This week in the garden - #84

It's another gray and drizzly day in what has been mostly a gray and drizzly week. It is definitely December weather.

We did have one day of brilliant sunshine, just to remind us that it was possible, and to lift our spirits if only for a day, but it looks as though gray days are about all we have to look forward to for the foreseeable future.

*~*~*~*

Meanwhile, inside, the timing of my seasonal plants has been decidedly off. My "Christmas" cactus turned out to be more a between Thanksgiving and Christmas cactus. It bloomed nicely but either too early or too late for the holidays. It still has a few buds but I seriously doubt they will develop. At least not in time for the holidays.

Same goes for the three amaryllis bulbs I've been nurturing in pots in my bathroom window. Two of them are coming along nicely, but one is just beginning to show a little green. I really don't think any of them will develop sufficiently to bloom for Christmas. New Year's Day maybe. I guess I should have started them a couple of weeks earlier.

This is 'Flamenco Queen,' the first one to poke its leaves out.

This is 'Cherry Nymph' which was second but has had a growth spurt over the last couple of days. It may be my best bet for a Christmas bloom.

And then there is the laggard, 'Grand Diva.' If I'm lucky it might bloom by Valentine's Day! Of course it was a bit handicapped by the fact that the nursery cut it so high. The leaves have to make their way through about an inch-and-a-half of last year's plant before they can emerge.

It's obvious that if I want some color indoors for this holiday season, I need to make another trip to the nursery. Maybe this weekend.

*~*~*~*

Actually, I need color for outdoors, too. There isn't that much going on in the garden right now. I did add some pansies a couple of weeks ago, and there are a few indomitables that are still blooming, but mostly the garden looks brown and gray. Gray just like the sky and my mood.

This week in the garden - #83

It's been a week of contrasts. Early in the week, we had temperatures above 80 degrees F. Yesterday, our high was 73 degrees and our low was 38. Today the high is anticipated to be 39.

 Early in the week, there were lots of butterflies about, including this little skipper on the purple trailing lantana.

This particular lantana is a great favorite with butterflies like the Common Buckeye.

There were several of these American Painted Ladies enjoying the lantana on this day.

On a cold and misty day like today, though, there are no butterflies about. And the gardener herself is staying inside.

But a few blossoms like this 'Ducher' rose continue to grace the garden, even on a cold December day. Is this the last rose of the season?

As cold air blankets much of the country, I hope your garden is doing well and that you are able to enjoy the week in the garden.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - February 2013/This week in the garden - #51

Spring has come early to my zone 9a garden. Shrubs and trees are developing fat buds that will burst into leaf any day now. Perennials that died back this winter are putting up new shoots, and around the garden, I'm seeing a few more blooms that I can share with you this month. So, let me grab my camera and we'll head out the door!

But before we head out the door, let me aim the camera at a couple of things blooming inside the house.

 This phalaenopsis orchid that lives in my guest bathroom has been in bloom for several weeks now.

And this one which I just received for Valentine's Day, gives promise of many weeks of bloom ahead.

And, lest I forget, these raggedy old Christmas poinsettias are still hanging in there even though they've lost most of their leaves. When it gets a little warmer, I'm going to plant them in a protected spot in the garden, just to see if they've survive here.

 The variegated potato vine blooms twelve months of the year - including February.

The Carolina jessamine blooms only for about a month to six weeks out of the year, but while it blooms, it fills the garden with the most heavenly scent.

This red salvia which came up as a volunteer plant in the garden last summer has bloomed all winter in its protected spot near the brick wall.

And in another part of the garden, another salvia, this cherry red autumn sage, is coming into bloom again.

The first blooms of the blueberries are beginning to open.

And so are the first creamy white blossoms of the antique rose, 'Ducher.'

The loropetalum has been in bloom for a few weeks and continues to be full of these fringy flowers.

Winter violas also are still blooming and attracting passing butterflies.

Aren't these blossoms of the 'Gulf Rose' plum tree pretty? They really do say "spring" to me.

The purple oxalis will continue to bloom as long as the temperatures stay moderate. As soon as it heats up, though, the plants will curl up and go to sleep.

The rose 'Old Blush' is well named, isn't she? Other than 'Old Blush' and 'Ducher,' which were already in bloom, all the other roses in my yard are getting a haircut this week and their blooms will be delayed.  

