Fall Plant Buying Spree!

So the biennial pilgrimage to Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center's native plant sale and the Natural Gardener nursery occurred on Friday. Himself took a half-day off and we sojourned down there on a really beautiful, warm but not to warm, bright and sunny day, which ended with shopping and dinner at the Whole Foods flagship store, driving home well after dark with a car stuffed with plants, wines, pumpkin ale, exotic cheeses and whatnot. Good times!

Anyhoo, here's the list:

Ladybird Johnson:

Desert Honeysuckle [Anisacanthus puberulus]--actually Himself found this and was enamored by the description or something...I have three flame acanthi around the yard and they have been magnets for bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, so I thought, why not give this pink-flowered relative a try? Heat tolerant and xeric sold me.


Yellow Passionflower [passiflora lutea]

Lyre-leaf Sage [Salvie lyrata]--I had a couple of these in front, then I moved them before that hot dry summer spell and one died--so, replacing! These self-seed too; it can make a ground-cover and resembles ajuga.

White Avens [Geum canadense]--a shade perennial in the rose family--foliage like strawberry plants, and way-cool, delicate white flowers.

Wooly Ironweed [Vernonia lindheimeri]--cool story behind this one:

Woolly ironweed is a 10-30 in. high clump of gray-woolly stems and leaves. Flowers lack petals, but numerous lavender to purple disk flowers are arranged in showy, terminal clusters. Not a rampant colonizer like some other members of this genus. Well behaved species.

This species is named after Ferdinand Jacob Lindheimer (1801-1879) who is often called the Father of Texas Botany because of his work as the first permanent-resident plant collector in Texas. In 1834 Lindheimer immigrated to the United States as a political refugee. He spent from 1843-1852 collecting specimens in Texas. In 1844 he settled in New Braunfels, Texas, and was granted land on the banks of the Comal River, where he continued his plant collecting and attempted to establish a botanical garden. He shared his findings with many others who shared his interest in botany, including Ferdinand von Roemer and Adolph Scheele. Lindheimer is credited with the discovery of several hundred plant species. In addition his name is used to designate forty-eight species and subspecies of plants. He is buried in New Braunfels. His house, on Comal Street in New Braunfels, is now a museum.

Giant Coneflower [Rudbeckia maxima]--'Tis the season after all for "brown-eyed Susans"!
Note to self: It should be cut back to the base after blooming to keep tidy and be planted in mass for best effect in landscapes; moist; sun-part shade (so plant in front where it can be watered)

Bloomin' in April.

It's been a while since I posted, and since I've stalled a bit on the landscaping due to rain and minor injury (strained chest muscle) I can't post before/after shots of the ones I started a couple weeks ago. But I also notice that I haven't put a post about what was blooming in the garden in April, and since it's now May, I should remedy that! So here are the high-lights.

First, to the left, we have the container I planted with some of the plants from the LBJ Wildflower sale and another nursery we went to (discussed here). This is one of the sea oats (grass), the 'Lilac Spoon' Osteospermum, and the Pelargonium sidoides (geranium, with it's little butterfly-like dark purple blooms and silvery foliage).

The cacti have continued to bloom apace. This is the Echinocereus (Lace Cactus) I picked up at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center sale earlier this month with a l'il beetle-bug snorgling the stamens:



This is a really cool clematis that I bought a couple wildflower sales ago that is naturalized to Texas and really goes gangbusters (I have another one that I'll post for next month). This one is "Pagoda"--and you can see that the sweet little lavender flowers are more like little inverted cups (or pagodas) than the large open hybrids that I also have. The vine is a lot more vigorous too. I like how this looks against the weathered fence and the weathered wood butterfly house (which seems to be just for show--I don't think any caterpillars have taken up residence in it yet).


Okay, you know I love Gerbera Daisies, and this beautiful blush-colored one is actually growing in one of the flower beds out front and has survived two winters:

This is "Bronze Sonnet" Snapdragon. LOVE. It's located in a bed right under the bedroom window at the front of the house. There's a dark pink tea-rose there that hasn't bloomed yet and a whole assortment of other things in hot, bright colors and a few dark ones to balance it out--like "Blue & Black" Salvia.


Below is 'Prairie Sunrise' shrub rose, growing in my rose border out back:



The wildflower border still has poppies blooming, now in shades of pink and white as well as a few lingering reds, and evening primroses, but the coreopsis is now blooming as well. I'm beginning to wonder if the cornflowers we had last year will be back, but perhaps it is still too early.

