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.

Signs of fall

Leaves are starting to drop, although temperatures are still in the 80s during the day (and this week the low temps are still in the 70s!). We finally got our first bout of fall rain, thank God. It's been a long, dry stretch, and while I was trying to water pretty regularly, it seemed like it didn't really make an impact. The clay that we have around here seems to become an impermeable membrane.

Here was the view of the oncoming rain a couple of days ago from the Mueller parking lot. That was the last little bit of sun...

Trees are losing their leaves. I'm not great at identifying trees, but I think the distinctive seeds are characteristic of the American sycamore. I love the beautiful bark of sycamore trees. They are elegant, aging ladies. 

Here's our pecan tree in the front yard:

I went to work and came home, and half the leaves were in my driveway. I hadn't even noticed the color changing much.

And my favorite sign of fall - the blooming fall aster, full of bees. I wish this plant bloomed longer and earlier because it brings such a lovely jolt of color and interest to the garden.

Sunday morning - Battling the hard, dry clay

I'm slowly putting all my plants in the ground that I got from the Wildflower Center last week. Already I'm mourning the loss of a black dalea - I placed it in a pot, and some animal (I'm guessing raccoon?) dug it up. I didn't realize it until yesterday, and I think it's too late to save it.

I planted the yellow bells (esperanza) and the big muhly in the front garden yesterday. I've put down some cardboard and mulch over the grass - I'm hoping to expand the bed in the front yard and remove grass while I'm at it.

Let's see... today I planted some indian grass in the back yard, a barbados cherry to help screen the air conditioning unit, the Mexican buckeye and one of the coral berries. Digging holes for the buckeye and coral berries was painful - the earth is so dry, the clumps of clay in our soil are hard as rocks. The forecast is calling for 100% chance of rain later in the week, and I can't even begin to express how excited I am. And nighttime temperatures are finally falling below 60.

I'll still need to plant the second coral berry and the kidneywood tree - but I think I'll have to save that for next weekend. Hopefully once we get some rain it'll be easier.

Here are some random pictures of my garden. The row of wax myrtles in my backyard that I pray someday will screen our view of the back of a grocery store. Still not sure I love the placement of the trees, but I guess I'm committed now:

Anacua, or sandpaper tree - this might be my single favorite tree in the whole garden because of its cool trunk and leaves that are rough as sandpaper. Also, I'm counting on this one to improve our backyard view as well because it is semi-evergreen. 

 I saw a black swallowtail in my flame acanthus as I returned from shopping this afternoon, but it flew away before I was able to get a shot. Happily, I spied one monarch over in the mistflower, which was soon joined by a friend.

The monarchs love my mistflower.

          

Inside Austin Gardens Tour

I saw four gardens on the Inside Austin Gardens tour yesterday. Here are a few highlights:

Monarchs in the Crestview neighborhood, dining on orange cosmos.

Pam Penick's backyard (soooooo jealous). Her pond.

Her whale tongue agave.

Beautiful mix of yucca, sotol, grasses and some flower plants in west Austin.

Passionflower still on the vine. I'm thinking about getting some kind of a trellis over my walkway and growing a passionflower vine, or maybe around the entrance to backyard.

View from the last stop overlooking the river. The pool had a waterfall. Some people have it all.  

I've never seen this plant before - cobweb spiderwort - but I love its thick, fuzzy leaves. Apparently comes from Northern Mexico and doesn't need a lot of water. I wonder where I might find more of this?

Esperanza with orange flowers, instead of the usual yellow. Pairs beautifully with fall aster. This picture gave me some inspiration for my yard. I just planted an esperanza that I bought from the Wildflower center - perhaps I'll dig up some fall aster from other spots in my yard to place below the esperanza. They both bloom in the fall, so it'll be the perfect pairing.