June Begins With Abundance

Summer suddenly arrived on June 1st. The temperatures are rising, the rain chances are low to non-existent, and the mosquitoes are huge. Seriously, the mosquitoes are swarming everywhere. I tried deadheading plants last evening and had to give up due to all the bugs. The ever present wind has helped a bit in keeping the blood suckers at bay but not by much. Hopefully the city will FINALLY start spraying now that the rain has abated. Meanwhile, the strolling garden is going gangbusters with color and flowers.

The roses, larkspur, nepeta, dayliles and coreopsis, salvias, and scabiosa plants are blooming their little hearts out. The fertilizer I put out at the beginning of May coupled with more than 9 inches of above average rain made the plants the healthiest and fulliest in years.

The catnip is running rampant throughout the garden. I'm partly to blame since I've been transplanting it. Yes, I know it's a type of mint and mint can be a menace when planted in the ground due to its spreading tendancies. However, I never expected it to keep spreading and reseeding the way it has. I've transplanted some of it to give away to friends with felines of their own. Penny the Pill, my chubby ginger and white cat, barely gives it a sniff, and my elderly part Siamese part Tabby cat Symon likes it but can't consume that much. Getting old sucks, my furry little friend. He doesn't even get silly and cross eyed much anymore either.

 A windy view through one of the rose arbors. Annoyingly, the late snow storm and freeze in early March killed off any chances of apples, pears and plums on my young fruit trees. The peach tree, pictured in the upper right of this photo, does have several furry little football-shaped peaches still growing. I might be able to taste a rip one this year assuming we don't get anymore nasty wind storms before then.

The larkspur is gorgeous and rampant and at this very moment I'm sure its plotting reseeding everyone ridiculous spot it can think of. Good thing its so easy to pull out from the ground when not wanted.

The lilies are back! I haven't seen these beauties in a few years due to the drought. I lost the 5 foot deep maroon Asiatics I'd transplanted from my last home and it appears over half of the 50 or so bulbs I've planted over the years are gone too. But some of the remaining stalks are looking healthy and small little buds are popping up now so I have more of these lovelies to look forward to this summer.

The abundant rain has also revived this one Climbing America rosebush. Its been so scraggly looking for the past two years, unlike the pair planted behind it. The three bushes form a triangle arbor space under which I have a chair I like to relax in in the early morning before the yard gets too hot. You can clearly see the new growth compared to the thin growth above. I highly recommend this climbing rose. It's strong canes can withstand the whipping winds of West Texas, its leaves are a deep glossy green, and the lovely pink blossoms have such a lovely strong scent. I have a fourth one planted on the other side of the yard next to one of the arbors.

A Windy Spring Day on the Plains

2014 so far is shaping up to be a bummer of a year. We've barely gotten over an inch of rain and the local weather forecasters are not optimistic about much precipitation in the next two weeks. What we are receiving is a lot of wind, which is normal in West Texas. Yesterday and today we're experiencing high winds so there's not much gardening going on. However, the yesterday morning was decent and the Lubbock Arboretum held its annual plant sale. The Arboretum relies heavily its small devoted group of volunteers and donations from the public. They are a prime example of an local group doing the best they can with very limited resources.

A bed of May Night salvias beckons visits to sit a spell at the entrance to the Arboretum.

Besides plants, there were rain barrels and seeds available for purchase. As soon as the obnoxious winds settle down in two days I can plant the Bush Zinnia and Love in a Mist seeds I purchased.

Since I was already there I took the opportunity to sign up as a member of the Arboretum and strolled around a small section of the grounds to check out what was growing and blooming. Isn't this a sweet little two story birdhouse?

 

Not sure what this is pretty purple flower is as unfortunately there was no accompanying plant tag. 

Entrance into the Arboretum where a tent was set up for visitors to pay for their plant purchases. The volunteers actually had to take the tent down around 11:30 due to the wind repeatedly knocking it down.

Texas Gold Columbines putting on a lush show. Below is a purple variety growing next to the gold ones.

The pink wildflower below is supposed to be easy to grow here but I've killed it the two times I've tried to grow it.

View down one of the many crushed gravel walkways at the Arboretum.

Not sure what these yellow flowers were but they seemed happy growing in various beds along the walkways.

This was a nice looking Euphorbia plant. I've never planted them in my garden due to the sap being an irritant but they are structurally attractive plants.

Last weekend I spent several hours dividing my daylilies and dragged down three bags full to donate for the sale. I ran out of steam before getting around to dividing the irises, which is pity since one of the volunteers told me Saturday morning that they'd had several requests for irises by visitors to the plant sale. So my goal this summer to to photograph the various irises when they bloom to document what colors they are and then next year when I dig some up for the plant sale I can print out pictures to accompany the plants. The reblooming, scented daylilies I donated this year sold out fast I was told so I'll try to donate a few more of those next year too.

May 15th Garden Blogger's Bloom Day

It's been a while since I updated the strolling garden blog but now that things are green and starting to bloom I hope to update more regularly. The rain situation is still dire out here in West Texas. Rain is hit and miss here and the Lubbock area has not had even 3 inches since January. Cotton farmers have delayed their plantings in the hopes that May rains would occur but so far we've only mostly had a few sprinkles with little measurable rain. And the temperatures are suppose to hit the high 90s before the end of the week. Not good news. We just need a good, long soaking rain to penetrate the ground.