Love this white poppy--so delicate!

Spring Landscaping Project 2: Mulched Paths

Right, so let's continue, shall we? After shuffling the trees around and pouring an expanded concrete stone edge to the big patio coming off the back of the house, the next step was to fill in a mulched path area. As you will see below, there's a bit of ground between the patio and the border I planted around the fenced-in rose/herb garden (below that chain-link fence I covered with plastic lattice is around the rose/herb garden. This bit of ground is shady most of the day and gets a lot of traffic, so grass did not grow well there. It was a no-brainer to just make that area a mulched walk-way, but then I decided to expand the mulched area between the flower border/beds and new tree/patio/seat area--less tricky to mow that way. I rototilled a lot of the area just so it would be relatively level, and transplanted some good sod to where we had moved the plum tree from (cutting sod is the WORST!). Then to keep grass and weeds (and dreaded trumpet creeper) from growing through the mulch, I lay out strips of landscape tarp:

Actually, before that I had expanded that garden bed at the back of the picture forward more, which will ease some of the crowding that was happening and to make the wall come out as far here as it would need to over to the left where the wildflowers are growing. If you look at the border bed curving toward you on the right, you will see that I had concrete edgers already delineating that so I just set one layer of narrow rocks on top of that. The more woodland-y section in the background had not had any formal edging beyond some pieces of tree-limb from a tree we had cut down last year, so here, and all along the rest of the edge of the yard, I'm doing a combination of a narrow plastic edging strip, and the rock wall in front of it. The edging is a pain in the butt, 'cause you have to hoe and/or pick-axe a narrow, even trench to sink at least half of it, and there are always roots that have to be dealt with. Then you fill in around it and help delineate curves and/or hold it upright with stakes every few feet. But that should keep the flowers in the flower garden and the grass out. It also helps provide a little back-brace for the two or three layer fieldstone wall in front of it. So with all edging in place, landscape tarp layed, ground stapled and tucked under the re-assembled rock wall, I was ready to add mulch. Lots of mulch. THIS much mulch:That is four cubic yards of hardwood mulch from a local landscaping supply place, that my brother-in-law kindly drove Himself and I to pick up using his trailer, covered in plastic to keep us from mulching the highway on the way home, and somehow crammed into our side-yard, where it will remain for the foreseeable future, until I have shoveled out enough cart-loads to empty it, or at least reduce it to a small, manageable pile. I don't think there will be any problem of having too much...for you see--it is a key ingredient for my landscaping plans, as you see below in this finished section:


That's the view from the door that goes out into our driveway from the new addition (there's a sliding glass door around the corner to the left that exits onto the patio. You can see the extra hard-scaping I added using concrete molds last month on the left, and a little strip at the bottom of the picture (that is a well-trod path going between the patio and the rose/herb garden, and around to the driveway). That area on the left expands the patio space for potted plants.

Having an embarassment of fieldstones now, I decided to fill in just between those two areas where I'm likely to be standing and watering a lot in summer with stepping stones (instead of home-made concrete ones. That kinda sucked 'cause I had already laid the landscape tarp, once side of which was now under that patio, so I ended out cutting out an area for each stone and hollowing a bit of earth out so the stone would lie secure and level when walked on. Laying a stepping stones or pavers is a huge pain in the arse, let me tell you! But in the end, there it is, all mulched in and looking neat. So you see, you can trip down the pathway to the left and go out into the middle of the yard, or you can pause on the lovely bench and contemplate the house, potted plants on the patio, and the little bed there that I re-worked and re-walled (contains Indian hawthorne shrub, a couple amarylli, spring daffs still have their foliage up, a couple hosta, "Mocha" heuchera):


or you can gambol down the longer path to your right which ends in the lawn and wildflower bed:


Both branches of the path end in yet more large fieldstones set in the ground at kinda stepping-stone height so one can step easily onto the lawn as well as drag lawn-mowers and wheelbarrows to and from the back and front-yards with minimal obstruction. But since the landscape tarp goes under them, they anchor the tarp, prevent mulch from going out into the grass, and the grass should not grow between, just tidied up in front with the weed-whacker. Sooo many things to consider in landscaping! I'm very happy with it so far, but still have a lot to do.

