What I meant to say...

In attempting to clear up what the plant was in Pam's "reds" photo from my garden (see previous post), that looked an awful lot like Japanese maple, I managed to muddle things further by calling it a "red-leaf hydrangea."  I don't think there is such a thing.  It's actually a red-leaf hibiscus.  Sorry about that.

A very happy day

Inside Austin Gardens 2009 will remain a vivid memory for a long time to come. Fantastic weather, appreciative crowds,

kindly comments, cooperative plants (for the most part). My daughter, who comes over a lot, said, “It looks, well… different.” I told her she was missing the hose sprawled on the lawn, the wheel barrow half full of mulch, the shovels and gravel piles that until last week were spoiling the “ambiance.”

It was an altogether fantabulous day, and I have my fellow Master Gardeners to thank for making it so, especially Elaine, the well-organized garden captain, Janelle (everyone loved the plant tags), Rosalie, Holly, Vertie, smart and entertaining speakers Susan and Carolyn, and the many other MGs and interns who made everything run smoothly.


It was so interesting to see what people were drawn to: the Chinese ground orchids (bletilla striata-see previous post) that I got at Home Depot ($3 marked down from $17) after Elaine put me on to them, the gomphrena “Strawberry Fields” that have proliferated from a 4” pot bought 4 years ago and that reseed like crazy, the color combo of them plus the red-leaf hydrangea behind them that Pam caught so nicely in her photo (fooled you Pam, I know it looks like a mini-Japanese maple), the sprightly pigeonberry with its pink flowers and red berries that I had hoped would get noticed, the salvia azurea with its glowing blue blossoms that now is one of my favorites, the blazing red zinnias, the last-minute birdbath of concrete rounds and a handmade bowl (nice photo by Jenny), and the white spiderwort that resembles a starry night in deep shade. Not to mention the manfreda undulata “Chocolate Chips” that some bloggers now covet.

Then there were other things I hope got some attention because they so kindly chose to bloom at just the right time, such as the sweet rose, “The Fairy” next to the sidewalk with its clusters of small , pink blossoms,

and the big indigo spires also spilling over the sidewalk. And I hope people were able to see the new benches full of potted succulents along the driveway fence as they made their way into the back yard.

Oh, if the flame acanthus had just bloomed! The Martha Gonzales roses

are covered with new buds, so drive by next week if you’re in the neighborhood.

Stealing an idea from Randy Case to show "before" pictures, here are a couple from mine in late 2002, the day before I bought the house long-distance based only on these photos:

Strange thing—I spent Saturday evening thinking about all the new things I want to do with my back beds and how much wonderful stuff I saw in the other gardens I can cram into my place by March. I guess it’s a good thing that gardeners never rest on their “laurels.”

Now that it's cool...

Working outdoors pretty much every day in the summer from hell left little energy for blogging, so I wimped out until now.  I took only one photo between July and September--no point when there's only rack and ruin and half-finished projects to look at, except for this amazing two-striped walking stick that appeared on the front porch one night in August:

Anisomorpha buprestoide (with male on back)

But then the rains came and with them a second spring.  Wouldn't it be interesting to calculate the rate of plant growth per hour over the first 2 weeks of September.  It seemed I could almost sit and watch things unfurl.

Chinese ground orchid

Passiflora 'Incense'

The storm that hit the Hwy 290-183 area on September 4 brought the schoolhouse lilies on September 6!

And there was a population explosion of anoles--this little guy was barely 1 1/2 inches, sitting on a salvia leaf.

This guy seems to be meditating

The September rains caused a lot of things to bloom before I wanted them to, such as the Souvenir de la Malmaison and Martha Gonzalez roses, and the brugmansia, which went wild up until last week, at times having 10-12 blooms on at the same time.  I do see a couple, though, that look like they'll open by Saturday.

The wonderful little white spiderwort that I got at the MGs' plant sale at Zilker Fest have spread well and will probably still be in bloom on tour day.

Speaking of tour day, it's fast approaching--my nerves are a bit frayed, my arms are covered with mosquito bites, my back is sore, and my cheeks and nose are sunburned, but I've enjoyed every (well, almost every) minute of the preparations.  There's a great sense of satisfaction in seeing ideas come to be.  I am so grateful for the moral support of my gardening friends, not to mention their labor on projects big and small.  The truth is, I could not have done this alone!

A Break from the Heat

A couple of weeks ago I went back east to visit friends. What a lovely surprise to see that it has been raining in the rest of the world. In the Boston area and up in coastal Maine not only were temperatures quite cool, but it also rained about half the time.

