pots, because I do love them, but I had no idea they were SO invasive!
I have a long bed in front that parallels the curb, raised with a rock border which I dug out while working on the bed and digging in amendments. I have primarily agaves and succulents, a few other things around the edges. About a year and a half ago I transplanted 4 or 5 tiny scraggly stems of the primrose from my back bed, thinking it would be pretty to have a few wildflowers growing among the prickly pear and agaves... last spring I had a solid carpet throughout the entire bed of pink evening primrose. I let them grow and bloom, but then realized that everything that I had planted was being shaded out of existence, and regretfully pulled them up. At least what was above the ground. Because it is spring again and they are back thicker than ever.
I am not surprised, and they are still only a few inches tall, but I know what is coming. And, reluctantly but resolutely, I am pulling them up bit by bit. So far just the ones in the raised bed, leaving the ones coming up around the edges for last, since they will not be an immediate threat to my poor little plants recovering from the freeze. (Some things did OK, they did have row cover, but I lost about half of the bulbine, and my thread agave has only a green core.) I used a couple of bare patches revealed by the weeding to plant a couple of bluebonnets. The seeds I have planted have never come up, and I read that they just won't grow where they not grown before - maybe the soil needs some sort of inoculation. Perhaps the planted ones will provide that, and I will get returns next year. They will not grow so thick and tall that I will worry about the other plants - those primrose got a foot and a half tall! It is a good example of the old definition of a weed: a plant growing where you don't want it to.
Enjoy the spring!

January gardening

2011-01-23T16:19:00.000-06:00

Well, it said in the paper that you can plant potatoes now, so that is what I just did. Two small patches for now, in the garden where I had squash last summer. I finished a little cleanup in the raised beds, and spent most of my time putting those little wire fences around the vegetable garden areas to dissuade the dogs. They can actually walk through the wider spaces, so I was also putting little bamboo stakes there, and even some closer spaced wire panels in some area. I just need to use a better fence. They are 10 month old dachshunds with digging in their blood, and all that loose black dirt just calls to them. So I am putting more wire panels flat on the ground where the plants will come up. Hmm. Maybe just some chicken wire flat on the ground, and I can just leave it until harvest - that would work for most things. lots to try.

My daffodils are starting to peek up through the ground. Should be quite a show later in the spring. There are somewhere near 200, planted closely. Last year I planted a bag of 100, and they were lovely. I had to dig them up, and last fall I separated all the side bulbs when I replanted. Since each one had at least one side bulb, often two, it will be a sea of lovely daffodils! Even this time of year there are pretty things out there, though. There are still a few deep red leaves on the pigeon berry, and the yellow shrimp plant is covered with blooms. The bulbine is blooming as well, and in the greenhouse, so is my mother-in-law tongue, and some kalanchoes.

Rain!

2010-09-03T09:34:00.000-05:00

It rained, it rained, it rained!

Do I sound excited? It will be so nice not to have to spend Saturday moving sprinklers around in the morning and evening. The yard is happy, the dogs not so much. While they will run into the rain to answer a barking dog next door, a heavy dew can be enough to make them reluctant to wet their dainty little feet. It rained on Aggie and I on our walk this morning and he was glad to get home. I didn't really care. Wet is good at this point. Cassie stayed home as she is recovering from yesterday's surgery - she was spayed. Seems to be doing well, but needs to stay quiet for a few days.

The weather is projected to be very nice this weekend, low humidity and low nineties, with morning maybe down to the upper sixties! Since I don't have to water Saturday I can get some of the materials that have accumulated in my driveway to their proper places in the yard. I am recycling some concrete edging a neighbor was disposing of to define the pathways on my front beds, and still have about a quarter yard of compost under a tarp that can be moved to places it can do some good. Also some wood pallets to make another compost bin. I have been waiting for a break in the weather (and some improvement in my foot - plantar fasciitis) and it is here. The weather anyway; the foot I will manage.

OK, still too hot.

