Sunset walk

One thing I have come to appreciate in Texas is the dedication to preserving native plants, especially the wildflowers that make the prairie so distinctive and beautiful.
The Mueller development (just south of my neighborhood) used to be the Austin Airport. When it moved further south some 20 years ago, the land sat vacant for a while, but was purchased with the goal of creating an ambitious housing development with mixed use. I feel so lucky to have purchased a home a  mile away, in easy biking distance (and occasionally a long walk) to restaurants, movie theaters, swimming pools, and beautiful parks. There are a series of water retention ponds on the southern end of the development that have been planted with native wildflowers and trees, and it's practically a little nature preserve with all the wonderful birds, insects, and wildlife attracted to the little area.

Yard of the Month!

I won Yard of the Month for my neighborhood. To prepare for the honor, I cleaned up the front a bit, primarily focusing on the edging of the garden beds to create nicer, neater lines. I'm going to work on edging the backyard flower beds next. I planted gulf muhly grass in the mulched areas between the agave and the blue mistflower bushes. It's taken a while for them to get comfy in the spot, but I'm hoping in a year or so they will fully root and flourish there. I've tried gulf muhly a couple of different places, but I've struggled with them for some reason - maybe not enough drainage, or water, or sun. We'll see which ones end up doing the best.
The Gregg's mistflower is really starting to fill in nicely around the pecan tree. Another season or so and I bet the whole ring will be filled in. I can't wait for all the monarchs and queens to visit in the fall.

Rainwater Management

I'm placing these videos here so I can go back and reference them. We had quite a few torrential downpours this spring - wonderful for the plants, but as I watched the torrents sweep across my yard, I wondered whether I can do something to manage the rain flow a little better. Here are images from the front yard.
The water sweeps down the slope from my neighbors' property, floods the little gravel path I created and creates a puddle on our walkway. I'm thinking I could dig out the garden on the left side of the picture, build a small swale to encourage water to drain off the sidewalk. This is one summer project I plan to attempt. 

In the backyard, this is the scene. The gutters are not very effective (they might need to be cleaned out as well). But they just haven't seemed to work well since they were installed. So, right next the house we get a giant puddle. Again, I'm thinking I could dig out a swale to carry water away from the house, and down toward the side garden by the fence.  

New Garden

Here are some more photos of the side of the backyard. There used to be several indifferent seeming irises and daffodils back here. I dug up several, and meant to replant them, but forgot. I don't know if there's too much shade, but many of them didn't bloom. So I dug them up, and it's probably too late to replant them. I hear bulbs can't stay out of the ground for too long. 

Anyway, I put cardboard and mulch down to facilitate creating a new garden scenario back here. It's not super well-planned. It's quite shady, with some late afternoon sun. I placed some yellow Indian grass; we'll see how that does. I transplanted some coral berry from the other side of the back yard (see photo below). That stuff is a great groundcover for a shady spot, and it's spread all over my woodland, so I had to dig a lot up. I tried replanting over here, but it's not looking super perky, even after the 4 days straight of rain. 

will it survive?

I also transplanted turk's cap, which grows like gangbusters, so it'll probably take over within the next two years. I also transplanted a tropical sage, which was super easy to transplant, and two yellow columbines, only one of which survived. The rain def helped there.

I bought a Mexican honeysuckle and a beauty berry. I guess I'm aiming for a garden grounded with several large shrubs, and salvia, coral berry and twist leaf yucca for ground cover. It'll probably come out fairly eclectic, but I guess that's okay. That's more or less what I did in the front yard, and I'm enjoying that a lot.

Update on Woodland Path

I started placing the flagstones in the garden yesterday, once all the rain stopped and the sun came out. Here's my progress so far - about 1/3 complete. I understand the meaning of back breaking labor.

It was so muddy still, the stones are covered in dirt. It is hard getting those stones in place, and keep them from wobbling. 

The evening was so nice, and we had extra wood from all the pruning we've done, so we built a fire in our fire pit. Here's the view back towards the house with the gorgeous sunset clouds, framed by pecan trees. 

Sunset reflections

Ode to the late afternoon sun. 

The light and shadow 

play with the colors, highlight the pinks the blues the yellows 

rising above green foliage, 

yearning for the light and heat.

The sun and the flowers 

reach for each other. 