All is not bad news though. The garden is green, vibrant and blooming this month. It's easy to forget we're in year three of severe drought when wandering around in my back garden. The fence repairman made my day when he described my garden as "zen" as he walked around checking out the plants. And I didn't even prompt him. Blooming abvoe is snapdragons, dianthus, pincushion flower, and and purple salvia. The irises, hollyhocks, shasta daisy, and rose blooms are still to come. The wonderful thing about this whole grouping is that it is all perennial to my garden. Didn't have to plant one thing here this year as it all came back from last year.

Close up of the angel statue and rose bush planted in honor of Basil, my sweet tabby cat who passed away. If you want a very robust, striking plant that will keep multiplying I recommend this white saliva plant. I had three originally and have dug up seedlings to put all over the garden. Great as a background filler plant. It does spread out though, so give it some room.

This pretty, small (not even 2 ft. tall) iris bloomed unexpectedly this past weekend. It's the first time in 5 years it has bloomed since I planted it and I adore the color. Softer colors such as pastels and particularly blue-purples stand up to the intense sunlight and heat of West Texas better it seems. I have probably 100 irises scattered around my small suburban property but only about 20 percent ever bloom each year. I must be planting them too deep, or rather the dirt shifts over the bulbs due to dust storms and watering.

Neepeta Walker's Low is a must for the small garden. Blooms for months, the blue colored flowers are like a soft blue cloud in a flower bed, and the bees love it. I'm afraid of bees, and especially wasps, and yet I want to encourage the bees to come into the garden to pollinate the plants and the fruit trees I've planted this spring.

Been dividing the pincushion plants and spreading them around the garden. Awesome plant and I like how their blue heads bob and sway in the wind, which is something we never seem to lack out on the open plains here. The larkspur has reseeded everywhere in the grass and I've been slowly removing it by hand. Will have to get the lawnmower to finish off the rest otherwise the walking path is hard to navigate. Penny the Pill, my garden cat, loves to romping around in the larkspur stalks but she's very naughty and uses it for camoflauge as she tries to sneak closer to the birds feeding in the center of the garden. She gets rather dismayed when I reveal her location to the birds.

The Zebra Mallow got its first flowers this weekend too. They're only about 2 ft. tall and so much better behaved than their taller cousins the hollyhock, which are reseeding everywhere. Have chopped down the same hollyhock plant underneath the dining room kitchen twice now and will probably have to do it again. It would grow to 8 feet tall and block the window otherwise.

One of three clematis blossoms so far. The vines were doing so well and had climbed up to 4 feet on the Climbing America rosebush when three rounds of late spring freezes, the last one being last week which broke a weather record here, killed most of the buds and leaves. Doubt I'll get much of a clematis display this year.

There's lots more blooming in the strolling garden. I'll post more later. Meanwhile, please check out what's blooming in other gardens for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.

Fertilizer Friday - March 25, 2011

Today was a gorgeous, very warm day. The plants are basking in the two weeks we've had of warm weather, despite the still cold mornings and yo-yoing temperature changes of 15-25 degree from day to day. Moving around the garden beds I was surprised to see several things that weren't there two days ago. For example, three irises had buds on them in the back garden and three in the front garden bed. It seems awfully early for the irises to be blooming. I could have sworn them don't start blooming until the end of April.

A new variety of daffodils, my favorite little ones, have finally started blooming too. Aren't they sweet?

The first of the perennial salvias had its first bloom too.

The salvia stalks are popping up all over. Can't wait for the purple blooms to start waving in the wind.

Since the weather was so nice I decided to tackle another garden task - dividing up the congested side bed. There are two beds in the back gardens that seem to do well for growing beds. Plants grow and spread in these two spot more so than any of the other beds and the last two years I've transplanted plants from here to other spots in the garden. Last year I planted two catnip plants in the side bed for my brats. They were thrilled with the fresh mint all summer long. Apparently the catnip was happy too because it's gone wild in the bed and is crowding out the scabiosas, daylilies, salvias, other plants in that small bed.

I finally dug up two-thirds of the catnip and put them into pots to be shared with friends with felines. Don't you just love plants that you can share with others? It's a great deal when you consider that a small container of the stuff costs around $3 each, making one of the long planters below worth probably $15 worth of catnip.

The salvias also had a good time in the bed. Last year I planted 4 salvias in this bed. This one spot had six of them - a momma plant and five babies. I dug several up and placed them around the garden so that they may grow and prosper. Not a bad deal for a $3 plant! Also transplanted four scabiosa plants into other beds too.

I should have taken a picture of the bed before it was all dug up and plants move so you could see how overstuffed it was but the sun was so bright today I wouldn't have been able to get a good shot. It is a hassle not having any shade in the yard. Anyway, everything in the bed below came back from last year.  

Still need to transplant four of the oversized daylilies. They're huge! Can't wait until they bloom so I can see which ones they are. This is the problem with having a cottage-style garden and moving plants around all the time. You forget what's what until it blooms. Notice the large hollyhock in the lower right bottom? Seeds blew across the yard the year before and took root around the edge of the patio. There are four of these growing around the patio edges and I haven't the heart to rip them out. They are so happy there. And who doesn't love a happy plant that showers you with beautiful flowers?

Visit Tootsie Time to see who else is participating in "Fertilizer Friday" and showing off what's blooming in their gardens.