In Washington DC they say there hasn't been so much rain in 30 years, and it was evident in the lush, green surroundings. An old friend took me to see three places I'd never been before in our nation's

(note: real rain clouds)

First we spent half a day walking through the 50-acre Brookside Gardens near Silver Spring, Maryland, a spacious, Olmsted-inspired site that contains a variety of local and exotic plants--a very 19th century feel. Brookside has many specialized landscape areas such as the Aquatic, Azalea, Butterfly, Children's, Rose, Japanese, Trial, and Rain Gardens, not to mention a Woodland Walk.

Woodland Hydrangea

Indian Pink

Japanese Garden

Rose Garden

Kousa dogwood (Japanese dogwood)

and water, water, everywhere...

Then we took a driving tour through the 446-acre U.S. National Arboretum, a beautiful and fascinating place to wander in, preferably if one has more than a couple of hours. Established in 1927, it's an part of the Agricultural Research Service (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture), and is equal parts educational and research facility. Many 'improved' plant varieties have been developed here; introductions from the USNA include 25 varieties of crapemyrtle such as Natchez, Sioux, and Pokomoke. Since its beginning, the Arboretum has developed and introduced over 650 new varieties of plants. Some of the collections are astounding, such as the 15,000 Glenn Dale azaleas, and 1000 daylilies, including 150 award-winners from the American Hemerocallis Society. Too much to describe here--definitely a must visit if you find yourself in D.C., expecially in spring. Here's the website.

The next day after a few showers we visited the U.S. Botanic Garden. Established by Congress in 1820 "to collect, cultivate, and grow the various vegetable products of this and other countries for exhibition and display to the public...", the garden's first greenhouse was constructed in 1842; eventually the garden was moved to the southeast end of the Capitol grounds. The current conservatory is a complete and accurate reconstruction of the one built in 1933, and was reopened in 2001.

The 3-acre 'National Garden' that now surrounds it was completed in 2006 and contains mostly plants native or adapted to the Mid-Atlantic region, as well as rose and pond gardens.

Box garden near main entrance

Inside the conservatory- Garden Court

The Jungle- the dome here is 93 feet high

In the orchid collection...

painted metal flower sculpture

The conservatory also contains desert, primeval, medicinal, southern U.S./Mexico, and rare and endangered species exhibits. I enjoyed it enormously in spite of the heat and humidity inside. Check out more photos and info here.

What a treat to get away briefly from Texas summer, even though it was still as hot as ever when I returned!

The tomato situation

It's just like all those years we had such high hopes every spring for the Red Sox only to have them dashed in August. I'm underwhelmed by the tomatoes' progress. This German Johnson has not one fruit on it, and the leaves have malformations, not to mention that the lower ones are turning light yellow.




Then 2 of the lower green fruits on the Jaune Flamme turned up like this. I believe it's the tomato fruitworm, aka corn earworm. Disgusting! No worms on any other plants.
These are the holes where the worm entered.





And this is clearly bird damage-- there were 3 of these on the lower part of the BHN-444, still hanging from the stem.

Current Tally (all green):

• German Johnson--no fruit, but topheavy with new blooms
• Azoychka--2 large, undamaged fruits, some new blooms
• BHN-444--4 fruit, lots of bloom
• Black Cherry--lots of fruit and blooms
• Jaune Flamme--lots of fruit and blooms
• Juliet--lots of fruit and blooms
• ripe and eaten so far--1 Juliet and 1 Jaune Flamme

So I'm thinking I could have spent some of the $$$ I threw down on compost, fertilizer and plants at the Farmers' Market instead and had a BLT by now. No tomato picture (although they have lots), but here's some of the other great stuff at the Austin Farmers' Market last Saturday. If you've not been lately, you should hike on down there to the corner of San Antonio and 4th St. soon. Great people and dog watching, friendly farmers, terrific pickup breakfast food, the best coffee, and live music! Peaches, blueberries and blackberries in abundance.

When not yelling at the vegetables, I'm now enjoying the new fountain that was installed last week. Those darn birds seem to like it, too.

Curiosities

There are lots of interesting critters showing up these days . I first noticed some lady beetle larvae on a large dill plant that I was about to pull out, since it had gone to seed and had very little green left on it. A few days later I saw 10-15 of them on a bronze fennel. Those are now gone and apparently grown up, but several remain on the dill, so I will wait a couple more days to pull it up and plant a replacement.

Then as I was cleaning up the poppy bed, I saw four strange, horned caterpillars on the pink evening primrose. A little research revealed that they were larvae of the whitelined sphinx moth (one of 3 kinds of 'hummingbird moth'), which made sense since I had seen one the night before around my back porch light. The larvae typically have a lot of color variation, but if you see something similar to this on primrose or pentas, it's probably the Sphinx.