When these pics were taken I had dug in the plastic edging strip and replaced the initial temporary rock-wall all the way across the wildflowers (still mostly primroses and poppies but starting to also get coreopsis) and stopped at a stone path to a bird-feeder before the next major area to landscape--the sunny street-side corner. The added complication of having the rock-wall next to grass, as opposed to mulch, is that I'm putting a recycled rubber faux-mulch mat under the rocks, so grass will not grow between them and up to the plastic edger. You can get this stuff at Lowe's, HD or Wal-mart; it's brown, about 5 inches wide and a half-inch thick--they also make circular mats to go around the base of new trees out of this stuff.

So that's it for now. I started rototilling and working in soil amendments on Friday but was interrupted by, oh, a tornado and hail-storm, put in the edger and started planting and trans-planting things in the corner on Saturday and Sunday between more rain showers (muddy mess) and hope to have the planting finished tomorrow (Tuesday), then on to landscape-tarping and mulching. Maybe pics by the weekend?

Oh, if you want to see more pics of the landscaping project with more description, plus pics of the hail-storm, click on the Flickr Slideshow on the bottom right--both have their own sets in the photostream.

Spring Landscaping Project 1: Musical Trees

Big doin's this season in the backyard! We started out by cutting out and grinding a bunch of stumps around the house, and were then able to plant an ash tree in the back corner where we cut down a hackberry (which will eventually provide shade, although now, not so much), and in one of the side-yards we cut out some kind of smelly flowering tree that was right up next to the house (and whose stinky blooms were right outside the study windows) and put in a young Mexican redbud that I bought at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center. Our tree cutters came back and cut down a huge hackberry in another corner of the backyard (hackberries suck--people plant them b/c they grow fast, but they are very weak trees and messy), and another "trash" tree in the backyard, a "silk tree" also called a mimosa, although it's not really. The plan was to basically replace it with a Mexican Plum (white blooms) that I bought our first year here, and after the loss of the hackberry is in too much sun. Here's the original set-up:

Had to move the other end of my clothesline, which the young plum tree couldn't handle yet, but this is much better in every way. Mimosas actually want more sun than that one was getting and it was all stretching out to one side, but now the plum tree will be a pretty understory tree that will be sheltered from the summer sun by our pecan tree. The guys who cut down the other trees helped me transplant this one, and they had also brought (the trip before) a pick-up truck bed full of fieldstones that I had already started setting out when they came back to take out a stump and transplant the plum tree:

As I think I might have stated before/elsewhere, the grand scheme of this project is to reduce the lawn area of the yard to an oblong in the middle surrounded by flower beds and plain mulched area filling in the entire edge and corners of the yard. I've been well on the way toward this by putting in discrete beds and borders in former seasons, and putting out the wildflower seed last year that has filled in a big strip along the road-side of the yard, but I wanted something cohesive--and in the outer corners, pretty but xeric (to non-gardenders that is heat and drought tolerant). PLUS, putting down landscape tarp under the mulch will, HOPEFULLY, help to stem the tide of that tenacious trumpet creeper vine, that I have been battling for almost three years and is STILL coming up from a huge network of roots in the ground along the edge of the yard.

Thus moving the plum tree out of the middle of the yard into an area that I wanted to turn into mulched paths helped build on this idea, but I also wanted a little flower bed around the tree. Transplanted trees need a lot of water, so instead of just watering a bunch of mulch, why not some plants around it, eh? And...well, NOT like I need many excuses for new flower beds! So I improved the area around the tree, put in a low rock wall around it, and set some really big flagstones in the ground to support a cool new garden bench I got (along with that bistro set for the back patio). This side view shows the size of the little flower bed:

Into this bed I transplanted a bunch of purple irises from the rose/herb garden, a couple white daylilies from a bed in the front yard (one was a big clump so I divided to spread it out), and some lamb's ears from a bed in the back yard (lamb's ears HATE to be transplanted, so I'm still coddling them). The theme is purple/lavender and white, so I added a purple-flowered creeping veronica in one of the "horns" to the side of the bench, and one of the LBJ Wildflower Ctr purchases Wooly Stemodia and Barbara's Buttons on the other side (both of those have white flowers and silvery foliage like the lamb's ears). Also from LBJWC I put in a Chocolate Daisy, which has cheery little yellow daisy-like flowers that smell kinda like a chocolate milkshake. The yellow is a bit off message, I suppose, but it goes just fine with purple in color theory and the foliage is silvery. To round it out I also put in Walmart-purchased lavender scabiosa (butterflies love) and honey-scented purple-flowered heliotrope. The latter is an annual, but I've been able to buy it every year--I love the smell and so do the bees and butterflies! We'll have to wait until next season to get the full effect of the garden bed in bloom, but here's the finished product, including some solar-powered lamps:

