Category Archives: Not Vegetables
Bill builds a spire to the sky.
Napoleon has conquered a new pot.
He’s come long way from the 2″ pot twelve years ago. Surviving the odyssey in the back of an old Ford through Death Valley in August. Landing in a sink of steaming hot soapy water (and coming out swinging.) Cats and dogs and freezes and forgetfulness have all taken their pot shots and here he stands. And there stand his progeny in the nearby pots.
These aren’t those.
I traveled to Houston this week on business and the wild flowers called to me. They wanted to speak to y’all. They wanted to share their view of the world with each of you. I hadn’t packed my camera, nor did I schedule a spare moment to pull over to the side of the road. Boy, doesn’t that say something.
I didn’t schedule a single moment to spare.
As a result, I have blurry pictures taken through a dirty car window speeding by on a windy day. So…low resolution splotches and splashes of color. So instead, I will merely share their names with you, and within such names a link to images from others. Other people who thought to pack cameras. Other people who allowed buffer in their day. Who took the time to take pause. I hope I’ve learned my lesson. I fear I will be relearning it time and time again, the hard way, in the weeks and years to come. I won’t say that I didn’t try though. I have and I will continue to try.
Bluebonnets, that for nearly a decade I would accidentally call blue bells, carpet the roadsides. Other roadsides prefer a warmer shade of blossom in the form of Indian Paintbrush. Not to be confused with Downy Paintbrush. Then there are the Winecups and the Moss Verbena adding some purple to the scene. We can’t neglect the yellow of the Engelmann’s Daisy, the Texas Star, or the countless other yellows soon to pop. Or the white of the blackfoot daisy or the wrinkly poppy that are coming soon. The summers here may turn brown and dry and drab, but the springs contend with the best of the springs out there.
I did have my camera this morning though and there are things up and about on home turf. Stretching their arms to the sky in a morning yawn. Wriggling their toes deeper into the soil with the help of the sprinkler. Working on their tan in the sunbeams or flexing their muscles in the wind, the growth has started to outpace the pill bug population…or so I hope.
Elian the Avocado is working on his next few inches.
An accidentally acquired navel orange is giving it a go in hopes of a bee or two.
These leeks have an rather cumbersome bedfellow…
The Peas That Nearly Weren’t are in need of a stick to climb.
And it’s past time to mow thanks to the timing of the rain lately and the alignment of naps and daylight.
Thankfully, the baby monitor that I left to fend for itself in the flood waters from the sky has miraculously recovered so I am once again free to roam about once or twice a day on weekends. Or as I say, “I’m going to go play outside now.”
Equinox and then some.
There’s also a super moon and a solar eclipse today. Busy day in the universe!
It’s been a rough day in the household today with life’s little hiccups all piling on heavy this week and culminating this morning. Nothing catastrophic. Nothing tragic. Just the wearing building and building too long.
It’s cloudy here with a light mist, so likely no eclipse or super moon for me. If you spot either, please do share.
I planted some of the tomato transplants last night with a baby in my lap. She was mesmerized. We helped DH reattach the fence to a reset fence post between plantings. I’ve sown carrots and beets that haven’t come up, and my peas are fighting the good fight against the snails though I’m not sure they’ll come out victorious. Chadwick’s lettuce is proving to be as reliable and sturdy as his cherry tomatoes, as they are the only seeds to sprout so far. And the teeny strawberry sprouts have the most charming little real leaves now.
Now if only the internet could transport scent, we’d be set.
Thanks to Tina, I believe that I’ve learned this lady’s name: Martha Gonzalez.
I’d like to thank the academy…
I missed the Oscars this year. I’m not the biggest fan. I have never attended a party for the Oscars like folks do on occasion. But I do enjoy the inventive dresses and the sincerity of gratitude in speeches. I like watching folks have fun and it generally appears as though they do. That, and not watching commercials leaves me rather out of touch with any movies that have come out in the past however long and they show nice clips of each film. It’s like a fashionable comedy show full of trailers and gratitude.
But I missed it this year. Only the backstage cameras were streaming online for free. We have had cable television twice before. For three weeks back in 2006 wherein we watched one movie and cancelled the subscription, and for six months twelve years ago when it was included in our rent payment and we couldn’t afford any other form of entertainment most of the time. We had an antenna for a few years, but the roof on this house is so very high and well, #becausebabies.
I’m rambling.
I won an award. The friendly and thoughtful NovaScotiaRoots awarded me a prize. As a result, I am honored and am to answer ten questions:
1) Favorite flower
Pride of Barbados became my favorite flower in August of 2003 behind a Taco Bell in Phoenix, Arizona during a gasoline shortage. I was fortunate enough to have my camera handy and mindful enough to use it that day to capture this photo.
I didn’t learn its name for eight years.
It’s become quite popular in the past four years and can be found in many landscapes around Central Texas these days.
2) Favorite veggie
Oh, man. Really? Ummm…that’s hard. To eat? I don’t know that I can choose. To grow? Also…eesh. I like them all! Let’s pretend I chose one and move along.
