It’s certainly a fine time to be in the old familiar places of the northwest. The Evergreen State is at its lush floral best, the cool-weather walks already impossible in Texas by mid-June are still a fine evening pleasure for scoping out the neighborhood sculptures and specimen plantings in their cottage-garden settings, ferries ply the waters of Puget Sound, and even Mt. Rainier comes out of hiding behind various veils of cloud from time to time.
Mornings are glorious, oh yes: last year’s blue morning glories in their full blazing beauty (center, with the infamous garden chandelier needing better candle power to compete with the blue brightness) inspired the planting of not only the blue variety again this year but also these hot beauties flanking it . . .
My friends, Texas gardening is a ceaseless adventure. I sense that Round One of the growth season has already closed and Round Two is beginning. The first batches of blooming goodies have quickly baked to dainty crisps and their leafy greenness gotten rather scrawny and lean looking. Yes, my darlings, it’s gettin’ hot around here.
The pavement and patio concrete have a certain handily dense solar mass that lends itself to emitting mirage-like rays of shimmering hottitude that fry up whatever seems to have escaped the downward dash of the sunlight as it fell burning from the sky in the first place. Hand watering with a hose, even in the cooler parts of the day, is an exercise in futility to a certain extent–you can practically see the spray evaporating as it comes out of the nozzle, and anything with full sun exposure makes me wonder if the roots of the plant in question will in fact be boiled in the water I’m trying to give it. Gives me a different perspective on the old saying about ‘killing with kindness’, to be sure.
While the planters are already past their first peak (in the left-hand shot taken during the roses’ first heyday), more blossoms are coming in readily; the blue-black ornamental sage next to the bell in the center photo are already a big favorite with hummingbirds–you can just see the white blurred silhouette of one in the lower right quadrant of the picture–and the brilliant blue of borage is in full swing . . .
The first burst of the rose blooms has passed and the buds are in place for their second coming after a couple of weeks of being pruned back and nurtured through their little rest period. The boxed herbs and vegetables are very thirsty and rather root-bound, so I shall have to ease their pain by some gentle dividing and see if they can continue to show their heroism in beating the heat. Even in their potted distress, the borage plants are putting out large trusses of those glorious blue, refreshing-flavored starry flowers, so I will hope all the more that a little judicious division or removal to allow them a little loosening of their too-tight pants will make them happy rather than prove an additional challenge.
Zinnias make fun little hideaway homes for local bug-dom, but katydids seem to prefer something with more windows, and the dragonfly always goes straight for the penthouse so he can survey all of the lesser insects down below . . .
I know that the garden creatures are happy. Besides having me to chew on, the insects have all sorts of plants, not least of all those greens that are heat-stressed and have their defenses down. Some of the little bugs are still shy, like the one just barely peering out of the peachy zinnia above. Most of them are quite happy to be a bit more brazen, though. My little green friend came to the window and hung out with me the other night quite willingly–or was it just staring and spying on me? The prize for showiness this week goes, though, to the handsome Carmine Darter (correct me if I mis-identify) dragonfly that calmly came and posed on my little homemade tomato cage so long that I could come out of the house and get up close and macro-personal with him.
Whatever else happens in my little playground here, the main development will likely be somewhat delayed by the depredations of my intended full-yard rehab and my entirely predictably inevitable mistakes and faux pas. And, of course, getting overheated. For the time being, I am enjoying the begonias, the silverbeet, the sweet potato vine, and the cyclamen; the marigolds, the basil, and the blue sage.
For now, all is color and joy . . . and there is undoubtedly much more to come . . .
The End.
Those Big Death Scenes in Westerns
The slinger slung his monstrous gun
out of its well-oiled holster—
she tried to dart from the couch and run,
but he shot her through the bolster.
She tried to duck his second shot
and they got into a tussle—
it didn’t help her cause a lot:
he shot her in the bustle.
She staggered around; began to totter;
still the gunslinger came
relentlessly on and at last he got her—
right in the final frame.