Chamaelobivia 'Rose Quartz'

This is a hybrid of Chamaecereus ("Peanut cactus" from Argentina) and Lobivia (also called Echinopsis, from Bolivia). Found it at Lowe's (amazingly); they got a big shipment of cacti and succulents last month that I've been pillaging, but I guess didn't notice this one as any big thing. Then last week I saw it with one bloom open and multiple buds. The bloom was amazing! So I bought it and brought it home--and here's what it looked like when all the buds opened:

WOW!!!

The last couple mornings were very cool in temperature, dipping a little under 40 on Monday and around there on Tuesday. I went out to get the paper and found one bud just beginning to open while the others were lagging behind. The coloration of the outer petals are amazing:

Both cacti parents of this hybrid are from the mountains of South America, and the info on the pot says that it can go dormant in summer heat. Well--here, that is a given! I'll have to read up on it and see if I should just leave it outside and see what happens, or if it might do better inside when it's 100 degrees out.

Spring Plant Run

I'm turning a large portion of the back yard into mulched areas and planting areas--basically trying to reduce the grass we have to water and mow, and put in tough, hardy, native or adapted plants that will not need a lot of water or care once they are established. So, I knew I'd have some space to play with, and that I particularly wanted some more salvia greggii and lantana, but was also open to whatever cool plants I might find at the annual spring wildflower sale at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, and a nursery not far from there called Natural Gardener, where I go every now and again to get organic soil amendments, plants, and take pictures of their butterfly garden. Here's what I got at each place, plus pics that I took (which will be noted) or from the online plant database for LJWC, along with plant info from there (if there's no pic and you want to see one, follow the link).

Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center Spring Sale

Gulf Muhly--I love this stuff! I got two gallon containers of it two years ago at our first LJWC sale and it's done great, with beautiful pink feathery flowers in Fall....well, last year I moved one and it's not looking so good, so I got a spare in case it just peters out this year; although this one is only in a 4 inch pot and will take several seasons to get as big as my others...

Inland Sea Oats (Chasmanthium latifolium)--This grass is also really cool looking. This was going to go in an expanded planting area behind the patio I made in the back part of the backyard, but, see, I do not have "moist, acidic loam," and thus I'm going against my above mantra a bit, so may put it in a pot that I can treat with acidifier like I do my potted azaleas!
Water Use: Medium; Light Requirement: Part Shade , Shade; Soil Moisture: Moist , Dry; Soil pH: Acidic (pH<6.8);>CaCO3 (as in Limestone) Tolerance: Low; Soil Description: Moist loamy well-drained soils. Sandy Sandy Loam Medium Loam Clay Loam Clay; Comments: Inland seaoats is a shade-tolerant grass with large graceful seed heads. The blue-green bamboo-like leaves often turn a bright yellow-gold especially in sunnier sites in fall. It will remain attractive through most of the winter but when it becomes tattered cut the seaoats back to the evergreen basal rosette. Reseeds easily. The seed stalks are attractive in flower arrangements. Inland sea oats makes a solid mat in moist loams and has been planted to help stabilize sandy dunes. Larval Host: Pepper & salt skipper butterfly, Bells road side skipper butterfly, Bronzed roadside skipper butterfly

Rose Mallow (Pavonia lasiopetala)--I just moved the one I planted last year from the LJWC and, yup, it's none too happy either, so I got two...an heir and a spare. Even if it doesn't make it, these will have a home in the new area I'm preparing in the back. It has small, bright pink hibiscus-like flowers, can take sun or part-shade, low water use, and attracts hummingbirds and butterflies.

Blue-Eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium sagittiferum)--actually a member of the iris family, and require semi-shade. I've already planted the two I got under the 'Natchez' crape myrtle (white) in my front salvia bed, which had one there already from last year. They will make a cute semi-circle around the front of its trunk.

Red Columbine--This is the red and yellow columbine native to most of the eastern half of the US. Thought it would go nicely with the yellow Texas columbine I have. Takes shade, of course, and can do well in dry, thin soil.