Yes, the purple trailing lantana is still in bloom. It hasn't stopped since its first blooms late last summer, but it, too, will soon be getting a severe pruning.

Purple pansies bloom in a pot under the red oak tree.

Nearby, a hen planter holds white pansies.

I don't have the best of luck with a lot of bulbs, but I can usually depend on the little leucojums coming back year after year and giving me their distinctive blooms.

This year, even a few daffodils are blooming for me! Maybe the Year of the Snake is my lucky year - even though I was born in the Year of the Monkey.

I hope this is proving to be a good year for you and your garden. Thank you for taking the time to visit my garden today.

And thank you to Carol of May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day again this month.

This week in the garden - #46

If my garden were a hawk, this week it would look like this:

Bedraggled. Disheveled. Wet through to the skin. Waiting for the sun to come out and dry him off.

We've had just over four inches of rain this week. Not unwelcome rain, to be sure. After our last two plus years of drought, I'm certainly not here to complain about four inches of rain in January. But I have to admit that it has left the garden looking pretty sad.

I've yet to really get started on winter cleanup. All the plants and limbs killed by the few frosts that we've had are still present in the garden in all their brown mushy glory. Soon, weather permitting, I really must get started on the task. Next week, perhaps.

*~*~*~*

In last Friday's TWITG entry, I promised you a "point of view" project this year. Well, the sun finally came out today and I went outside with my camera to fulfill my promise - at least the beginning of it.

I debated about where to point my camera for a POV, but, at length, I decided to stand in front of my garden shed and look back down the garden path toward the house and my neighbor's yard. This gives a fairly panoramic view of a good slice of the backyard and it is a view which should change dramatically as the months go by. Right now, it must be admitted, it's a pretty desolate view. Here it is - the unexpurgated, unedited, un-retouched image of part of my backyard.

I plan to take pictures from this angle every month on the 11th of the month to show you how this area changes over time. By February, I hope it will be a littler neater and a little more colorful.

*~*~*~*

This was another week when I didn't really get any real gardening done, but I did manage to get some birding done. Yesterday, we spent the day at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, where I took the picture of the wet hawk that you see at the top of the page. I took a lot of other pictures, too. You can see some of them at my other blog, Backyard Birder.

This week in the garden - #45

Did you make any New Year's resolutions pertaining to gardening? I had plenty of time to think about it this week because I wasn't doing any actual gardening, but in the end, I didn't make any gardening pledges. I guess my only resolution would be to try to build on what I've accomplished and make the garden better this year. In short, the same resolution that I make every year.

*~*~*~*

I've spent the week doing indoor chores and reading. On January 2, I started reading Barbara Kingsolver's new novel, Flight Behavior. I'm about halfway through it, so if you've already read it, don't tell me how it ends!

If you haven't heard of it, the plot of the novel is about climate change and its effect on migratory creatures - specifically the Monarch butterfly. In the time covered by the novel, millions of the butterflies have been misdirected from their normal migration to their winter home in Mexico and have settled instead in a fir forest in the Appalachians, in Tennessee. The drama of the story is how this affects the local inhabitants, particularly once the story gets out and becomes a part of the 24-hour news cycle. Climate change and its effect on all of us is something that has concerned me for a number of years. Kingsolver has taken the story and made it understandable and personal, the mark of a very good writer.

*~*~*~*

Trying to come up with a project for the blog this year, I thought I might do something photographic. I'm considering taking a picture from a particular point of view in my garden at a specific time each month and posting it on the blog. I did something like this several years ago when we put in some new beds in the front yard and I found it enjoyable and interesting to watch how the beds evolved and matured from month to month. Now I just have to figure out my point of view and the date on which I will take the picture.

*~*~*~*

My sweet daughter knows that I like poetry and I like gardening and so today, she sent me a garden poem. Have you seen this one before?

The Garden Year
by Sara Coleridge

January brings the snow,
Makes our feet and fingers glow.

February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen lake again.

March brings breezes, loud and shrill,
To stir the dancing daffodil.

April brings the primrose sweet,
Scatters daisies at our feet.

May brings flocks of pretty lambs
Skipping by their fleecy dams.

June brings tulips, lilies, roses,
Fills the children's hands with posies.

Hot July brings cooling showers,
Apricots, and gillyflowers.

August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne.

Warm September brings the fruit;
Sportsmen then begin to shoot.

