What's flourishing in the garden this year part 1

The strolling garden is doing much better this year due to better rainfall (though we are still under the normal average rainfall) and less days of triple digit temperatures. The herb circle is now in phase three. The first, pictured below, was heavy on chamomile and dill plants that had reseeded from last year. Nice fragrant combination and I love the little cheerful flower heads of the chamomile.

The caterpillars love the dill and chew it down to the ground but there's so much of it reseeded, including in the grass, that I had plenty of full grown dill plants with their fragrant umbrella-shaped seed heads. I always make a point of brushing against the plants to release their scent too. Pity I dislike salmon as dill goes so well with it.

The second phase of the herb circle was dominated by the reseeded Dalhberg Daises, which I am grateful for since it's very difficult to find these in plant or seed form locally. I planted two six packs 3 years ago and they came back this year. Their nice spicy scent is a favorite of mine. Miss Penny the Pill here enjoys padding through the circle on her daily marches around the yard as she secures her yard from other trespassing felines. Quite a feat for her since the neighbor seems to be collecting cats and then letting them roam free to terrorize the rest of the neighborhood. The next phase will be the Gaillardias at the front of the circle which have now developed flower buds and will eventually brighten up the circle with its red-orange flowers that beckon the butterflies and bees to linger longer in the garden.

Salvia is the garden plant that keeps on giving. It blooms it's heart out, gets a severe trim to clear out the spent flowers, and then sends out more flower spikes within 6 weeks. I have three varieties that I've been transplanting around the front and back yard over the last four years. Love the white and purple color combination of the three varieties and the yellow Coreopsis likes to reseed itself among the salvia, making for a vibrant color combination. Don't think I could ever have a garden without some salvia plants.

The Flame Acanthus, also known as Hummingbird Bush, is gorgeous when in full bloom. Haven't seen any hummingbirds since the severe drought started three years ago but there are plenty of butterflies and hummingbird moths that flit around it.

Amazingly, I have managed to grow one hearty bush of marigolds. This is quite a feat considering I have killed every marigold plant I've tried to grow. Sad, I know, considering it's labeled "the plant you can't kill" and it's grown in children's gardens. The plant below was grown from seed and has been blooming non-stop for almost two months now. My grandmother, from whom I inherited the gardening bug, always had marigolds around her little house that she'd grown from seed and so there's a lot of sentiment attached to this plant which is why I keep trying to grow it despite failure year after year.

 And finally, the Verbena Bonarensis from last year came back and flowered from over two months. I cut it back down to the ground this week after it was done flowering and hopefully it'll come back next year. The butterflies loved it too and I loved the height it added to the back of the bed.

In Between Days

Today is a beautiful day... just made for gardening. What little wind exists is gentle and the plants poking up everywhere are soaking in the warm rays of the sun. Hard to believe we have a 30% chance of snow tonight and the temperatures are going to drop 15-20 degrees tomorrow. The Lubbock area of West Texas has had little in the way of a real winter. We've gone from a very cold fall to a chilly spring, but no freezingwinter as we enter the third straight year of severe drought. Each year gets a little better though so hopefully this one will be even more wet than last year. We had about 11 inches last year and so far we've almost reached 2 inches since the start of the year. Things are looking good so far! 

Miss Penny checking out the daylilies, pincushion plant, and catnip flouringing in the bed underneath the dining room window.

In the garden, the larkspur is coming up everywhere, including everywhere in the grass. A good mowing will fix that later on. The rose bushes are budding out everywhere with striking red and dark green foliage.

Red leaves budding our everywhere on this rosebush, which was planted in memorial of my cat, Basil. The serene angel was a gift of a co-worker and watches over his deep red rose bush year round.

The daffodils are still short with no flower buds yet but they normally don't bloom in my beds until April anyway. The shasta daisies, sedums, nepeta, salvias, and daylilies are greening up nicely. None of the trees and rose of sharon bushes are showing any signs of green so far.

The flower-shaped heads of the sedums are coming up nicely, even in the shade. 

The month of February is such an in-between month. Can't really plant much because the ground is still freezing in the early mornings. Watching numerous episodes of Cottage Farms on QVC is only making the gardening bug more impatient. I keep eyeing the reblooming daylilies and fruit-named butterfly bushes and have to remind myself that I should try to buy more locally this year as the drought has been hard on our local nurseries due to city watering restrictions and little annual rainfall.  February and early March is the clean up months. Need to repaint the wood fence, expand flower beds, dig up weeds and put in a ton of humus and top soil. The earth seems to inhale the compost and new top soil the way I drink iced tea. Seriously, I can't figure out where the tons of dirt/compost I put down each year goes. The beds don't seem to get any taller. 

