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. 

New plants from the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center!

Arrangement of a few agave poking out of a sea of Mexican feathergrass and fall aster

Another beautiful spring weekend, with a few storms and wind thrown in. Friday I took a half day to attend the Wildflower Center's Spring Sale. I love getting my plants here. First, I know they're all native plants suited to this area. Second, it benefits a good cause, as the Wildflower Center does so much to preserve and educate the public about native plants. Third, it's pretty affordable. I renewed my membership and got a coupon for 3 free plants. I also got 10% off my purchase with my membership. And of course, Friday is members' only day, so I can beat the rush and get plants before they sell out, although several plants had already sold out when I arrived Friday afternoon.

The Wildflower is my zen place. I love coming here. I was happy to see the mama owl is back at her nest by the front entrance. A curious baby owl was sticking its head out to check on all the gawkers below. The entrance is so peaceful, with ginormous wind chimes and a little pond with a fountain and native water plants.

I didn't have time to do the full walk around, but the new meadow they opened a year or two ago is always pleasing, especially in spring with all the wildflowers in bloom. I did a quick spin through the shady garden. I wish I had a little stream like this one in my garden at home.

So, I made it out with only 40... okay, 42 plants! Because I can never have enough plants! 

This time I'm working on that bed out front that is brand spanking new. I should probably wait to plant until the grass is good and dead under the cardboard-mulch topping, but I am impatient (not a great trait in a gardener). Some photos from my Sunday in the garden:

Adding some mealy blue sage, coneflower, Berlandier's sundrops, black foot daisy, among many others 

Arranging my new plants

I was able to get a few in the ground.

Time for everyone's favorite game, find the sleeping cat! 

Creating new garden beds

Ventured into the garden today. I'm expanding the bed in front to create a more unified appearance for the front yard. It has been a slow process - I started trying to kill the grass last summer by solarizing it with clear plastic. I think, however, the pecan tree provided too much shade, and so it didn't really work. So I had ugly plastic out there for most of the past year. I love to garden, but I am slow at it. Someday, 20 years down the road I'm sure, my garden will look expertly tended and planned out. But for now, it just seems like a hodgepodge.

And of course I ran out of mulch, so I still need to finish the far corner, but now that probably won't happen for another two weeks. 

I love watching for the little surprises spring brings. Sometimes the plant that I had thought was dead comes back to life, or a plant that hasn't bloomed in a few years all of sudden sets out a bloom. That's what happened with my prairie penstemon or wild foxglove. I have bought these every year at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center sale, and every year they've died off. This one specimen didn't, but neither did it create any flowers. This year I noticed a lot more growth, and saw flower stalks shoot up. I have been watching for its blooms every day, and here's the flower, just before blooming. I will have to take more photos after it opens up. And now I'm wondering what my next step should be. Buy more cobaea penstemon at the Wildflower Center sale in a couple of weeks? Collect the seeds and try to grow them? I don't have much luck with seeds typically, but that could also be due to my impatience and lack of proper care/cultivation. 

Penstemon Cobaea 

Same thing with the Wright's penstemon, or Wright's beardtongue. These seem to die back on me every year, but they re-seed prolifically. I have found these growing in random corners of my yard ever since I first introduced about 2-3 plants a few years ago. They transplant pretty easily. I transplanted this bad boy last year and it seemed to hold its own, but no major growth. Now it's got these beautiful blooms. Another one I transplanted in the back yard at the same time has done even better in a shadier spot.

Nature often drops a few unexpected surprises for my garden as well. One year I got some volunteer bluebonnets, which was serendipitously deposited next to a prickly pear and Berlandier's sundrops. There's nothing lovelier than the contrast between the deep blue of the bluebonnet and the bright sunny yellow of the sundrops. But, for whatever reason, that was the only year I got the bluebonnets. A year or so ago some stiff greenthread also found its way to my garden, and it's taken off like mad. 

Its delicate foliage and blooms are gorgeous in the xeriscape, interspersed among the yucca and agave. 

Finally, look at this little surprise I found. Grady likes to be in the garden with me, though she's not so actively engaged in work. She prefers to find a nice bush to hide behind and take a nap.

I haven't entered anything into this blog in a while. Two years, in fact. But now spring is back and I've got my eyes on my garden again. It demands a lot, in part because I ask a lot. I'm not content with an empty yard, perfectly mown and fertilized. I need life and energy in my garden, a small oasis of nature. But I still want it to look nice too. In short, I want it all, and that's a lot of work. Happily, it's the kind of work I can do all day and feel a sense of accomplishment, along with the ache in my hands and legs.

So, one must start with cleaning up after the winter. A whole bunch of weeds grew up in the grass in the backyard, so I took my weed remover and dug and dug and dug and dug. When I removed a dandelion with roots intact... Victory! A sense of jubilation washed over me. I only managed it about 1 in 3-4 times, so I imagine many of those bastards will be back.


Every once in a while you get a weed you love, if you can call it that. A weed by any other name... a weed is in the eye of the beholder. I found this volunteer as I was mowing:

Spiderwort

It is a stunner. I wonder whether I should plant even more next to this one, so he won't be lonely. I would say I'd try to collect and plant seed, but I don't see very skilled at that. I spread a bunch of wildflower seeds last fall, but I haven't seen any plants emerge from the ground this spring. Are they waiting? Will they pop up when I'm least expecting it? Or did they get washed/blown away during the winter? What did I do wrong (**shaking my head sadly**)???

bed sans stickywilly

This morning I tackled the sticky weed, aka Stickywilly. Two hours and scratched arms later, I removed almost all of it from my backyard woodland area.

















And as I was cleaning up, look at the beginnings of spring I have discovered: Columbine beginning to bloom and the first little flowers on the Mexican Buckeye.