Scarlet beardtongue

Bee foraging a mealy blue sage 

Damianita on fire in the late afternoon sun

Woodland path

You can see my woodland in the last post. I wanted to make the back of the woodland more accessible, so I can weed and check in on the plants back there, as well as create a view to the beauty berry I planted two years ago (which was invisible in the earlier blog post).
So, I hacked away at the Turks cap and widow's tears, along with pruning back some of the rough leaf dogwood suckers that have grown in (buyer beware - it's a beautiful tree, but be ready for a thicket of suckers if you're not an avid and aggressive weeder).
You can see how I created some space here:

It's hard to tell in the image below, but there's a patio there (really just a concrete foundation from an old shed). It's covered in the plants I pulled, so it looks a little weird.  

I haven't actually laid the stone in the ground yet. Still playing around with the design, plus it'll take some work to get the stone dug in. I think once it's properly laid and some of the plants grow back in, it'll have a fairly natural look. 

Finally, here's Grady, nestled in her favorite spot in the front yard, right in the sun.

Woodland garden

This is my thicket.

We're looking at roughleaf dogwood, yaupon holly, behind that is dwarf palmetto, Mexican buckeye,  and somewhere back there is an American beauty berry bush. In the foreground, we have turk's cap (just starting to get some height, but no flowers yet), widow's tears taking over, and in the very front some cedar sage and lyre leaf sage. The cedar sage is blooming beautifully, but I don't see many blooms on the lyre leaf. So... what to do with all this? I'm thinking to scale back some of this growth. I'm just going to have to start curating and pulling up some of the self-seeded plants. I'd like to create a little garden path that I can walk on to get to the back and tend to all the plants in the very back. I guess I'll use some paving stones. This might be a summer project.

Zen garden

I'm trying for a zen feeling when you enter the backyard. This is the side yard next to the carport. I have a series of vines growing along here that I planted about a year and a half ago. There's Carolina jessamine (for early flowers and evergreen screening) and passionflower vine (for excitement and sexiness), mingling with Virginia creeper (that creeped over from our neighbors' yard). The jessamine is much better established than the passionflower, though I have big hopes for the passionflower. My wonderful friend Tamara has been taking cuttings from her prolific vines. She's given me several, and so far I only managed to get one to take root. So I need to add more to balance it out.

You enter the back garden into the gate, and you'll find the fence (which is falling apart, thanks to the overexertions of the neighbor's dog) with more Virgina creeper, and some native grapevine on the right. We purchased the Buddha fountain at Miguel's imports, and I got the garden stool from neighbors across the street who were having a yard sale last weekend! To the right of the fountain is a Japanese holly fern. It requires consistent moisture - fingers crossed it likes living under my (sometimes negligent) care. I typically go for plants that are solidly drought tolerant, cause living with me, there are no guarantees. But I'm taking a risk, so hopefully it gets what it needs to flourish.

So, I'm still waiting on the fountain pump I ordered to come in the mail. My main concerns now are how often I'll have to clean the fountain, whether any birds or other wildlife will appreciate it, and how to keep the other wildlife (ie mosquitos) from breeding in it. 

Here's the full effect via video. You can see the shed is a bit unkempt. I'm debating what to do there (other than clean it up, obvi). Considering another trellis with a vine. I want something vertical that doesn't take up too much room. Then again, I've always wanted a possumhaw holly. I shouldn't... should I??? No, I really shouldn't... 

Update: Finally got the pump, so the fountain works! 

Spring Cleaning

I always feel like I'm scrambling to get everything done before the heat hits us full force, which should be arriving in, ohhh, around 2 weeks. Then we'll be sweltering until October 16th, and good luck getting plants established.

So, firstly, I got some deals on planters at Miguel's imports on Burnet. He claims he's selling the land and closing shop in a month or two. We'll see ;-) But I bought three new planters, and I went for some green. It blends in with the landscape, and I decided I didn't want something too bright.

Wandering Jew, verbena, and coleus

Fig tree and wooly stemodia 

We got the fig tree from a friend. I don't have room to plant it (they get so big) so I'm hoping that keeping it in a container will keep it manageable. I transplanted the wandering Jew (tradescantia) from another location in my garden. It was growing among some Gregg's mistflower, at the base of the pecan tree in the front yard. I want to populate the whole area with the mistflower, so there will be a perfect circle of mistflower all around the tree. It will be the most beautiful thing in the fall when it's flowering and all the queen and monarch butterflies visit it. Anyway, the container with the fig has a southwestern exposure with very intense sun in the late-r afternoon (3ish?). The other container is mostly shaded by the pecan and the cherry laurel, but gets a dose of sun in the late afternoon/evening. We'll see how they do.