Even though a cowboy’s socks can pretty much stand up on their own . . .
Something’s Afoot at the Fort
A Texas Ranger lost his boot
And all of us can feel
His pain at losing shaft and spur
And being down-at-heel
Without the custom stitching and
Tooled silver on the toe,
The steel shank inset and the vamp—
Where is a man to go
To get re-shod so perfectly
In style with stuff that wears
Like his cast-iron skillet, by
A boot-maker who cares
As deeply as the Ranger does
For quality and class?
I only hope the Ranger knows
That this pain, too, shall pass,
For down the street the Ponder shop
Has crocodile skin
And hand-tooled leather of all kinds
To tuck his tired hooves in,
And like a human’s farrier,
Will shoe him with perfection
In custom boots as soon as he
Gallops in that direction,
So go on, Texas Ranger, sir,
Get in and order boots
To save your poor hooves from their loss
In any style that suits,
From ostrich up to diamondback,
From white to black as soot,
And classy as a Cadillac
You wear upon your foot
Nothing can compare to the perfect boot . . .
If I’ve learned anything in moving from the Pacific Northwest to Texas, it’s how to handle a wider range of temperatures than I was accustomed to experiencing on a regular basis. Part of that is thanks, I suspect, to a gradual cyclic change of the climate in general, and that was helpful in its way: the extremes at both ends of the weather spectrum had gotten slightly extended outward before I left western Washington, so while it was nowhere near as common to have three-digit Fahrenheit temperatures (around 38C) as it is here in my newer home, it came closer more often. And I can certainly credit a combination of my own tendency to freeze exceedingly easily, even to the point of having a nervelessly cold nose, during much of the year with the counterbalance of that delightful boon of aging, a personal microwave having been activated in my torso at various intervals from my arrival at a Certain Age and forward.
Then there was this relocation to Texas and the discovery that even a freezy-bones like me can learn to love air conditioning in the good old summertime, and conversely, that it really doesn’t have to be snowy, icy or even a notably low temperature to feel bitterly cold in the winter if the wind is howling through town sharply enough at the moment.
So what I’m working on is a sort of low-rent version of biofeedback: learning to think my way toward hot-and-cold happiness. Not hugely successfully, thus far, mind you–this is very much a work in progress. But I’m trying to convince myself that if other people can find the blast of the cold air returns in cafes and grocery aisles pleasant and comfortable, surely the temperature can’t be untenable for me. That if they can like sipping screamingly hot coffee or soup on a cool day and not develop third-degree burns, I should be able to warm up my refrigerated self in wintertime without having to set my socks on fire.
Now that it’s May and has passed 90F/32C at a hasty trot, I do need to get the whole plot in gear. While my brain is not necessarily already operating at top speed in gathering the necessary data to combat the actual, and already pretty nearly oppressive, heat, maybe if I dig deep into my treasury of imagination and do my best to imagine myself cooling off, there just may be hope yet.
Some while ago I made this little mixed-media wall piece that I think still represents my style of gardening pretty well. I am the virtual avatar of all things bumbling and ignorant and serendipitous and goofy when loosed upon the back forty. Off I go on a ramble, grabbing what is decidedly a weed but managing to yank out a perfectly healthy portion of the adjacent flowering or fruiting plant in the same fistful, backing away sheepishly only to go stepping sideways in a hole, twist over onto my elbows and land face to face with a giant unidentified insect that clearly thinks I have arrived not just to gape at it but to invite it into my open mouth. Gnashing my teeth shut like a portcullis in the event, I bite the inside of my cheek, rocket upward and hop around on my one un-twisted foot, brandishing my shabby bouquet of mismatched greenery at the bug as it whizzes away, dancing around as spasmodically as a broken marionette, and muttering imprecations not appropriate for any sort of garden party under my gasps of breath. Meanwhile, the beetling object has settled quite contentedly on a nearby pristine piece of fruit and begun munching it to smithereens placidly, not needing to bother degrading the bit of fruit I’d already accidentally killed.