Yellow Columbine

Mexican Buckeye 

I'm also going to start a new garden bed in the front. Whenever I start a new bed, I've found it most effective to lay cardboard with about 3 inches of mulch on top. I've tried solarizing with clear plastic, but that took months and didn't seem to kill the grass completely. Cardboard works like a charm, then I might squirt some grass killer on the few blades of grass that attempt to push through.
 

The other joys of gardening in the spring - I love this view of the xeriscape I created a few years ago. All these plants used to be so small! Look at the damianita starting to come into bloom. I love the colors and textures at play - the spiky sotol and agave, wispy Mexican feathergrass, sturdy prickly pear and the burst of yellow damianita. Couldn't have planned it better if I tried. And the coral honeysuckle is blooming like gangbusters, with lots of small bees and flies busily enjoying its offerings. 

 

 Another stunning bloomer - desert globemallow. I have two of these, the one closest to the driveway (pictured) has done the best, the other has struggled. They're native to Mexico and southwestern deserts (duh), so I don't give this any supplemental water and I planted it in the xeriscaped patch of the garden. You can see the flame acanthus behind it, beginning to put out new leaves.

Desert globemallow

Irrigation Systems

I've been working on designing an irrigation system for my garden. Luckily, a good friend is an engineer, so he knows how to design things like that. I start looking at all the different parts and configurations and my eyes start spinning.
We bought all the parts, starting with 100' of irrigation tubing, and we inserted the female attachment where the garden hose will hook up.

The other end gets closed off so easily with one of these: 

We laid the mainline throughout the garden, no more than about 5 feet from each plant. Adding drip emitters is pretty easy - simply punch a hole in the main line, attach a single barbed coupling to the main line, insert one end of the rubber distribution tubing into the coupling, cut the tubing so it reaches your plant, then attach a 1 gph or 2 gph dripper to the end to deliver water right to the plant. You can see the set up here: 

I only had 1 gph drippers, so sometimes I used a t coupling and attached two rubber tubes, each with a dripper to go to the same plant. I suppose it's more economical to just buy the 2 gph dripper for the larger plants, so I might swap it out in the future. 

For trees, my friend and are experimenting with soaker hose attachments. We cut a length of the 1/2" mainline tubing, and closed off one end with the end closure. On the other end, we attached a coupling to connect directly with the soaker hose, and secured the attachment with a clamp on the soaker hose. 

I inserted an end cap at the end of the soaker hose, also securing it with a clamp. With the 1/2" tube, I poked a hole, inserted the coupling and connected that part to the mainline. 

I've been playing around with this set up in the garden. The problem I'm finding right now is that this particular type of hose, while it doesn't seem to deteriorate and clog up the way the rubber soakers do, it does tend to kink a lot, especially when dealing with a shorter length. I'd cut one long piece to go around several plants, and that one seemed to do okay, but the shorter pieces, like the one above, don't seem to work as well because they don't curve well around the plant, so multiple kinks develop. 

I'm going to get another soaker hose and play around with that a bit, see if it works better. 

The evolution of a garden

It's amazing to see how a garden evolves, often in unexpected ways. I was looking back over photos from the last few years and found earlier pics of my garden, and I was surprised to see how much it's changed. It sneaks up on you.

Here's a view of the garden just after I'd first created it. You can see all the little baby plants I'd picked up at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center. In the back you can glimpse my herb garden. I laid down cardboard and newspaper and smothered all the grass with decomposed granite. This is just 2 short years ago - April 2014. 

And here it is in July 2014, after the house got a fresh coat of paint. I got the tree (a Texas red oak) from TreeFolks - one of the freebies. I love TreeFolks - such a great program for encouraging everyone to plant trees. Wait till you see what that tree looks like today...

 
Whoa! Can you believe this is the same garden? Do you see how happy that little tree is? I know, not super impressive yet, but another two years... it'll be giving us some much-needed protection from the evil July sun.
The beauty of this garden isn't only what I planted intentionally, it's the little surprises that pop up, like that self-sown blue bonnet you can see hugging the corner of the driveway. And many of the plants have sent their seeds scattering all over, so I'm always excited to see the descendants of my first plant generation popping up in unusual places.

Spring Cleaning

I finally got back into the garden today. And I realized I should be a little more diligent about posting! I posted several times in October... then nothing.
Of course, it's harder to post when you're trying to ignore your garden. Sigh.
I wanted a little something to create a homier feel in the front yard, so I made these two hanging baskets with some varieties of sedum and sempervivum. I love it right now-  we'll see how they look in July. I'd imagine they'll still be okay, since they are full-sun plants. But I manage to screw up watering no matter what I do, and that side of the house faces south west - brutal in summer.
We have a lovely red oak that I planted about 2 years ago. It's starting to fill out and look more like a tree, less like a stick. But I think it'll still take a couple of years to really provide much shade and protection from the sun. In the meanwhile, I hope these prove to be resilient.

I love discovering all the animals that live in the garden. I found these bad boys eating my dill. They're swallowtail caterpillars, based on what I could research. I counted about 6 or 7. The neighbor's kids came over and we spent some time studying them. One of the girls asked if she could take one. I gave her a dill plant and told her to plant it in her garden, and perhaps a butterfly will lay an egg on it. 

Today I checked on the plants, and the caterpillars were all gone. Where do they go? These are things that are mysteries to me, in my novice-dom. 

I added a new basil plant this week, a couple of varieties of thyme (orange and lemon!). The parsley is doing great.
Working on installing an irrigation system, possibly tomorrow. I'll post my progress. A friend showed me how to DIY, and I'm really impressed (of course, he's an engineer). Thankfully he's very generous with his time and has been willing to spend hours figuring this out with me.