2010-08-17T13:09:00.000-05:00

I am concentrating on keeping things alive, watering mainly. I have cleaned some old stuff out of the veggie garden, and although I have some okra coming up, and yardlong beans and a few sweet potato slips I planted form the ones in my pantry, I am not really willing to plant more seeds in this heat - I don't know if I can keep them alive. May be best to wait a bit and concentrate on winter greens and such. I am pruning back the tomato plants to see if I can coax them to start up again for the fall.

The little waterlily nurseries are shallow enough to need topping off almost daily. (Those are dishes with clay mud in the bottom and a few inches of water above. Great way to start baby waterlilies.)

The bog plants are huge, of course - fish water 24/7 and lots of heat. Lovely white butterfly ginger, so fragrant! I am giving away some more pond plants Sunday. That should finally empty the little kiddie pool. I will then clean it out, put a few inches of play sand and water to cover it an inch or so. New puppy play toy for hot weather! Some of my trusty mosquito bits will keep it wiggler-free.

I have projects piling up, but can't take the heat. Even the mornings are humid enough to feel oppressive. OK, I am a wimp. After I get back from the morning dog walk I really don't want to go back out there. The dogs get precedence, coolest part of the day (and pavement!) for their walk. Aggie has bounced back very quickly from his surgery (hard to believe he has gotten old enough to be neutered!) and is full of energy and high spirits. Cassie has her appointment in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile we have our walk then hunker down and try to stay cool.

I am very pleased that one of the thunderstorms that popped up last night hit me with almost 1/2 of rain - that makes such a difference. Wishing rain to everyone that needs it - and a little more for me! Ciao now.

Hot so hot so hot

2010-06-28T17:19:00.000-05:00

I have two thermometers on the back porch, both in the shade. The one on the wall of the house reads a couple of degrees hotter than the one hanging from the lattice behind the potting bench. That one gets more air movement, but both are always in the shade. The 'cooler' one is solidly on 100 degrees. And it is humid.

Then there is the metal dragonfly thermometer hanging from the back fence where it is in the full afternoon sun. Almost at 120 degrees.

It is still June.

*sigh*

2010-06-23T09:20:00.000-05:00

Painted Ladies. Isn't it a pretty name?

I planted these and Scarlet Runner, and Scarlet Emperor to climb the bean poles in my vegetable garden. I had heard that they produce beans as well as the pretty flowers, but so far just the flowers. They are so pretty that I don't mind. I have some bush Roma beans that I am enjoying, usually eaten fresh off the vine as I stand there and the puppies nose around. Cassie likes bites of green bean; Aggie has no interest.

I let a couple of my Ichiban eggplant get past me in the heat and they started shriveling. Bummer. But more are on the way, and the green goddess eggplant has 3 or 4 I need to pick. And more cucumbers, always more cucumbers - good thing I like them! Tomatoes are continuing to ripen. I don't expect more to set until fall, but lots of green ones are still coming along.

It is my watering day - back to moving sprinklers!

Water so that it will rain...

2010-06-17T16:23:00.000-05:00

I watered well yesterday, so today I had a pretty good rain. No complaints - I was going to mow, but I can do that tomorrow.
The squash are about dead and gone, vine borers. I got some good crops off of them, but should be able to get more without those dreadful pests. I tried burying the vines to promote root growth, but I don't think it is working.
Aggie surprised me this morning. I had been at the back side of the pond filling some plant tubs, and was back by the front. Suddenly he came barreling across the stepping stones in front of the bog! He is the adventurous one. I am glad we are having lessons with the escape ramp. They will be splashing in the bog before I know it!

2010-06-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

The puppies are helping in the garden...