And yet despite incidents very like this occurring on a regular basis in my peregrinations through the green world, somehow I usually end up mistress of quite the cozy and inviting little patch of paradise. I’m fairly certain that I have something very near to the best karma in the universe–the finest possible friends and family, fabulous adventures wherever I go, and by golly, I keep finding pretty things in my gardens no matter how boorish and buffoonish I manage to be as a gardener. I shall neither apologize nor excuse such unwarranted, unearned good fortune. There’s nothing I can do that would explain why, when I consistently do exactly what the garden experts say will Never Work, it consistently rewards me with much lovelier results than I could possibly deserve, and frankly, I’m glad to just wallow in my happiness.
So come on over for a nice sweet tea under the shade of one of my many marvelous trees, gazing upon the phantasmagorical collection of improbably, ridiculously happy plants that really shouldn’t be thriving so, and we’ll just pretend I’ve done all of this by virtue of my hard work and genius. No, it’s not a flourishing haven and (in Realtor-Speak) a Park-like Setting quite yet, but in my blustering, blundering innocence I always believe that soon it will be. And I betcha it will, too.
Yesterday after running errands, we were reluctant to head directly home and do serious Work on a sunny Saturday afternoon, so first we took a couple of brief driving detours into the surrounding ranch-lands and enjoyed a uniquely lush and verdant north Texas spring outing, luxuriating in the marvels of denser woodlands, fuller runoff creeks and richer grasslands than we’ve yet seen since moving down here. Needless to say, we are reveling in the wealth of meadow and pastureland in the surrounding counties, as are all of the horse and cattle herds that didn’t get sold off or butchered outright to evade starvation and thirst in last year’s drought. It’s a beautiful prospect, this well-watered magic we have right now, and inspires the poetic in one’s spirit no matter how it defies other work.
Spring Pastures
Far back among the rolling hills, Where prairie grasses sweep and bow
And the sweet wildflower spills Pour down the slope, the Angus cow
Set farthest back along the line Draws up her calf to join the herd,
Slow-swaying, toward a stand of pine; The rancher there, without a word,
Appears to bring an evening feed, And all the cattle on the clock
That balances content with need, Some time before, began this walk . . .
The faintest glint of sidelong rays Begins to tint the brush with gold
The way late Spring colors her days, As if instead of growing old
She’s only burnishing her tone The more to show her graciousness,
Inviting birds that fly alone To join a choir whose notes confess
A radiant love of living things, Of all that’s sweet and warm and new,
Of leggy calves, of seed that brings That grass now banking up the slough . . .
The cattle walk, now, in their line, Their black flanks shaded in the dusk
With blue-tinged shadows, as a fine Light scent arises like a musk
From all their footsteps tapped in clay, Veils of the thinnest dust laid low
Between the sorghum rows’ array And that tall hayfield yet to mow,
And not one calf among them all Drifts off the center of the trail,
Because they sense their supper-call As sure as seasons never fail . . .
Mormor's swing, tucked into a corner under the maple tree that in springtime was full of naturalized trilliums, bleeding heart, wild currant, Scilla and other northwest treasures, and in summer, covered with Clematis durandii from foot to arbor . . .
This coming week I get to have consultations for bids on redoing our yard landscape! As I’ve plotted the Q&A lists extensively over time, I have been more and more recollecting my mother’s gardening style and values, and beyond that, returning to her father’s–Gramps’s. Their influences remain deeply embedded in my own ethos of gardening, to be sure.
I won’t be able to strictly replicate either of their styles or efforts, nor should I, since neither the climate and conditions of my current home nor my own personal imprint would make it useful or meaningful to do so. But what was truly valued by both of them in the general sense was upheld in their methods and the lovely and personal and hospitable outcomes of both because it was about combining the sensible and practical with the sort of building and design that would enable them to do more of the tasks of gardening that they each enjoyed, and fewer of those that they didn’t. In short, they were both ‘sustainable’ garden advocates long before there was such a popular trend, and they still both chose plants and arrangements and additions to the yard that suited their sentiments and likes.