The Pill insisting her picture is taken. Half the shots I took today had either a tail, furry head or behind in it. There is something relaxing about having a garden cat following you around the yard... well, until she starts rolling in the dirt or chasing the butterflies around. Thankfully she's never caught one that I'm aware of. Don't think she really tries to catch them but rather just enjoys the chase itself.

As soon as the ground freezes are over I also need to start cramming plants into every open spot of dirt. Four neighborhood cats, three of whom actually belong to people around me, keep using bare spots in my flower beds for their litter boxes. The fifth culprit is the stray I adopted, Miss Penny the Pill. The tight planting would also help cut down on weeds in the beds.


Adding oranges and orange peels has so far not deterred the cats from digging into the beds. Bummer. The green pictured here is one of the shasta daises in this bed. Their flowers are so cheerful swaying in the summer breezes.

The weeds got so bad last year that I finally consented to having pre-emergent put down on the grass. We'll see if it was worth the cost later on. I'll have to put down more bug pellets this summer too since the lack of winter is going to make the bug situation bad in the summer months. 

Well the basil might have died. The dill and cilantro, on the other hand, is coming up everywhere in the herb circle. I just love the weeping seed heads of the dill and so do the butterflies. The dill is also coming up in the surrounding grass and thin side bed of the east side of the fence.

The raised veg bed didn't work out so well last year due to the drought and baking temperatures. What did work well was all the mint, cilantro and basil plants tucked into the cinderblock openings. The chocolate mint, mojito mint and orange mint is reviving itself in our warming temps. I suspect I'll need to reseed the basil.  

The cilantro is quite happy in the cinderblock too. Must add more this year. I think instead of veggies in the larger opening I'll add some flowers and turn the rest of the raised bed into a herb bed, most of which will be mints. Will have to look for apple and pineapple mint to add to the collection.

Update: By 5 pm the wind was whipping and the sky was dusty pink with dirt in the air. The cold wave is definately headed our way.

The Herb Circle

Well a month has past since my last post. I've been dealing with a shoulder injury that has prevented me from doing much work in the garden, plus it's so miserably hot as well, so the inclination to do much gardening has not been there. With a month of images to post I thought I'd start with the herb circle. Early last fall, an article in one of my gardening magazines caught my eye. It showed a small bed divided into triangular shapes using bricks. It was beautiful. Figuring on trying it on a smaller scale, I cleaned out the very small circular bed a co-worker helped me put in. First, it needed something in the center to serve as a focal point. Glancing around, I quickly realized that my favorite bird bath with dragonflies would fit the bill and placed a cement paver underneath to stablize it. Some rocks for drainage, soil and sedums quickly filled up the basin. Some rocks dug up in the garden were placed around the plants to add more texture. Don't the sedums look great? I love the feel of running my hand over them. [too bad two of the three have now almost bitten the dust since I planted them. Two weeks of rain came down after they were planted and I guess their roots got water logged. bummer. At least the Dragon's blood one is still alive... so far anyway.]

I was going to originally divide up the circle into pie pieces with rocks but being such a small bed it seemed a waste of planing space. Also, the herb circle soon became part herbs and part temporary bedding space. Several divided plants ended up here - a bunch of Stella D'Or daylilies, Coreopsis, Shasta Daisies, and Gallardia. All of these seem to really enjoy the bed because a year later they've spread and some of them have been move to other beds in the garden. The herbs I planted this spring, on the other hand, are hit and miss. The catnip is doing well. The Genovese Basil and Thai Basil wanted to go on life support a few times but finally seem to have taken root. The three different types of parsleys and the dill were quickly found by the caterpillars and eaten to ground level. I actually had expected that and was willing to sacrifice those rather than the other plants in my garden. And the butterfly population has gone up this summer. And if those little buggers would stay still long enough I'd have non-blurry images to prove that! The two plants that are really struggling are the lemon balm and spearmint, which is odd. Both should be doing well in the heat and dry dirt. But then, killing plants that are supposedly "easy growers" and "the plant you can't kill" seems to be my speciality!