2010-06-08T11:05:00.005-05:00

I am so tired of the humidity. OK, I am looking forward to a few days of good rain, as forecast ;) and I do not forget last summer's extreme drought, but it should be comfortable to go out at 7am to the garden, not drippy. *sigh*

However, last week's rain has produced a lovely thick flush of rain lilies, and the vegetable garden is happy. I have lots of flowers, lilies, cannas, skullcap, daylilies, and more. Not to forget all of the scarlet runner and painted lady beans. In theory those produce green beans, but mine are just flowering. I have some asparagus beans planted in with them, though, and am getting beans on those and on the bush romanos in he cinder block bed. The tromboncino has a large squash hanging from the trellis, and I am trying to extend the life of my squash by burying the stems in mounds of dirt, to form new roots. A few of the vine borers finally got through.

With the impending rain I got out there and dug the potato bed. With one exception all the vines were essentially killed a couple of weeks ago by an overnight defoliation of hornworms. Hey! I think I just came up with a new term of venery: a defoliation of hornworms!

Anyway, it was fun digging them out - I kept going over the beds and finding more. I am sure I missed some. There were 4 with pitchfork wounds which I will cook today. None are large. A few had rotted - the reason I wanted to dig them before the projected rains. I had planted the aged sprouted remnants of a bag of russets, too soft to eat, so anything is a bonus, and the new potatoes taste so good, a different texture, yummy.

What really made it fun was deciding to let the puppies help. Probably a bad idea in the long run, as I have been trying to keep them out of the garden, but I removed the little (pitifully inadequate) wire fences first, and did keep removing them from the remaining fenced areas. They can walk through those little fences, so they are meant more as a deterrent/learning tool than a real block. I had to be very slow and careful with the fork, sometimes lifting them with the pile of dirt! They had a blast. Dig dig dig - they are doxies, after all - getting gloriously dirty.

Now that the bed is well dug, I will add in a little fertilizer and plant okra. I have been eating mostly out of the garden for a while, squash, green beans (usually eaten right there as I pick them) some tomatoes - lots of green ones coming along - as well as cucumbers and eggplant. And a few late snow peas. Between the yard work since I was laid off in February, and especially since I got the puppies, I have lost 15 pounds by eating better (lots of veggies and fruits), more outdoor time/exercise, and being too busy with puppies to remember to eat. It is 11:30am and I am just now finishing my morning oatmeal. It is a drop in the bucket to what I need to lose, but every drop counts.

2010-05-26T11:10:00.003-05:00

Crinum is blooming, Asiatic lilies, guara, cannas are glorious in bog, daylilies and rain lilies, black and blue sage, some others…

Yesterday I ate from the garden: tomatoes (cherry), squash, green beans, potatoes, green garlic, squash blossoms (omelet) and picked a young cucumber but haven’t eaten it yet. Tromboncino that I shifted to a bigger trellis has a huge blossom open. Hope the work picking vine borer eggs and killing the moth I found pay off. No apparent frass deposits yet on the various squash.

Grass needs mowing. Even without actual rain the incredible humidity has kept things growing green. I have ordered these cool watering bags, 8’ x 9” with drip emitters you can place on them and stakes to secure the ends. I can set these up and fill them with my rainwater, and a little seaweed for a continuous drip. Looking forward to trying them out.

Sadly, the cardinal nest which I found in my crepe myrtle and took a quick (and too dark) picture of was robbed last night. Name your culprit – raccoons, possums and feral cats all roam (and defecate in, grrr) my yard and garden. I discovered it when my puppy started eating something on the ground nearby and I pulled it out of his mouth to discover a baby bird leg. The nest was only 6 feet off the ground, so vulnerable, I suppose. But I loved seeing the cardinals flying in and out of it.

2010-05-22T10:18:00.002-05:00

Wow, over a year since that last post promising pictures and things. I have most of the front yard in beds, almost all of which made it through the summer drought and the winter deep freeze (with a little help). I do need to work on sizing pictures. Including some of the new puppies who are now 'helping' in the yard! They love the pathways around the veggie garden, and my cinder block bin of decomposed granite, slowly going to paths, is now the dig den. The liriope bed is puppy jungle.

I will try to get some pictures up soon. Really.

I know I said intermittent posts, but...