For Gramps, of course, there was a strong influence of frugality that came from being first an immigrant (and even before that, presumably, from being raised by typically scrupulous Norwegian savers) and then a hard-working General Motors employee (he worked on the crew that produced the first amphibious vehicles). After all of that he was an independent farmer, mainly of sheep, and then also a longtime carpenter and home builder. He was never in any get-rich business, and he appreciated old-fashioned things and earthy things, so it wasn’t a stretch for him to look with his carpenter’s eye and see in his shed the makings of all sorts of fine pasture fencing, outbuildings, picnic tables, benches and more.
Gramps's compost bins, quite beautiful in their own right and certainly very practical, as well as the models for Mom's own bins later . . . and, perhaps, mine yet to come . . .
His idea of plantings began with the practical as well, so if there was any space at all there was always a beautiful kitchen garden with corn, raspberries, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, rhubarb, and all of that sort of loveliness, and between that and his fishing trips and raising lamb there was a lot of good eating. But beyond raising fine fruit and vegetables on his property, furnished with rich home-cooked compost from his lovely row of hand-built bins, Gramps did have a graceful nature-inspired aesthetic sensibility, capitalizing on the canopy of majestic Douglas-firs and filling in with the native understory treasury of dogwood and trilliums (the source, of course, of Mom’s first ones), azaleas and rhododendrons, ferns and primroses and bleeding hearts and yellow and fuchsia-colored wild violets. For a person who gruffly eschewed frivolity in the main, he had a mighty tender, bleeding heart of his own when it came to the beauty he saw in nature, and he capitalized on that very well in his garden.
His daughter learned from it, and being more overtly sentimental, added yet another layer of appreciation for those marvels and jewels of the natural world that she could nurture to their fullest expression in her own garden and yard, wherever she lived. She adopted her father’s practical and often laborious attentions to getting the most out of the existing landscape and quickly put her own imprint on it and enriched it over time to the degree that her yard was always rightfully an enviable small park for visitors’ delight. By the time I finished college and then spent three years working near to and therefore boarding with my grandparents, thanks to the ridiculously affordable living there–then finished grad school and started working near my parents’ place and moved back to take advantage of the ridiculously affordable living there (anybody sense a theme? I blame the genetic link to Gramps’s frugality)–I had a much greater appreciation myself for both what it took to create and maintain such glorious properties and how much respecting nature’s own local inclinations would be a value-added approach to healthy, sustainable, logical, creative and gorgeous design.
I had the bonus, while living at my parents’ again, of not only the privacy and flexibility afforded me by their frequent travel for his work, but the opportunity to practice my own incipient garden design skills both while following Mom around and learning the names and natures of things and while taking things into my own hands whenever they went out of town for any length of time. First of all, having learned a couple of useful things about how to treat some of their plants, I practiced my sculptural pruning skills on them, opening up the lacy umbrella of a laceleaf maple, making faux bonsai out of some of their smaller evergreens, and limbing up tree trunks to clean and open up the space for all of the pretty understory things Mom had brought in as starts from relatives’ gardens, from her trading with friends, and from various nursery expeditions over the years. It was during this time that I especially fell in love with trees. The craggy Garry oaks native to that area are a fairly uncommon yet extraordinarily lovely and impressive variety and I nurtured a seedling or two myself along the way in hopes that sometime long after I’m dead they too will be magnificent and grand old trees sheltering their homes and their denizens like the massive ones already in town.
Here in Texas, it’s the two stately post oaks and that lithe red oak in back that endeared our home to us at first notice, along with our two splendid Bradford pear trees. There’s quite the community of sweet oak seedlings sprouting in their shade, and I hope very much that I can manage (with lots of help and advice from the local experts, of course) to relocate a number of them to foster a natural-style mini-grove in a back quadrant of our property over the many years to come. That will help create a fitting foundation for the whole wild, native and well-adapted collection of plants intended to fan out from all of that into the rest of the property. Fun times ahead!