Woolly Butterfly Bush (Buddleja marrubifolia): I currently have two buddleias in shades of purple, and they provide great opportunities to photograph butterflies. So why not one more? This one will contrast with its silvery "wooly" foliage and yellow and orange blooms. It's a large shrub like all Buddleia--3-6 feet. Water Use: Low; Light Requirement: Part Shade; Soil Moisture: Dry; Soil Description: Sandy Sandy Loam Medium Loam Clay Loam Clay Limestone-based; Comments: Woolly butterfly bush attracts a fair number of butterflies. The orange flowers and fuzzy leaves of pale gray-green are attractive. Because it is accustomed to a warmer part of Texas woolly butterfly bush needs protection from freezes." (need to mulch this baby good in winter and maybe wrap in burlap in the winter--but then Davesgarden.com says they are hardy to zone 7b, so it should certainly come back from the root, even if it dies back)


Standing Cypress (Ipomopsis rubra): The one I bought last year (seen at left) self-seeded a bit in a front bed (I just picked the seedlings out of the mulch today and transplanted them in areas where there was a gap in the landscape tarp) , but it's so awesome for butterflies and hummingbirds that I got one more plant--just in case those don't make it.

Texas Betony (Stachys Coccinea)--This kind of resembles Standing Cypress and Salvia Coccinea with it's tall spikes of small red flowers, but I'm going for the gusto with hummingbirds and butterflies, and unlike those others, does well in shade. Water Use: Medium; Light Requirement: Part Shade; Soil Moisture: Moist; Soil Description: Moist soils; Comments: Texas betony has aromatic foliage and a tremendous bloom show. The heaviest blooms are in early spring but Texas betony continues to display vivid scarlet flowers throughout the season. Makes a good groundcover for shady places.
Barbara's Buttons (Marshallia caespitosa)

Big Red Sage (Salvia Penstemonoides)--another tall perennial with red tubular flowers; this is in the mint family. Water Use: Medium; Light Requirement: Sun , Part Shade; Soil Moisture: Dry; Soil Description: Medium Loam Clay Loam Clay Limestone-based Calcareous; Conditions Comments: Big red sage was once thought to be extinct. It grows easily from seed and is now a common garden plant. Robust glossy foliage looks attractive behind a border. The hummingbirds and butterflies love this summer bloomer. Cut spent flower spikes to their basal rosettes. Reseeds easily.

Small Coastal Germander (Teucrium cubenses)-- Water Use: Low; Light Requirement: Sun; Soil Moisture: Dry; Comments: This delicate herbaceous mint relative with multitudes of small white blossoms often grows adjacent to prickly pear. The old growth can be cut back in mid summer when new growth appears at the base.



Blue Shrub Sage (Salvia Ballotiflora): Deciduous 3-6 ft. shrub; Water Use: Low
Light Requirement: Sun , Part Shade; Soil Moisture: Dry; Heat Tolerant: yes
Soil Description: Limestone-based Sandy Sandy Loam Medium Loam Clay Loam Clay Calcareous; Comments: Blue shrub sage is somewhat of a woody plant. Cut it back in late winter to produce bushy plants in the spring. The leaves smell great and the nectar feeds adult butterflies. Somewhat deer resistant.

Coral Honeysuckle (Lonicera Semperverens)--My back-fence neighbor has this growing on her side of the fence, and I noticed that if it trails on the ground it will root. I might take advantage of that, but in the mean-time I got a small plant to start on the far end of the back fence. Hummingbirds love it! Water Use: Medium; Light Requirement: Sun , Part Shade; Soil Moisture: Moist;CaCO3 Tolerance: Medium; Cold Tolerant: yes; Soil Description: Various soils. Sandy Sandy Loam Medium Loam Clay Loam Clay Caliche type; Comments: Coral honeysuckle requires light good air circulation and adequate drainage to prevent powdery mildew. Some structural assistance may be necessary to help it begin climbing. Not too aggressive. Good climber or ground cover. High-climbing twining vine 3-20 ft. long with smooth glossy paired semi-evergreen leaves and 2-4 flowered clusters of red tubular blooms followed by bright-red berries. Prune after flowering to shape and control. Flowers best when given more sun. Tolerates poor drainage.