Here is a borrowed photo of the adult.

In the driveway there is a big tarp covering what's left of 2 yards of Geo Growers 'native mix,' and the last rain made little puddles in the folds. This Woodhouse's toad made the best of the shade and water. Buffo woodhousii is common throughout Texas and gets to be 4-5 inches long. According to enature.com, its habitat includes "sandy areas near marshes, irrigation ditches, backyards, and temporary rain pools," and its call sounds like a sheep with a bad cold. Click here to listen. This guy stayed in his cool hidey-hole all day, then disappeared just before sunset--off hunting, no doubt.


Below is the very first slug I've ever seen in my yard, known as the common garden slug and prevalent throughout Texas. It showed up on my back deck one night, and at first I thought it was a leaf under the weak porch light. I tipped it into a jar so I could take photos in daylight. It was quite large, about 4 inches, and heavy--about 4-5 ounces. Did you know that slugs are hermaphrodites? Their sex organs are under their mantle (part behind the head), so you can imagine the contortions they have to engage in to have sex with another slug. Actually, there are photos of fornicating slugs that you can google if you really want to have a look. My slug was solo. I put him by the back fence hoping that some toad or bird would find him tasty.

Not a critter, but curious nonetheless, is the manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chips' I got from YuccaDo nursery and planted in the new bed where all the St. Augustine grass used to be. There are several varieties of manfreda, a deciduous member of agavaceae, and this one was actually developed by YuccaDo from seeds of an unusually wavy form found in Mexico. It looks like an alien starfish that only Salivador Dali could imagine. It blooms in June, and if I'm lucky I'll soon have a 5 foot flower stalk. The plant itself has already doubled in size since planting.

I hope you are discovering some curious critters in your environment.

Enchanted April

...is the name of a beautiful film about four interesting women on a sort of retreat in an Italian coastal villa. It's also an apt description of what's been happening the last couple of weeks hereabouts. Before April ends I must catch up on Bloom Day and Earth Day.

Plants large and small have been showing off with little or no help from me:
This magenta Wave petunia has been blooming off and on for the last 14 months with no fertilizer since last summer.


This is a double petunia I bought at Lowe's--it's taken over a 3 foot space in the driveway bed.



One of my top 10 favorite plants of all time, Jerusalem sage (Phlomis fruticosa), is bigger than ever and can be seen from a block away. Its alien-looking flowers bloom all along the stem, and its velvet-like sea-green leaves are delicately edged in white. And it's evergreen.



Here's a view of it alongside Martha Gonzalez roses, mealy blue sage, and indigo spires, looking along the sidewalk from the front walkway.

The new bed where I took out 400 square feet of grass in the back yard is coming along. I have adorned it with my buy of the week--a copper dragonfly found at Wildseed Farms near Fredericksburg. It has green marbles for eyes.

A few of the stella de oro daylilies have burst out all at once after having been divided. I believe the name means 'stars of gold.'

On the other side of the front porch the Black 'n' Blue (salvia guaranitica) has already been cut back once and insists on crowding the roses. It's almost as tall as me. The name refers to the large cobalt-blue lipped blooms and true black sepals. It spreads by underground shoots which can easily be pulled up (and potted up for friends).

The tomatoes and peppers are gung-ho from the rain and a couple of molasses/fish emulsion cocktails. This "Black Cherry" is doing the best. I'm growing some others I've not tried before such as "German Johnson," "Azoychka" (yellow flesh), "Flamme," and BHN-444.

Pam of Digging gave me the vegetable mulch idea--on the way home from picking up a visiting friend at the airport, I zipped into Callahan's and got a bale of coastal Bermuda hay. It spreads easily and smells nice, doesn't cost much, and I have plenty left for next year.

Another watering vacation this week with .8" of rain since Monday.

Both birdbaths magically filled themselves, and the glossy abelia (background) responded with more blooms than I've ever seen.

In honor of Earth Day I had the old and new rainbarrels linked and set up on higher foundations. My other contribution was to give up my Statesman paper delivery. Instead, I subscribed to the e-edition, which is 1/3 the cost and comes every morning by email, a page by page replica of what's in the paper edition. No more throwing mountains of timber in the recycle cart!

On the other hand, I used a lot of gas on the 600 mile trip to and from Marshall for my first state Master Gardeners' conference. Most of the sessions and speakers were very good, and I bought 2 purple passion vines (passiflora 'Incense') I had been looking for. Everyone was given an EarthKind rose in a pretty Marshall pot (the area is known for its pottery). All in all, it was probably worth the trip, but I wouldn't necessarily go every year. I think the central Texas one-day conference last fall was every bit as good if not as elaborate.