In addition, I love to incorporate some traditionally indoor materials into my gardens so they feel a little more like an extension of the house and invite leisurely visits. I’m thinking of things like the burnished brass chandelier you’ve seen tiny glimpses of in previous garden photos, a little cozy kitchen-style seating on the patio, and a bench or chairs for shaded stopping on the front porch as guests arrive for a gathering. But although I see lots of lovely yard swings around town and love them, I never see people sitting in them–it’s almost always too terribly hot and often very bug-pestered here–so there won’t likely be an investment of money and labor to create a swing like the arbor swing (above) that I designed and my brother-in-law built with my semi-able assistance, to surprise Mom with a little long-fostered-wish fulfillment, while she and Dad were off on one of their longer expeditions.
Still, I do want our yard to invite exploration and to be particularly attractive from all angles inside our air-conditioned house, year round. So many possible ways to accomplish that, that I am excited to see what I can learn and be inspired by, even from a first conversation with each of the landscapers who will visit here this week. I suspect I’ll need to be getting out all of the tools I have, and then some, and it’ll take a bit of a while to get the whole project well and truly underway. I know I’m a little rusty at some of this, having lived with tiny yards for quite some time before buying this house, and will have to relearn much and discover many new things in my new climate. But oh, how invigorating to begin!
Every cook of any skill or talent level knows–or should–that one of the best inspirations for the next dish or meal is found in cleaning and tidying the kitchen. It doesn’t mean I have to completely reorganize and sanitize every square centimeter of the place constantly, though undoubtedly I could stand to do both a little more often. But even the most cursory, quick cleanup of fridge, pantry or cupboards can remind me that I’ve stashed away a number of tasty items that ought to be used before they become lost in the mists of time. Petrified vegetables and mossy fruits, sandy-bleached spices and unrecognizable bogs-in-jars are all interesting science projects in their way, I suppose, but rarely likely to serve the purpose of good taste or nutrition for which they were initially acquired.
So I’m setting out on a mission, albeit at a sauntering pace, to see if I can’t catch up with some of my longtime plots and plans in the culinary realm and get a neater and more easy to clean workspace in the bargain. Today’s inspiration came from a fellow blogger who offered a recipe that sounded like a wonderfully easy mash-up of a traditional German chocolate cake’s glaze (with the broiled coconut topping) and a raisin spice cake. Mostly, it made me want to bake a gooey cake, something I’ve simply not done in forever. In my typical style, it was not that there was the remotest chance of my following the inspirational recipe even to a mild degree of accuracy, but the initial concept that thus urged me on was greatly appreciated all the same. In honor of the inspiration I went through my stores of dry goods like a little tornado and came up with a few ingredients that I thought would suit the occasion pretty well. I give you:
Texas Tornado Cake
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease a 9×13 baking pan.
Blend together the following ingredients. I did so by pulsing it all together in the food processor until it was a coarse flour-like consistency, but you could certainly hand shred, chop and mince the ingredients and then blend them.
1 cup of raw cane sugar
1/2 cup dried apricots
1 cup shredded raw carrots
2 Tablespoons of candied orange peel
2 Tablespoons of candied ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon of more of ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
In a saucepan, bring to a boil 1/2 cup of butter and 1 cup of water, adding the prepared coarse meal of previously blended ingredients and cooking briefly to blend. In a separate large bowl, blend together 1-1/2 cups of mesquite pod flour, 1/2 cup of coarse almond meal, and 1 teaspoon of baking soda. When the wet ingredients have come to a boil, pour them into this dry mix and blend quickly. Pour the batter into the greased baking dish and level it as needed, and pop it into the oven for about 15 minutes.
While that’s baking, mix together the sticky topping ingredients. I just squished it all together quickly with my hands.