Fresh October brings the pheasant;
Then to gather nuts is pleasant.

Dull November brings the blast;
Then the leaves are whirling fast.

Chill December brings the sleet,
Blazing fire, and Christmas treat.

Obviously, that garden was much farther north than mine. July brings "cooling showers"??? In my dreams! Nevertheless, it's just a reminder of how our gardens are always changing, from month to month and day to day even. That old saw about how you can't step in the same river twice could be applied to the garden, too. You can never see the same garden twice. It changes even as we look. Let us hope that we have the eyes and take the time to see that in 2013.

This week in the garden - #43

The brown leaves skitter across the quiet yard pushed by a brisk cold wind from the north. The only other sounds come from the jousting Rufous Hummingbirds as they vie for a place at the sugar water feeders or from the other occasional winter bird announcing its presence at the backyard feeders, and from the splash of water in the little fountain and the fish pond. As the year winds down, the sound level in the yard winds down, too, until, at last, it seems to whisper, fearful of disturbing the sleeping plants.

We had our third frost of the month last night. The temperature registered by my thermometer on the back porch was 32 degrees, but farther away from the house, it was surely colder than that, probably into the 20s. We had an early morning appointment in Houston and so had to get up earlier than usual while the frost was still very evident. It looked almost like a light frosting of snow on the yard.

Just a couple of days ago it was 80 degrees here, but then the cold front blew through with strong winds and the temperature dropped rapidly. That is fairly typical of our weather at this time of year - nothing if not changeable. You never know whether you'll need a sweater or shorts on any given day. It does make our lives interesting.

I understand that it is supposed to warm up again over the weekend, but I hope the colder weather will return by the time our Christmas guests start arriving. Something about the holiday just seems wrong when you have to turn on the air conditioner to keep your guests comfortable!

And so, today, the day of the Winter Solstice, the shortest and darkest day of the year, and the end of 13 Baktun on the Mayan long count calendar, I puttered around my garden accompanied by Charlie the garden cat.

Charlie stops to wash his face.

We enjoyed the brilliant sunshine and brisk weather of this first official winter day. I watched the goldfinches hanging upside down eating the crape myrtle seeds. (Most members of the finch family love crape myrtle seeds, which is an excellent reason not to prune your seedheads off before the birds have a chance to strip them.) I thought about all the tasks that I need to get started on as soon as the holidays are over. For the next week, the garden will have to wait as I fulfill my annual role as hostess for the family year-end celebration. It's a role that I love, but I admit I am also always glad to get it behind me so that I can concentrate on my garden again.

Whatever holidays you celebrate at this time of year, I hope they are happy days for you and your loved ones and that the coming year for you will be a healthy one filled with all the best that life has to offer. And may much of that "best" be waiting for you in your garden.

This week in the garden - #39

It has been a much-abbreviated week in the garden, punctuated by our preparations for Thanksgiving. The family gathered at our house again this year. Fortunately, the guests brought the smoked turkey and pecan pies, as well as a pot of greens and a Philippine specialty that utilizes purple sweet potatoes and is a kind of pudding. We refer to it, perhaps not surprisingly, as "Purple Pudding."

With all that food being brought by others, there wasn't that much cooking for me to do. I made the family's traditional "Aunt Lurline's Cornbread Dressing" and a couple of other side dishes including a simple but (I thought) delicious cranberry relish that uses fresh cranberries, Clementines, and walnuts. In short, we had a feast! I hope you did, too.

Looking around the garden this morning, I went to check on my citrus trees. All of my citrus has suffered this year from citrus leaf curl which makes them look really ugly, but doesn't actually seem to affect their crops.

 The little kumquat tree has a number of these little fruits, all still perfectly green.

While I was checking the kumquats, I found a couple of surprises in the form of Giant Swallowtail caterpillars. This one was out in the open and easy to see.

A second one was well hidden among the leaves. You can see how their camouflage as bird droppings serves them really well.

The Satsumas that I've shown you several times recently are beginning to change color and will be ready soon.

It's amaryllis time. I bought this one at a local store a couple of weeks ago, but when I unpacked the kit, the stem had already grown in a twisted fashion. Not very decorative for my purposes so it got relegated to my outside table, where it seems perfectly happy, even if it is twisted.

I hope you have much to be thankful for in your garden this week and this year.  Happy gardening!