Pearl or Green Milkweed Vine (Matelea reticulata)--I got a purple one at the sale last September, but didn't plant it quickly enough and it dried out in the pot. I kept it though and this spring it started to leaf out from the root! Then in a couple of weeks it died back again. Hmm. But I really wanted to try it and have it as a Monarch larval host, so looked for it, or the Green variety at the sale this year. Only had the green one, but I was excited as it sounds and looks from the pictures as a really pretty flowering vine (6-12'). (I'll keep watering the purple one and hope it comes back...) Water Use: Low; Light Requirement: Part Shade; Soil Moisture: Dry; Cold Tolerant: yes; Heat Tolerant: yes; Comments: Green milkweed vine is not a bold plant but the green star-shaped flowers with a pearly irridescent center are lovely and curious. Use as a novel woodland-edge garden feature. Blooms best with plenty of sun but does well in some shade also. The Large interesting seed pod open up to release silky seed threads and many seeds. Members of the Milkweed family are host to Queen and Monarch butterflies.

Barbara's Buttons (Marshallia caespitosa)-- related to Asters; 8-18" tall; Water Use: Low; Light Requirement: Sun , Part Shade; Soil Moisture: Dry; Soil Description: Sandy or calcareous soils. Sandy Sandy Loam Limestone-based Medium Loam Clay Loam Clay
Comments: Barbaras-buttons is an upright perennial with solitary or several unbranched stems. Dainty balls of white fragrant flowers are borne on slender leafless stalks arising from a rosette of narrow leaves. (These would look really cute with the white flowers floating above the fuzzy white leaves of lamb's ears!)


Chocolate Daisy/Green-Eyed lyre leaf (Berlandiera lyrata): I heard someone talking

about this at the plant-sale. They said the word 'chocolate' and I went running to get one. Here's a picture of the one I bought; it has a little flower on it now, but it's green so far, while it's just a little past a bud, although apparently it should turn yellow...This phenomenon is attested in pictures at the LJWC plant database.
Size Notes: 1-2 feet. Water Use: Low; Light Requirement: Sun , Part Shade; Soil Moisture: Moist; CaCO3 (Limestone) Tolerance: High; Comments: This flower smells like chocolate! On warm days it will fill the air with fragranceLyre-leaf greeneyes or chocolate flower is a velvety-leaved 1-2 ft. perennial. Its mounded coarse gray-green foliage has a chocolate aroma. A leafy plant often with many short branches at base and longer leaning branches ending in leafless stalks topped by flower heads with yellow rays surrounding a maroon central disk. The numerous daisy-like blossoms are 2 in. across with yellow rays and a maroon center. These flowers open in the morning and droop in the heat of day. The cup-like seedheads which follow are also attractive.

Woolly Stemodia (Stenodia lanata)--Light Requirement--Part Shade; Soil Moisture: Dry; Soil Description: Deep sandy soils of plains brushlands slopes dunes and beaches. Comments: Woolly stemodia is a white plant that is great for the foliage alone....and then it blooms! Tiny flowers are most visible at close range. Quite suitable and attractive for trailing over the edge of a pot or wall. (Will likely plant this at the back of the yard around the patio where I already have lambs ears, making sure it's near the rock wall to spill over; both will probably like a little sand and amendments to lighten the soil.

Natural Gardener:

Yarrow Achillea 'Paprika'--Really pretty brick-red color. The one I got has lots of buds on it and I hope to be able to dry some blooms--they retain color well. Yarrow is supposed to do well in poor, dry soil, so great for out back.

Salvia Greggii--unnamed but the flowers are a mix of pale yellow and pale pink so they look a soft peach color. It is lighter than the varietal 'Coral'. Salvia

Salvia Greggii 'Sunset'
Lantana 'Bandana Cherry'--mix of bright pink and yellow" 2'x2' (upright)

Lantana 'Silver Mound'--silvery foliage and pale yellow flowers. 18"x36" (trailing)

Geranium 'Pelargonium Sidoides': this is a South African species geranium with small, fuzzy silvery l

eaves and tiny dark plum-purple blooms. Y'know--I think it would look great in a pot with one of the Sea Oats! Which pot, I don't know yet... the pic is looking down on it. I was looking it up online and found that it is used as a medicinal plant for respiratory conditions, and as an antibacterial. Who knew?