1/2 cup butter
1-1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup almond meal
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon crunchy flake salt (I used Maldon sea salt)
When the cake comes out of the oven, crumble the topping mix over it fairly evenly, and pop it under the broiler just until it caramelizes. Cool, cut, eat. A little ice cream or whipped cream would not, of course, be amiss with this, but it can be eaten like a brownie or blondie just fine, too.
The problem is this: the stuff is too darned tender to even hold the shape of a small bar or square of cake. Needs better structure. Flavor? Oh, yeah–I mean, after all, look at all of the butter and spices and the mesquite flour and apricot and orange nuances. But it’s as crumbly as heck. What are gooey cake crumbs good for? Yes, that’s right folks: ice cream add-ins. So now I give you Texas Tornado 2.0:
Texas Tornado Ice Cream
Yes, it looks mighty mish-mashy, like it’s right in the middle of the tornado. But by golly, it’s a lot pleasanter than being pelted with flying cars. In fact, it tastes pretty danged delicious. All it took was to crumble the whole pan of erstwhile cake up into chunky crumbs and stir them into unsweetened vanilla whipped cream. Yes, unsweetened–you saw how much sugar went into that cake, y’all. 1 pint of heavy cream, whipped up with a generous 1 teaspoon splash of good vanilla; fold in all of the delicious ‘dirt’ you made of the cake, put it in a sealed container, and freeze it. If you can wait that long. It really makes a pretty tasty pudding without ever freezing it, if your sweet tooth is aching already. So I’ve heard.
The surprisingly spiced-mocha scent of the mesquite flour is quite strong when the cake bakes. So much so, that I almost forgot it wasn’t actual brownies or chocolate cake in the oven. Which in turn may mean that I have some chocolate baking to do soon too. Something that holds up structurally, I should think. But I’m not sure I care. There’s always an alternate use for good food-parts. These things happen when I start rummaging around in the kitchen stores, don’t you know.
Maybe I should buy myself a big tall red conical hat (possibly made of concrete). Because I am not exactly the most useful object, not the most decorative, nor even perhaps the most whimsically amusing, in a garden. But I give it my best from time to time, really I do. And generally, the earth is pretty forgiving and responsive to my fumbling efforts.
The wildflowers hereabouts have continued to delight, with waves of Showy Evening Primrose bordering the roadsides and ditches, and Vervain spiking up out of the meadows . . .
For once, I paid attention to the promises of today’s rain; it’s not been terribly impressive thus far, but it has rained a teeny bit, so it was good to get things a little better in order out there and ready for some watering the day before the rain arrived. Not that I didn’t water it all thoroughly myself, at the end of my stint, since even if the plants hadn’t been so thirsty after all of my brash ministrations on a toasty afternoon, I needed a bit of rinsing too. Besides turning into a human saltwater fountain and being bespeckled by the colorful bite-marks of a seething mass of varied insect pests, I also collected plenty of bits and bobs of garden detritus in my hair, a nice thorough coating of fresh brown dirt all down the front of my clothes (with special emphasis on my mud-capped knees), and the handsome assortment of plant stains reaching up to my elbows, not to mention the weird black stain my cheap metal watchband makes on my wrist when its gets all slippery with sweat. I considered just turning the garden hose on myself full blast but opted for the slightly less neighbor-frightening method of going indoors and showering, after all. They’d suffered enough if they’d just seen me transforming myself into a living blob of nature-gone-bad while gardening.
A sweet mockingbird sat surveying the front yard from the mailbox, but dashed off long before I came closer to tuck some sturdy, spiny agaves around its base . . .
Meanwhile, I did enjoy discovering that besides the blizzards of unlovable bugs gone rampaging on the heels of a warm winter, there are the lovely sorts as well: I was almost constantly surrounded by clouds of butterflies that were attracted to the plants I was tending and the nice little drinking fountains I was making with my sprinkler for them. It was as though the flowers woke up and took wing around me. The birds around here are certainly loving the feast of fresh insects, so at least I can tolerate the biting brats if I know that they may soon, in their turn, be Cardinal Chow. Which reminds me, I’ve heard tell that the hummingbirds are back in town, so the feeders should go back up today. How quickly things change in Spring!