2009-02-26T09:17:00.002-06:00

I know I said intermittent posts, but...
I have been really behind, so a quick post to say I will get more pictures sized and up soon. I have been working in the garden, I have moved 1 10'x4'x16" raised bed from the vegetable garden area and split it into 2 (they were stacked) 8" tall 10'x about 3' beds in the front. They are narrower because the corners are hinged, and I set them down into paralleogram shapes. The soil from them (Hillcountry garden soil mix originally) had to be shoveled into my wheelbarrow and transported and shoveled out again, so it has not been a trivial task for me. I added some manure and fertilizer and evened it all out, then went to go rest. Again.
However, they are now planted, with caladiums along the back, daylilies in the corners, other bulbs which I needed to put somewhere around, and a center section in each of mesclun seed. This area is part shade, more as the trees leaf out. Another good learning experience for me, I am sure. I am gradually trying to delineate the border between my front yard and my neighbors - it all just runs together now - and incorporate paths that wind back towards the gate to the pond. There is a long way to go, but when done, about 2/3 of the skimpy grass will become paths and garden areas.
ciao for now, Mary

2009-01-26T17:02:00.008-06:00

Well, since it is not a very pretty time of year, I will share some pictures I have taken in the past, starting with the pond. If you went on the 2008 Austin Pond Society Pond Tour, you may have visited my pond - over 600 people did, counting some friends and relatives that weren't on the tally sheet. (That was 600 people between 9am and 5pm - I have never stood and talked so long in my life!)

I just wish I had had a chance to speak to everyone, and longer to many! My pond used to be a swimming pool. It was a modest swimming pool, but quite a large pond. This conversion is why so many people were interested. So here is a picture when construction is almost done, but it is still empty:

Not so pretty at this stage, but so much potential. I had had it as a still pond for a few years, but it was quite green and I couldn't see the fish, and I knew I needed to add circulation and filtration for the health of the fish, as well as appearance. Here it is filled, and moving plants into position in the bog.

And here, all filled up, a month or so after planting the bog. The bog is the primary filtration - rocks over a grating, and bare root plants in the rocks, with water coming up from beneath and flowing over the roots. This was taken about 10 months before the pond tour. If you look back to that picture, the first one I put in the blog, you can see how much the plants like it.

Some of the denizens of my deep:

The big pale yellow one is Buttermilk; and the white (platinum) butterfly at the front was Ariel (aka Fu Manchu). He was a favorite of mine, but I lost him to dropsy in November. Very distressing. He rests in the flowerbed near my dear little dog, Sadie.

Most of the smaller orange fish are descendants of the original feeder goldfish I threw in to eat the mosquitoes when it stopped being a pool and became a pond. (When the pool pump died for the last time and I got fed up!) The tiny fish are mosquito fish (gambusia).

This time of year they are sort of hibernating, they don't get fed, and mostly hang out near the bottom. If they do feel peckish, there is plenty of algae for them to graze on - here is a shot of them last summer, taken underwater near the steps, cruising around and grazing. That's Ariel in the front.

That is plenty for now, a glimpse into the water-gardening part of my garden - really a very large part of my garden. Ciao for now.

2009-01-20T18:05:00.003-06:00

OK, let's experiment - adding a picture - a slightly larger version of my pond. Bear in mind that this was taken in July 2008, the day of the Austin Pond Society Pond Tour. It is at the peak of pretty, and certainly does not look like that now! Most of the plants are showing the effects of winter (brown and/or gone).

I must say the mint in the stock tank filter is bigger and more vigorous than ever - I have not had a really hard freeze yet this winter, just enough to get some ice in the birdbaths, but not entirely kill off the sorta-tender plants. There is certainly work to be done, mostly in the cleanup category, and I am behind, as usual. Maybe I will wait to post again until I can report that I have gotten "something done!". Maybe not. Ciao for now.

Mary

2009-01-20T17:51:00.001-06:00

New blog, new activity - my first attempt at blogging. I expect this to be an intermittent activity, especially since it is mostly about my garden, and not much is going on there right now. But at least I have begun.