This week in the garden - #38

It has been a truly momentous week in my garden. Its character has been changed forever. The tree people have paid us a visit.

All of the huge oak trees (five of them) in our front yard needed work and the big sycamore tree in the backyard that was much too close to the house - well, much as I loved it, it needed to be gone. In the end, we had the sycamore tree and the two smallest oak trees removed, and the live oaks and remaining Shumard red oak (my favorite) were pruned, all dead limbs and some live ones removed. The result is a much sunnier yard in many areas. I'm going to have to rethink some of my plantings and probably move even more plants than I had previously intended this winter.

It's a drastic change and takes some getting used to, but I think I like it. Plus we now have plenty of oak firewood for our fireplace, so we are prepared for a cold winter. (Well, I guess we will be prepared for winter next year, because I'm told this wood needs to age for a year.)

My main problem with the change is that my backyard shade where I sat every day and watched the birds and butterflies is gone. I will miss that tree.

As a temporary solution, I could use a table umbrella at the table where I usually sit, but I'd like something to provide more permanent shade. A pergola or arbor maybe? I'll have to give it some thought.

Meantime, I'll just have to find another vantage point for watching butterflies.

Butterflies like this beautiful Red Admiral, soaking up the sun on a metal fence on a recent cool morning.

This week in the garden - #37

What a lovely week this has been. Bright yellow sunshine accompanied by cool, pleasant temperatures. What could be better?

Much of my week has been spent coming down from the mountain, so to speak, processing what I saw and experienced during our vacation - and processing photographs. Oh, my, we took soooo many pictures during the trip!

I still haven't finished with all of them but one thing that leaps out at me from the pictures is the desert foliage. Big Bend National Park is located in the Chihuahuan Desert and encompasses the Chisos Mountains and a few other lesser mountain ranges. The colors there are muted and the foliage is very different from what we see here in humid Southeast Texas. I found it very attractive and as I processed the photos, I thought about ways that I might translate some of that muted beauty to my own garden. Here are some of the pictures that are an inspiration to me.

I just like the look of this soft grayish cottony-looking foliage against the hard rock of the mountain.

More soft, muted colors.

Yellow was the dominant color of fall flowers in the desert. I love the look of these little flowers that have found a way to seed themselves among the gravel and small pebbles of the desert floor below the Chisos Mountains.

Grayed colors are a way of dealing with the intense sunlight of the desert.

Do you recognize this plant? That's right - it's Tecoma stans. This tough plant that flourishes in my garden also flourishes in the middle of the desert, although the plants there are much smaller than mine. But they were attracting bees and flies just like they do in my yard.

Here's another flower that looked and smelled very familiar to me. The scent is very similar to the almond verbena which I grow and I think the plant must be related, although the leaves of this plant are much smaller and the plant itself is smaller. Several of these small shrubs grew along the trails that we walked in the Chisos Mountains.

I don't know the name of this ground cover with the tiny purple flowers, but it was flourishing in the dry, dry desert.

 Most of the plants in the desert feature spines or thorns as an adaptation for preserving moisture. Iconic among these plants is the prickly pear.

Another tiny yellow flower blooming among the rocks.

You can certainly see why it is called prickly. Those spines are wicked!

A softer version of yellow. This plant was similar to the Texas sage that grows in my garden, although the flower color is different.

You can just see a ghostly moon setting at mid-day behind the limbs of the ocotillo, another iconic plant of this region. I do like the sculptural look.

This rather lush-looking flower looked almost out of place in this harsh environment.

In certain parts of the desert and the mountainsides, the sotol, a member of the lily family, is the dominant plant. The tough flower spikes of this plant, two of which you see here, are often used to make walking sticks or other sturdy implements. Again, the thing I love about this plant is its sculptural quality and the soft gray-green of its spiky foliage. Plus, that flower spike is really dramatic.

I love the look of rocks in the desert and I'll be trying to find more ways to incorporate rocks into my garden. I love the sculptural look of the rocks and the plants and I would like to be able to translate that in some way into my humidity-ridden domain. And the soft, restful colors are very pleasing to me. Maybe I can include more of that here.

I think we all have much to learn from the desert, a place which blooms and flourishes with a very minimal amount of water. Plants and animals there find ways of conserving water and we, in our changed world with decreasing rainfall, need to learn their lessons.