Less than two months of time, and what a difference on the patio and in the yard!
Both the ornamental and the edible is swiftly springing up, and thankfully, many of the latter sort of plants are very much the former too. Along with their other benefits of beauty and entertainment and insect-control, the birds have evidently gotten involved in the garden design work around here, planting a number of sunflowers in serendipitously amusing and even rather unexpectedly apropos spots. I’ll leave them all in place and see what seem to be propitious locations for next year’s crop of sunflowers. Meanwhile, I’ve got lots of other things beginning to come fully into bloom that need deadheading and trimming and fertilizing and watering.
The dainty blooms on the capiscum plants promise sweet bell peppers to come, and the little wild rose is smiling broadly . . .
The roses have–not too surprisingly, given the kindly weather–been great show-offs already this season. The little old-fashioned straggler that I dug up from its hidden spot by the back fence last fall and tucked into a pail is thriving and throwing off a fair number of its small but deeply velvety dark red blooms. The coral colored rose that I moved to a more visible place in the raised bed by the patio has probably already fired up close to a hundred of its bold blossoms, bringing its own dazzling light to the little ‘courtyard’ enclosed by the house’s wings.
The detonation of the roses in bright sunlight is impressive even if only from two plants . . . but should I add more, I wonder, when they're all so lovely? Hmmm . . .
That holly tree that I intended to kill, or at least cruelly constrain (someone planted it much too close to the house’s foundation for either’s good) was stripped to its trunk not much more than a year ago but is not only covered with those charmingly soft new leaves that have their pointy edges but no bite yet but is simply a mass of bloom as well, and now that I’ve seen how adored it is by the bees I know I won’t kill the tree but will just keep it as a sort of vertical bonsai, pruning it vigorously but leaving it to stand as a bee haven, a vine post–I loved having my cobalt-blue morning glory glowing from it last summer and have planted that and other colors this year–and a berry farm for birds and winter decor.
Apparently, the birds and butterflies, not to mention the bees, are going to have a grand dance around the holly tree Maypole this year . . .
The herb-and-vegetable planters are well underway, and there’s not only plenty of borage leaf, despite the marauding munching bugs who try to turn them to lace, for a nice tisane long before they will be tall enough to bloom. The marigolds have opened their brilliant eyes to have a look around, and the carrots and beets are shooting upward (and, I hope, downward). The parsley and other, daintier herbs will have to fight their way up through the jungle a little more slowly, perhaps, but should be strong enough by the time they do that they will outlast the root veg and the annual flowers.
Packed with, very likely, too much, these planters are still cheerfully chipping in to do their flaming floral part . . .
The peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos and red cabbages are all quite happy and healthy looking right now, and as long as the garden pests can’t get ahead of the birds and me, there may be a nice little bit of produce before too long. In the meantime, it’s sweet just to look at the plants and measure their growth by the day, if not by the hour. One of the perpetual delights of gardening, of course, is the unplanned element that invites itself into the flowerbeds and borders. I was elated to find, among the dozens of baby oak and elm tree sprouts volunteering on the property (and many of which I will transplant, when they’re big enough, to other parts of the yard), a seedling which I quickly identified as a mulberry tree. This, too, will have to relocate eventually, but I thank the bird or squirrel that kindly donated it, as it will also become a great wildlife feeder on the back-forty one day. In the right-hand photo, it is balanced on the left by a seedling soapberry that I’ve been nursing along for just such a purpose, and together they frame a wonderful volunteer that apparently forgot it was supposed to be a tender annual plant, a brilliant orange Gerbera daisy from last year.
Gifts from the garden to the gardener: a mulberry seedling, a wintered-over annual flower, and lively green growth galore . . .
