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.

Fall in West Texas

The temperatures are back down to pleasant ranges and the 2 inches of rain my garden has received in the last two months has done wonders for the strolling gardening. Everything's so green again and many of the plants are flowering again. The roses have all produced more blossoms and their colors fare so much better without the harsh 90-100+ degree heat bearing down on them. Now, if only I could find time to work more in the garden on the weekends when we don't suddenly have a cold front or winds.

 

Hyacinth Bean has been a very lovely surprise. My co-worker gave me a few seeds she'd received during a sale at the local garden and arts center and the blossoms are so lovely. The wind knocked many of the vines off the trellis though so I will be tying them to the trellis next year with twine.

The shades of pale lavender to a darker plum purple of the hyacinth bean flowers are so attractive.

The veg bed had mixed results. The heat and drought from June through early September fried most of what I planted in the raised bed. I did get one really nice zookini and two squash before I had to pull out the dried up plants. Watering everyday and using good planting soil with moisture retention beads wasn't enough to keep the vegetables alive. Three bell pepper plants, seen above with the hyacinth bean flowers, is doing great now though and has blossoms on them. I might be able to get a few peppers before a freeze kills the plants.

I have discovered that mint does really well in the raised cinderblock beds. And for the first time I've been able to successfully grow basil and keep it alive. In fact, it's reseeding in the cement opening before the plant. As with all gardening, growing things in the cinderblock bed is a case of trial and error. I've decided that it will become a mint bar now, with basil and hyacinth bean mixed in. The larger central section will have flowers in it next year. Just need to track down the tags for the various mint plants and put their names on the brass plant markers I got on clearance from Target. The nice thing about the mints is that the more exotic ones can be identified by their scent and tastes. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out which one is the mojito mint, the orange mint and the chocolate mint. I also have English mint planted in the corner. So the hunt for other mint varities will be next year's adventure. A mint bed fits in well with the English cottage theme, right?

The roses have been blooming nicely since mid-September, when our temperatures started dipping and rain came to visit the West Texas area. Above is The Fairy, which has numerous branches with tiny pink blooms. Just wish it didn't have all the tiny, sharp thorns along the branches. Am probably going to regret planting this near a walkway in the furture. But is is lovely nevertheless.

I think no flower garden should exist without an Iceberg Rose. First of all, the white color glows at dusk and the buds have a nice scent to them. So many modern roses seem to be missing the scent aspect. The green of the leaves have a yellow undertone, which contrasts well against other plants, such as the two varieties of sedums underplanted here. Lastly, the number of flower buds on it when it blooms is fabulous. I definately plan to try to cram one or two more of these in the garden in the future. There is a garden at Sportsmen's Hotel in LA that is mostly planted with Iceberg Roses and it is stunning. No wonder so many people get married there.

This was labeled a Kordes rose with a tag that said it would bloom white with pink. Well, it blooms yellow and fades to white. Oh well, it's still a lovely rose and I just consider it my yellow rose of Texas.

My favorite rose in the strolling garden is the Climbing Americas. Besides their spicy floral scent, they have been blooming non-stop since May. Pictured are two of four of Americas I have growing. Their canes are incredibly strong and are upwards of 9 feet tall so far.

And speaking of sedums, the three varieties I have planted in the front and back yards are all blooming. Such an easy plant to grow and the butterflies seem to love flitting around it and feeding from the blossoms. Well, that's all for today. I will try to be better about updating this blog. Meanwhile, I'm off to put out buckets to catch the light rain falling down right now. If we got more rain I'd buy a rain barrel but there's no point paying upwards of $100 when rain doesn't fall often here. Little buckets work just fine.

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!