3) Favorite garden picture (insert it if you can)
This isn’t my garden, or even a garden really at all, but each May in parcels of the valley around where I spent my teenage years there are fields of red clover to take the breath away and replace it with an awe of the magic in the world.
Red Clover near my folks’ house
4) Favorite season
Summer in the Pacific Northwest. The fields are brown, the trees are green, the air is hot and dry all day and crisp and cool all night. The streams gush with melted snow and the music is always perfect for the windows down on back roads.
5) Biggest defeat in your garden
Growing non-veggies from seed. Herbs and flowers have a much steeper learning curve and I’ve yet to take the time to study. Thanks to a the lovely and talented author of Palm Rae Urban Potager I have a new toy book to play with read all about such matters.
6) Biggest challenge in your garden
Climate. But that is probably pretty common, no matter the climate. I suppose unless it’s soil. It gets hotter than hot here, for longer than long. “Full sun” means “morning sun” here and with the heat comes the need for water through a constant drought. Hot peppers need shade cloth before July is over simply to stay alive. They won’t produce again until September usually if I can keep them alive through the summer months.
7) Your next big project
I’m six months into my first big project at the new house. Time moves differently with a little one and what I previously would’ve been able to accomplish in two weekends will take the better part of a year, I think. The project? Building the vegetable garden.
8) Your gardening partner you are most grateful for
For all of the tough questions, this one is a no-brainer. My DH is the best gardening partner I could ask for. He’s full of great ideas, solid instincts, and is no stranger to hard work. He was the main caretaker for the garden all last year spring when I was pregnant, arranged a weekend of garden building for my birthday this year, and helps me remember to keep the sprouts alive these dark winter days. Yesterday was our twelfth anniversary. He rarely gets me red roses (not to say he rarely gets me flowers, for that would be an untruth.) But sometimes, and he knows just when, they really hit the spot.
9) Your favourite quote
As a bit of a quote-a-holic, this is also a tough question! I have a few that I keep handy to remind me of what I find important. I’ll share some of those:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
― Walt Whitman
Ok, I must stop here, because if I don’t, I’ll be posting quote after quote as though I were planting them to thin later.
10) What are you grateful for?
It’s interesting you ask this. I’ve recently taken on a personal challenge to be consciously grateful (and somehow put that gratitude forth) every day. I’m grateful for the health and happiness that there is in the world, and the patience, hope, and healing where there isn’t health or happiness. I’m grateful for blue skies when they come and rain that is deep and short. For earth to dig in and songs to sing. For my memories and my future, my family and my friends, and all of the wondrous creatures that make up this beautifully weird world we live on.
August, nearly gone.
Things I find hard to believe these days:
– August is nearly over
– How mild this summer has been
– How envious (and grateful) I am of (for) other people’s gardens and the fact that they share
– What starting from scratch looks like with this much space
I’m sorry, summer is almost over? When did that happen? And what kind of “summer” has this been for Texas, you ask? A ridiculously mild one. Here’s a graphic from last year around mid-July.
Keep in mind, that was mid-August, and by the end of the summer in 2011, we had had a stretch of 100 or more degrees that lasted 27 days, with a total of 90 days over 100 degrees that year.
By the same time in July this year? Zero 100 degree days. It was glorious.
Other people’s gardens (and farms) have been keeping us in delicious squash, peppers, tomatoes, melon, peaches, greens, beets, and various other goodies…like blackberries.
And so the planning begins in earnest. Trying to recall through the fog left behind by our adorable sleep thief which fall veggies to sow when and wondering if I can push things around to fit into the timeline of still needing to actually build the beds. I pull out my fall garden seeds to see what I want to sow this year. Of course the answer is “all of them.” We’ll see how that goes. Also, I don’t think I can justify buying any fall garden seeds this year…
But I can read through one of my favorite gardening books while I plan how to maximize space, balanced with aesthetics, keeping in mind that a 5′ wide bed was wider than I could reach to the center of at the last house.
And try and make it to the library for a book on monarch gardening (unless one of you clever folks knows of a useful website on the topic?) After listening to a piece on the radio about their continued decline due to Round Up (and other chemical) usage on GMO crops in the Midwest taking out their larval food, I’m reminded that not only do I want food for the bees, but for the butterflies as well. I’ve seen a tiger swallow tail or two, and we have about 25 resident dragon flies practicing maneuvers each evening in the backyard, but no Monarchs. We’re in their migratory flight path, and every species I know of likes road trip food. Just because they can’t knock on my door and ask for food doesn’t mean I shouldn’t feed them.
Hopefully there will be some “breaking ground” posts in the next month or so. In the meantime, thanks for keeping up on your own blogs to keep me excited for y’all and inspired for the work to come.
A peek at the new ‘scape.
I managed to weed the three front flower beds the other day during a particularly well-timed (and lengthy) nap, leaving the little yellow flower all the room it could hope for. I’ll need to prune the roses, as they’re a bit leggy and poking their way onto the walk. Rose pruning where I grew up was in September. I have a feeling it’s different here. I’ll have to look unless any of you knowledgeable folk (who seem to have evacuated my area to cooler climes!) might know?