Along with the Survivor Daisy there are hints of the wildflower seed I threw nearby beginning to assert themselves. The first tiny cosmos has peeped out from the pathway, and there are promising leaves and stems among the sunflowers and cosmos that say we’ll soon enough be seeing nasturtiums, corn (sweet and ornamental), blanketflower and Echinacea and a whole host of other charmers. If you want to know more specifics of what we’re, ahem, expecting, check back to my plant-list post.
Grandpa Gerber Daisy, meet little Miss Cosmos . . .
I was certainly not confining my attentions to the back yard, and am pleased to say that both the surprises given to me by the garden and the things I’ve done myself and with goodness aforethought out front are also paying off in lovely dividends. The area in front of my beloved’s office window was particularly shabby and is not so easy to suss out, as it’s victimized by bad drainage because of the contours and conditions of our property and also is quite heavily shaded by one of our big beautiful post oaks out there. So if you set these characteristics up in combination with naturally hot and over-dry Texan weather, there are what might charitably be called Conflicts of Interest. I’m experimenting, to say the least. But I’m getting a fair return at the moment and will enjoy it while I can. Among the humorous and pleasant surprises I would count that of having celery in bloom there. Yes, celery. I had a very ancient bottle of culinary celery seed sitting in my kitchen for so long that I was quite sure it had no flavor left at all, but being a thrifty mad scientist, I tossed the contents out in the front flowerbed and behold, a year later I have flowering celery. If it’s biennial like some of its cousins, who knows what next year may bring!
Outside the office window, hope is arising in its green and tenacious way . . .
Between the front walkway and the porch, the flowerbed is cut into yet another poorly drained (but sunnier) spot and is too narrow for its own good. But I’m getting a number of things, mostly perennial, to pop up there and even had a happy re-visitation from last year’s annual sweet potato vine (the fluorescent-green leafed sort) that will probably now give me yet another year of excellent fill-in wherever I haven’t yet solved the bed’s Issues. I’ve tucked in a few herbs besides the front door rosemary that’s thriving–far more than expected–and am working to have a broad mix of textures and colors and seasonal change-ups that I hope will continue to mature and fill in the naked spots until any non-flowery weeds will just feel unwelcome to even visit.
Though the tulips are long gone from the planters, there are all sorts of new things coming in and many possibilities yet to sprout . . .
Along with the porch-side plantings there is also another shady stretch, this one less plagued by poor drainage but still overshadowed by one of our big flowering pear trees, so that too is getting an experimental blend of trial-and-error plantings to withstand the vagaries of seemingly opposing growth needs. One of the particular pleasures of yesterday was finding a Bonus Plant tucked into the pot like some sort of vegetal conjoined twin with one of the agaves I laid in yesterday, so now I have this vigorous ‘baby’ to choose a good home for as well. These specific agaves are a variety (Agave parryi) I’ve long admired for their good looks and was thrilled simply to locate, let alone in a size I could afford, but doubly so on learning that they are supposed to be relatively hardy plants–and then on top of all that, I got a big, handsome extra among them. Surely the garden gods were smiling on me yesterday. Or at least the garden gnomes.
Last year's Beautyberry has burst into full bright green leaf, the New Zealand Flax is spiking up its burgundy spears, and the variegated leaves of their companion flax lily lights up the shade with its fine stripes. And where will bonus baby Spike go to live? Stay tuned . . .
Aside from things like my having been chewed upon ungraciously by a bunch of skeeters and having very indelicate and unladylike rivers of sweat inundate my poor little eyebulbs, the inside of my glasses lenses, and every single item of clothing upon my personage, an afternoon of gardening like today’s is a very welcome thing. I finally got after some of the weedier segments of the flowerbeds, planted some of my sprouted babies, moved a plant or two, and did some watering, and by golly, the place looks a tad more presentable.
In honor of that, herewith: a little Texiana and a Garden Fairy for your delectation and/or amusement. Tomorrow, perhaps, a batch of garden update photos. Just to prove I did something, don’t’cha know.
Once Upon a Time in Texas: the Genesis of Big Hair & the Ten Gallon Hat . . .
Art-Colored Glasses 