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.

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.