I’ve yet to mow (which I am looking forward to, I’ve always loved mowing) so am finding myself with a solid grasp of where the St. Augustine stops and the crab grass begins. I’ve been eyeing the wind and the shadows, the rain run off and the lengthy hours of sun. Hopefully by the end of summer when I start to build some beds I will have decided on the best spots, but only time will tell.
We’ve been having cooler temperatures (only low 90s most days) and it’s actually rained at least once a week it seems for the past long while. The fire flies started in late April and are still glowing their way through thickets and underbrush. I first saw them this year the day before I became a mother. I told the child in me that they’d better hurry up or they’d miss the fire flies this year. She definitely hurried up and here we are, two months later, and while she cannot yet see them herself, I still point them out on our evening walk. I await the squeals of glee next year when she sees one for the first time.
Thoughtful goodbyes and new beginnings…
We moved on Monday. First of all, packing (and attempting to unpack) with a six week old who is just learning to be laid down for longer than ten minutes without melting…is an adventure. We’re making progress with a lot of creative problem solving and gratitude for grandparental help.
Saying goodbye to my first real outside garden is a mixed bag. It’s full of green tomatoes and baby peppers. The soup beans are only half-dried on the vine. The garlic aren’t done.
But the strawberries are done, the lettuce has bolted, and the three year old beets may actually be done giving us greens…
And the new house has so much space to play in…so much potential. Forget the 100 square foot bed I built, I could have ten of them! And still have room for DH’s miniature fruit orchard, a grass pad, and a kiddie pool.
So please join me, in a near-final farewell to this garden before I embark on the prepping and planning involved in turning a blank slate into happy beds full of tasty food.
The sage that wouldn’t die. We planted this 4″ sage in six inches of soil with a concrete foundation on one side and a sidewalk on the other, that bakes in the afternoon sun. It grew to take over the sidewalk and break three feet in height. DH chopped it down. It looks nice and happy again already.
Serrano peppers amidst the tomato jungle.
Some San Marzano tomatoes waiting to ripen.
One of many bell pepper plants getting busy…
The jalapenos spicing things up.
The lettuce (red romaine, cimmaron, little gem, and others) getting ready for next year.
Then we move to the front yard…
Delicate lavender.
Moss verbena making a go of it.
I forget this one’s name…
I won’t be around to see if this zinnia actually survives the heat long enough to bloom. (Or if the new tenants water it to give it a chance.)
The nasturtiums usually grow, flower, and finish up months prior. I’m not holding out hope this one will bloom…oh who am I kidding, of course I am!
Don’t worry, Bill the Lime came with us. (Although he’s pretty upset after that surprise freeze we got late in the season while we were out of town. We’ll need to give him a lot of love and a good pruning.
The raspberry bush (that doesn’t make raspberries) also came along. Perhaps putting it in the ground will make it bloom?
Oscar the Meyer lemon tree will hopefully not mind the move and give us some tasty treats in a few months.
The rue, ruefully, had to stay.
I haven’t seen another Mexican oregano for sale since I picked this one up nearly five years ago. I’ll have to try my hand at sourcing (and sowing) some from seed.
I did save extra seeds from my butterfly weed, so the new house will get to enjoy these “orange molar flowers” as DH calls them.
The fragrant mimosa decided to put out a late round of blooms (it blooms months ago as well) with all the rain and unseasonably cool (read: low 80s during the day, high 60s at night – downright chilly! And long gone. We’re into days in the mid 90s and nights in the high 70s now, and we’ll continue to rise another 10 degrees on both the high and the low.)
The larkspur was all done by Memorial Day last year, but is hanging on still.
The blanketflower is making quite the showing this year. This is one plant. The fields are alit in orange petals along the roadsides.
I don’t remember this daisy-cousin’s name.
I hope the tenants enjoy gardening…
And for anyone yearning for a new photo, the little gardener is now six weeks old.
Bill the Sunbird
Bill, the lime tree, comes inside each winter. Most years, he serves double duty as Christmas Tree and air freshener. This year my folks gifted us with a noble fir from their neck o’ the woods and Bill was off the hook.
He spends his winter days dropping leaves and making buds. I don’t know enough about lime trees to know if this is normal behavior or not, but it’s worked for him these past years. He’s a Persian Lime, so his fruit is less tart than some varieties, larger than store limes, and on occasion it is sweet enough to simply eat. Usually we relish his hard work by adding it to drinks (fresh juice, sparkling water) or squeezing it atop Pad Thai or grilled chicken.
He is still working on one final lime from the fall season, and has gone bananas (or would it be limes?) getting ready for this year.
Each flower bud starts ever so shy and tiny and then swells like a popcorn kernel. Before bursting forth into a five-pointed snowy star, a single droplet of nectar forms to attract any willing pollinators.
The nectar shines in the sunlight with hope and promise.
Although with no pollinators in the house, I’m not sure it’s a necessary function for harvest as he has already set a few dozen limes and more buds are breaking.
What, if anything, do you bring indoors for the winter months?
plumdirt 