I worked on the herb garden a bit - I've recently added some basil, chile pequin, spearmint. I hesitated to put the spearmint in the ground - mint can spread quite a bit, but then again... I can just pull it if it gets out of hand. I'm hopeful the other plants will help keep it in check. I will probably need to add some parsley. I've had a beautiful parsley that's well established, but it's in flower now, so I'm thinking it'll be done soon. You can see a black swallowtail checking it out below.

Moving to the front left side - good morning light, a period of shade in the afternoon, revisited by sun late. I moved this tropical sage from the mistflower patch as well. It was doing well - I hope I got enough of the root structure to make the transplant fairly shock free. It looks like it's doing well so far. I found two seedlings near the plant, so I moved them too.

I've really been appreciating the extraordinary blooms of the red columbines I planted last year. I hope they reseed, and I can get more of them going. The yellow columbine in the backyard has kicked off a few successful seedlings, so perhaps I can expect the same from this. These are a lot smaller than I was expecting. The yellow variety gets good sized - around 1.5' by 1.5'. These babies are only about 6 inches tall.




Back garden - much shadier (4 mature pecan trees). I have recently begun to build a garden next to the fence on the eastern side. I'm slowly adding plants (some which I got from the Wildflower center semi-annual plant sale, some I have been transplanting from other places in the garden). You can see the squid agave pup I moved into the bed (I started with an agave in a pot and it keeps kicking off babies, so now I have several). I moved a blue flax from another garden that had very little sun - we'll see how it fairs here. This is a mostly-shady spot, except for some intense western sun in the late afternoon/evening. In the back I added Indian grass and a Mexican honeysuckle. I've wanted a Mexican honeysuckle for a while: the orange flowers are so striking. But I was sold when I was at my friend's baby shower, hosted in her mom's garden, and I was mesmerized watching all the hummingbirds flitting around the flowers of the Mexican honeysuckle. It's all the way in the back left of the photo. All my plants are so small, so it'll be fun to compare when they've matured.

Finally - the remnants of 6 cu yards of mulch. Seemed like a good idea at the time. It's not a bad idea, really, but apparently I've abused my wheelbarrow too much, and the wheel fell off. So there sits the remaining mulch, waiting until I purchase another wheelbarrow. #smh
But look at those wax myrtles! My favorite southern tree. Not a charmer like Texas Redbud, who arrives boisterously in early spring with its pronouncement of pink joy, or a bewitcher like mountain laurel, with a fragrance that announces its grape-y presence before it appears in view. Wax myrtle is just a dependable, good old tree. Its evergreen leaves provide shade and screen year round, and release a pleasant, fresh, herby scent when crushed. If you'd like to know all the benefits of this tree for human and animal use, check out this link.  I planted three wax myrtles shortly after we moved here to screen out the fluorescent lights and view of the back of the strip mall behind our house. It has taken about 6 years for the trees to get this size. They said they were fast growers, but truth be told, I've seen faster. I don't know if the challenges of keeping them watered in the summer have led to the slower growth. But my Mexican buckeye and anacua have grown like gangbusters on the other side of the yard, so I don't know what accounts for the slow growth of the myrtles.

A propos of nothing, I saw a flock of gray catbirds in my backyard this morning. One of them apparently flew into the screened in porch, and was a bit dazed on the ground when I came outside. I believe they might be migrating through, based on my quick research. I don't usually see them around here, especially not in my backyard.

Spring Happenings

This spring has been fantastic. We ordered 6 cubic yards of mulch. When it's delivered, it doesn't really look like much, but once you start to shovel it around the garden, it becomes the never-ending pile.

I added mulch to the whole side of the yard and in the back among the wax myrtles. I've started adding some to the front yard herb garden, and I need to bring more of it to the front. The fight against encroaching grass and weeds never ends.

I have a new project in mind. Here are the before photos:

You can see the downspout from the gutter on the left, just behind the AC unit. We get a ton of water in this area, and it sits and floods. I'm going to install a dry creek bed from the downspout, connecting to the screen door on the right (our gutters weren't installed very well - we need to get that fixed, but currently we get run off from the roof there). and down along the garden bed next to the porch, culminating at the end of the porch. I hope I do this right! It's going to be a lot of labor.