Antique Rose Emporium Purchases

Of course, I have no pictures of this beautiful nursery/garden BECAUSE MY CAMERA DIED! But I did console myself with some purchases. Their bushes are well-grown and in gallon pots, which is good, but the price is pretty high: $18.95 per plant, no matter how rare or common. So I didn't go too nuts, and I could have, I sooooooo could have. Especially if I had the room for more shrub or climbing roses. But I stuck with compact ones with little, mini-type blooms that won't go over two or three feet. The ones I got were in the "found rose" category, which just means that their parentage are unknown, so in a sense they are pretty unique (pics and text from their site) include:

Lindee: Like a miniature version of the Polyantha, ‘Katharina Zeimet’, “Lindee” is a compact bush of dark green foliage, but the tiny white flowers are borne in clusters rather than separately. This leads us to believe it probably is a Polyantha; in fact, some have suggested that this rose is ‘Pâquerette’, the first Polyantha. Mike Lindee, of Houston, shared his grandmother’s rose with us. This is the perfect plant for a confined area, small pot, or dainty border along a sidewalk or flowerbed.
Right now my biggest problem is deciding which of the latter to do, as I do have a narrow border it could go in, but I also like the idea of it cascading over the edge of a nice pot. If it's not in the ground then it's easier to take it with me when I move if I wanted to, but all the pots I have are full, so I'd have to make some decisions about those, and/or get a new nice pot--and those are hard to come by 'round here (would take a trip to Civilization prob.). So....I dunno yet.

Petite Pink Scotch: " This rose was found in 1949 by Jackson M. Batchelor of Willard, North Carolina, growing in the garden of a 1750’s plantation home on the Cape Fear River, near Wilmington, N.C. The area was originally settled by Scottish and English immigrants and Mr. Batchelor speculates that this rose came with them, which explains its name. (The rose shows no relationship to the ‘Scotch Rose’, R. spinosissima,) He sent plants to the National Arboretum in 1956, where it was rated as an outstanding groundcover shrub for slopes. We find that this once blooming rose makes a superb and graceful low hedge." I love the history of this one! It has really tiny leaves and blooms in tiny pink sprays--very unique looking. It only blooms once in the spring, so the rest of the year it looks like a little green shrub. I'm in the same quandary as above with this one. I don't have enough for a hedge, but it's pretty spreading so it would eventually take up horizontal space, which is kinda at a premium in the bed I'm considering. I'm already taking stuff out of it. So, hmm.

Oh, also got a really cutely-bizarre Osteosporum 'Soprano Lilac Spoon', which is an annual but might survive here in the ground or if in a group-plant pot, in the greenhouse.






Finally, a wicked Gaillardia, 'Torch Red Ember', which is a perennial and adapted well for this area. It will go in a hot and dry area of one of the front beds.

Spammers Suck!!!

Lately spammers have been leaving comments here saying "Please see here" (with the "here" as a link). If you see one, do not press the link, it will try to download something on your computer. I've already deleted two. Damn idiots ruining it for everyone. And yeah, the "Please see here" people: "Please kiss my ass!"

Okay, sorry, it had to be done. I've turned on word verification and comment moderation in the meantime. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming....

Ring Around a Rosey!

We got some rain this past week and the roses are all in bud and/or blooming like crazy! And for our enjoyment and edification I will be including info from the Antique Rose Emporium which is in Brenham TX, but has a catalog and ships roses to individuals and nurseries all over the US. I got several antique roses that were grown by them at a local nursery which has since closed. Oh, and several of my roses come via mail-order from Chamblee's Roses which is in the Rose Capital of Texas: Tyler (also in East Texas). We are going to take a long day trip tomorrow for wild-flower viewing and a huge antique/craft show festival that takes place in several towns between here and Houston, and since we will be in the area, I think we may try to stop by there. Himself does not know this yet, and I will definitely have to keep a tight schedule of photography and antiquing if I hope to succeed...

Here's my 'Souvenir de Malmaison':


A Bourbon Rose, from 1843. "Originally known as ‘Queen of Beauty and Fragrance’ this rose received its present name when one of the Grand Dukes of Russia obtained a specimen from the gardens at Malmaison for the Imperial Garden in St. Petersburg. ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ produces large, flat, quartered blossoms with petals of pale, almost flesh colored pink, and a delightful fragrance. The compact bush rarely grows more than three feet, seemingly spending all its energy on blooming rather than growing."



This is 'Distant Drums':

It's a shrub rose hybridized in the '80's by Griffith Buck, but I have a thing for lavender/brownish and two-tone roses. This as you can see has a cafe au'lait-ish center and lavender outer petals. The buds are exquisite. It's also scented--supposedly like myrrh, kinda spicy-sweet. I'm sure I got this from Chamblee's but they don't appear to carry it any more.

