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spring doesn’t officially land on the astronomical calendar until march 20th, but the garden, in response to the seemingly warmer than typical temperatures of late, is telling me otherwise this year.
front yard garden view of Foeniculum vulgare 'Purpureum' (bronze fennel), Salvia gregii 'Raspberry' (sage), Pyrrhopappus multicaulis (texas dandelion) and friends...
a few steps closer to Rosa 'Knock Out' (rose), Punica 'Red Silk' (pomegranate), Salvia x fruticosa 'Newe Ya'ar' (sage) and Prunus 'Methley' (plum) ... and some slime mold on the leaf mulch, yay!
a close up of pretty Prunus 'Methley' (plum) blooms that burst into flower this morning. even mr. grwhryrpltd stopped to enjoy them before heading to work this morning
isn’t it all so pretty? you should see it from the other direction, when the late afternoon sun and early evening sunset light up the newly emerging foliage like rubies.
talk about a knock out... Rosa 'Knockout' against Punica 'Red Silk' (pomegranate)
newly emerging pomegranate leaves... little rubies they are...
especially when back lit. this is what i call the ruby glow...
and i’ve got a little extra glow because i was awarded this the other night:
2011 brazos county master gardener of the year
gardening is a labor of love, no matter where you’re able to do it… happy march everyone.
green garden boots & trusty felco pruners
a dear friend of mine notified me that my last post was well, shall we say, less than uplifting? yes. i know, but i can’t really apologize for it. but i can offer up some spring beauties that are catching my attention these days a little closer to home.
a giant swallowtail chrysalis, open after spending the entire winter under the protection of our front porch
the Papilio/Heraclides cresphontes (giant swallowtail), who emerged from the chrysalis, getting to know her wings
a skeletonized leaf of Rudbeckia maxima (bog coneflower), casting beautiful texture of light and shadow
my first Latrodectus hesperus (black widow spider) finding in Stachys 'Helen von Stein' (lambsear). note CobraHead tool for scale.
a closer view of Ms. Latrodectus... and moving on to another part of the garden...
while i can't grow my favoriet giant Alliums here, i can grow this minature one. Allium canadense (native onion)
Verbena bonariensis (butterfly verbena) is coming along nicely. clumps of it were green all winter.
Sisyrinchium (blue-eyed grass) just starting to bloom
full view of Sisyrinchium (blue-eyed grass), with gallon-sized pot in back for scale reference
a full white bloom of the thorny Rubus (blackberry) shrub. the birds patiently await along the fence top above...
dude the sneak-away-cat sips from the water bowl. Prunus 'Sam Houston' (peach) stands over them.
Ipheon (spring beauty) about to bloom for the first time
Ipheon (spring beauty) in bloom
Pyrrhopappus multicaulis (texas dandelion), an adopted weed/wildflower in our garden, in bloom
a molting Papilio polyxenes asterius (swallowtail) caterpillar, on overwintered Petroselinum crispum (parsley)
and finally, here are three views of our spring time garden:
spring time view of the front garden (3.23.11)
back yard view of spring time garden (3.27.11)
patio view of spring time garden (3.27.11)
a gardener’s work is never done, but i think i’ll rest for now. enjoy your weekend everyone!
i love my garden for the simple fact that it brings me joy and happiness…
Hemerocallis 'Big Smile'
Papilio polyxenes asterius (black swallowtail) on fennel
Ipomoea 'Blackie' (sweet potato vine) and Carex 'Red Rooster' (sedge)
Verbena bonariensis (butterfly verbena) against Ipomoea and Carex
ripening Rubrus 'Brazos' (blackberries)
Passiflora caerulea ‘Constance Elliott’ (white passionflower vine)
Mimus polyglottos (mockingbird, state bird of texas and resident kitty herder) on metal man
new compost bins for the accumulating piles of yard waste
Nassella tenuissima (mexican feather grass) lit by the sun
silvery Stachys byzantina 'Helen von Stein' (lambs ear)
street view of the ever expanding front garden
the other night i was out weeding the front garden when i overheard a young boy, pulled in a wagon by his mom and dad, say, “mommy, what is she doing?” she responded, “weeding, honey.” to which he asked, “why is her yard so big, mommy?” i didn’t hear her response, but it made me smile…
the surprises of spring are still sweet…
sweet narcissi
i discovered this sweet narcissi the other evening while watering the last of the weekend’s plant fare purchases… the tiring effects of the day’s incessant wind finally calmed down enough to peacefully enjoy the sunset, the rays of which happened to catch these lemony yellow petals previously shaded by umbelliferae.
spring still has surprises for me, and i am grateful.
what does 1,120 pounds of fresh mulch look like?
loading up at the bryan composting facility
this past saturday was sunny and beautiful, and since i’ve spent the last three weeks in houston for federal jury duty (that’s a 2.5 hour drive one way, thank god for friends with apartments downtown), mr. grwhryrpltd and i had a date with our garden. first stop was to buy mushroom compost for our front yard turf elimination/garden expansion project. second stop was to pick up free mulch at our neighboring city’s composting facility. that’s right, i said free. their mulch is basically chopped and shredded branch refuse from residents’ brush piles. it’s a little rough around the edges, but then so are we is our landscape. it all breaks down in time.
making progress...
obviously, a half ton of mulch wasn’t enough, but we’re making progress. conveniently, the facility’s actual compost (mulch + municipal bio-solids that are windrowed, heated to 131F and turned at least 5 times by bulldozers) is also free this week (usually $28/ton), so i’ll be making another trip soon. in the meantime, i used what stones we had lining the existing garden to delineate its future stone wall edge (don’t worry, it’s not going to be a polka-dot-stone wall forever), moved the frost-damaged kumquat into the new bed (i’m hoping a little tough love will inspire it to grow where it’s planted…), pruned back the ornamental grasses and roses, and half-way dug out the crappy crape myrtle that was planted too close to the house. i’m hoping mr. grwhrypltd will dig the rest of it out for me, after he finishes his drainage project on the other side of the yard… i told you our landscape is a little rough around the edges. but it will be the envy of any plantsperson all in good time…
the morning after i wrote my last blog post i put on my mudders and headed out to check on the citrus. i was a bit leery of what the frost and cold temperatures might have done to the young trees, but curiosity got the best of me and i had to take a closer look… as i unwound the twine around the top of the sheeted frost protection silo (i know that sounds odd, but that’s what i’m calling them), i peered on tippy-toes to see inside:
a mostly green blood orange
a yellowed tangelo
a yellowed and droopy grapefruit
a very yellowed satsuma
the kumquat that we covered with a plastic tub came through just fine, but i somehow managed to miss photographing it. the fifth silo was covering a box, which was covering the remaining avocado. it was also nice and green, but since it really hasn’t grown much all year i’ve pretty much lost interest in it, even though mr. grwhryrpltd doesn’t want to give up on it yet.
i know the citrus trees don’t look their best, but i wasn’t too disappointed in what i saw. to be honest, the leaves on most of the trees had started to turn yellowish before the cold snap, probably due to a lack of nitrogen, and the to-be-expected color change of normal senescence. the past few days have been overcast, contributing to decreased light levels – and the sheets certainly haven’t assisted in the leaves’ chlorophyll department. but why, you ask, haven’t we picked the blood orange, tangelo and grapefruit yet? because someone wants to let them ripen a bit more, and as i read somewhere, the best storage place for citrus is on the tree.
elsewhere in the garden, the frost effects are more pronounced:
Orthosiphon
Belamcanda and Caladium
Justicia spicigera
Rosmarinus 'Blue Lady'
Agave
Solanum (eggplant)
Clerodendrum ugandense
Hibiscus coccineus
the temp is again expected to drop to upper twenties by morning… i wonder what will advance to the next round…
frozen rain gauge
as forecasted, we received freezing temperatures this weekend. while friday’s “snow” melted on contact, the overnight frost left more than a lingering impact.
fearing what such low temps could do to our still young citrus trees, mr. grwhryrpltd and i managed to construct five frost protection “silos” out of welded wire mesh and queen-sized sheets with coastal hay around the graft union of each tree.
a caged satsuma
a look inside the blood orange silo
look honey, there's a silo in the neighborhood
our efforts were timely because the temps dropped to 36 degrees overnight. friday warmed up to 42 but then dropped to 24 in the wee hours of saturday morning. when we awoke, the view of the garden was crisply beautiful, but i knew that the sun would soon render the frozen foliage into a blackened, turgorless body.
a frosty morning
hyacinth bean loses turgor pressure
chipped ice from the wheelbarrow
frosty purple basil
frosty artichoke
as the day warmed the frost’s beauty away, i was saddened to see what we forgot to cover… oddly enough, neither of us were brave enough to peak into the frost protection silos to see how the citrus fared, but today’s warmer temperatures and soaking rain has me curious…
it was a bit chilly on my walk this morning, a whopping 40 degrees, so i decided to wade through the neglected hat and mitten bin to see what friends i could find to accompany me. after donning my favorite fair isle tam (hand knit by an everyday anthropologist) and the first mittens i ever knitted (that have seen better days…), i headed out the door. twenty minutes later, i was sufficiently warm but kept them on, because really – it’s a rare event when i can wear them.
cool weather friends
inspired by the russet fall colors that are finally starting to show ’round these parts, i headed toward the garden to enjoy its spare colors.