Last weekend I moved an arbor over in the Rose-Herb garden so it would support both 'Buff Beauty' (which sadly is not blooming yet) and 'Safrano' pictured here. That one is going nuts with the canes and the blooms, and I'm pretty sure it's not a climbing rose, so color me surprised that its canes are both longer and more abundant than 'Buff Beauty' ever since I planted them. I must fertilize 'Buff' more so it will catch up... Anyway, toward the left of the shot is the left arc of the green metal arbor to which I tied some canes, but there was also a big one shooting straight out in front that I pushed back out of the walking path with a trellis. I really should cut that one all the way back, but it had so many buds I figured I'd wait till it bloomed. Iris in the foreground came with the house.

Here's a closer look at some of the 'Safrano' blooms along with 'H.F. Young' clematis:

This is a Tea rose from 1839 (please note--this is not the same as a Hybrid Tea, which is a modern variety, many of which have been bred for shape and color of blooms to the detriment of scent and disease-resistance). " Though its parents are unknown, ‘Safrano’ is recorded by Roy Shepherd as 'the result of the first successful attempt to control parentage by hand pollination,' thereby introducing a new era in rose breeding. This rose has double, well scented flowers of bright fawn, with long-pointed buds. It was once described exhibiting 'lovely buds of sunset coloring... saffron to apricot in the bud, changing to pale buff... A pretty and hardy variety, worthy of a place in every collection...'."

The hummingbird feeder hung on that arbor has been very popular this week:

This is a female. We get black-chinned hummingbirds first (the males have a black band around the neck at the height of the chin and a deep purple spot on their throat) followed by ruby-throated, but the females of both have white/gray throats and are almost identical.

I'll try to get a picture of the 'Mutabilis' bush up here in the next couple of days; it didn't have a whole lot of open blooms earlier in the week. It's a climber and the longest canes were always falling off the fence, so I got another arbor and attached the longest ones to one side (they go almost to the top), and to the other side of the arbor I attached some really long canes of a dark red hybrid tea that my mother-in-law planted. From the looks of it, it may be a climber, but I dunno--it's not as vigorous in spreading out like 'Mutabilis' or the white climbing hybrid tea she planted out front ('John F. Kennedy') so it may just be a function of a relatively tall bush that I haven't pruned much...

March Madness Continues!

Right....so I'm just going to add more pictures to this as they come until the end of the month:


Starting last weekend, which is to say, the weekend before St. Pat's day, Himself and I started to expand the patio. In the background from the steps to the wall is what we did last fall when the addition to the house was completed. The strip of two rows in the foreground is what we just did--you can see the stepping stone molds we use. You mix up the concrete in a wheel-barrow (bag of Quickrete and enough water to make it like a thick soup; then you shovel it into the molds. After it's hardened enough to stay together, you can remove the molds. I then mixed up an extra liquid-y concrete mix to pour in bottom of the cracks so that weeds can't grow between them, and fill them up the rest of the way with sand so everything is level.

Well, it's back-breaking work, but I'll have you know that this past Friday (before Easter), I, me, myself, personally mixed 10 40 lb bags of concrete in succession and laid another whole row, and made free-form shapes to fill in at the ends and on the edges. Ahem. I am woman, hear me roar! There's a lot more to do, though, and I will post pics as it goes.

Here's some more pretty, pretty, flowahs!


The clematis (I have many plants) are coming back up from the ground and here's one blooming right at the base of a rose bush with artemesia in the background (note Mr. Bug on the petal on the left):


Here's a 'Pink Diamond' Amaryllis. I think this is one of the ones Annabelle donated to my garden to get them away from some dreaded bulb-eating plague of beetles she had in hers. Here it is, Annabelle, all happy and healthy!!

Behind it is that cactus that should bloom with beautiful fuschia flowers in May....I can't wait!


These poppies are really cool--notice they have white picotee on the edge. What's up with that?


Oh, here's the 'Pink Diamond' Amaryllis I have around back. It has a 4-bloom stalk on it. Magnifique!


And here's the fancy-schmancy 'La Paz' Amaryllis:


And finally, for it is now the last day of March; I now have a pink corn poppy blooming with the red ones:


We've had lots of rain in the last week and the wildflower forecast for April is looking up. We are starting to see bluebonnets along the roadsides. Yayyyyy! Hopefully we can go on a spring "color tour" soon!