Brassica 'Colorup Purple'
Chasmanthium latifolium
Rosa 'Sunny Knockout'
Prunus persica 'Sam Houston'
then i remembered that a box containing thirty Narcissus tazetta ‘Italicus’ was recently delivered from the the bulb hunter. this weekend’s rains prevented me from planting them right away, but this was their morning to snuggle down into the soil.
Narcissus tazetta 'Italicus'
frost is in the forecast for this evening and tomorrow morning, and the radio professor just mentioned a chance of snow (yeah right)… so snuggle in little bulbs, i can’t wait to see your pretty little faces.
uh-oh… we have a problem. i’m not sure if it’s something i really want to admit to, but it exists and appears as though it isn’t going to go away anytime soon. you see, a certain kind of critter has taken refuge in our garden. and not just any kind critter. the kind where you skew up your nose, curl your lips and look for the nearest chair to stand on… we have rats.
the first visual indication of our new garden squatters was near the compost bin, as an attractive nest of shredded paper started to grow along one of its edges. “huh… i think something is nibbling on our tasty compost.” firmly in denial at this point, i asked a friend of mine who had recently gone through the city’s three day composting program if they addressed how to deal with say, i don’t know, rodents in residential compost…?
“oh, no, we didn’t cover that,” she said and quickly asked, “why…”
“well, i think we may have rodents in our compost.”
“oh dear, you aren’t putting your kitchen scraps in your compost are you?”
“why, of course we are,” while i thought to myself, isn’t that what compost bins are for…?
“oh, you shouldn’t do that…”
um, okay. it’s not like we put meat, dairy or oily products out with the spinach, egg shells and veggie debris… but hey, if i were a rodent in a new residential development, i’d belly up to the free bar too!
and then the neighbors started talking…
“have you seen any rats around?”
“no, but i think i may have heard some scampering feet last night – we had our windows open and the kitties were captivated by something going on out there.”
“you open your windows at night?”
“yea… it’s good to let a little fresh air in the house… i think the scampering feet were running along the fence lines.”
“well, we’ve seen ‘em in our yard, and have trapped a few. i hear the neighbor’s dog, behind your lot, caught one that was as big around as a rudy’s cup (our local bbq joint, and yes, they have HUGE plastic cups for sweet tea)…”
that's a big... glass of sweet tea...!
“really? that big?!”
“yea, and it wasn’t the only one…”
“huh. well, we’ll let you know if we see any.”
“we’ve put out some bait traps. the kind that your cats shouldn’t be able get into, so they should be okay.”
“alright, thanks, we’ll keep an eye out…”
i think the neighbor’s bait stations are working. about two weeks ago i found a small (4″, not including its tail), decapitated rat in our front yard. how it lost its head is a mystery to me. last week dude, our black cat, alerted me to the second dead rat in our back yard. euwww… it was lying near a generously-sized opening under the fence, with its mouth clenched around a tuft of sedge that was surprisingly difficult to pry it away from… i take it the poison must’ve worked poor thing…
side note: aren’t you glad i’m still camera shopping? no macro closeups for this story…
pumping station
late last week i was awarded another good find… i decided to hookup the pump to drain the ever-collecting water in our backyard, as it’s been raining here and the pathways are a soggy, muddy mess. we’ve installed a french drain system that’s connected to a submersible pump to convey the water from back yard to front yard. the not-yet-automated pump is in an open hole (we’re working on it…) that frequently fills up with water. i was pumping the water from this hole, occasionally cleaning out the grass clipping debris with my gloved hand. when the water got to the half-way mark the thought occurred to me, i wonder if something’s been living in the drain this whole time, like a snake or something… and a few moments later, a furry mass with a long ratty tail came out of the pipe and floated next to the pump intake…
EUUWWW…!!! good thing it wasn’t alive, and was smaller than a rudy’s cup…
three times must be the charm for this rodent family, because i haven’t seen one since…
have any of you had similar experience with critters in your compost? any suggestions are welcome…
