Apologies for my absence this past week, it’s been busy! I had my birthday last week, and this past weekend, I got engaged!
And oh my goodness, if I thought there was a lot of planning and decision-making involved in gardening…it’s a cake walk compared to all that goes into planning such a special day.
(I have a feeling picking flowers may be the most fun (and one of the harder decisions) for me!)
This little Lemon Basil (success at growing basil from seed! finally!) has enjoyed the shade of the carrot greens while adapting to the ways of the outside world.
These two characters made me laugh when I saw them. It takes some special kind of talent to hang from the very thing you’re eating.
I used to pull the snails when I found them, dropping them in soapy water or taking them down to the pond. Then upon closer observation I noticed they left all of my food alone, and spent their time devouring the spent vines, the decomposing leaves, and the other not-quite-yet-composted goodies on the surface. Since then, I’ve left them to their own devices in the garden. Hopefully they’re not the ones responsible for the Squash Disappearing Act?
My guess is that if Tarzan lived here, he’d swing from morning glory vines. I cannot tell you how satisfying it was to finally find the base of this invasion and tear it out. I have been back in No Time To Garden Land, but a cold front blew in last night just in time for a free Saturday. (Cold fronts in Texas this time of year means a high of only 92° AND a low of 60° AND a near constant breeze. Which translates to the first time we’ve been able to open the windows in the house since April.. .for an hour.) Posts of the progress soon!
We walk our dog every evening. (DH also walks him each morning.) I often wish I had my camera handy on our walks, but most often I don’t (and quite often, it’s dark by the time we go on the prowl.)
Not tonight! After feeding the ducks the snails and caterpillar, we wandered down the greenbelt that follows the creek. It had rained yesterday and again last night, and the pond had again swelled to its tippy toes and started the creek up again.
When it’s still raining, runoff flows down the left branch as well.
We were quickly losing the light, and the glow through the thickets were magical.
The flood a few weeks back made some changes to the landscape around the pond and creek, one of the smaller of which was relocating many a’ horse apple to a new location.
(If you’re saying, “umm…what’s a horse apple?” I didn’t know either until we first encountered them in this neighborhood and went a’Googling. They have quite a neat history in the USA.)
They’re really interesting to look at by themselves, and they grow like pull-a-part rolls!
Oh! Remember that bridge I showed you during the flash flood that I was worried would float away? Here’s how small that creek is supposed to be (with the bridge still in tact.)
We left the greenbelt at this point, and wandered up the neighborhood toward home. A few strides up the hill and suddenly DH exclaimed, “Watch out!”
I froze.
“What?”
He pointed.
How adorable is that? He even had a “big” brother.
Up the hill a little further are some of the happiest looking (and healthiest looking) agave I’ve seen in a neighborhood.
With the light fading, I’ll leave you with the pink blossoms ablaze in the setting rays…
One could philosophize as to whether the leaf is missing, or the caterpillar that ate it is. I would simply argue that both are long gone. DH was upset enough that as soon as I found the perpetrator, the perpetrator was no more. No chance for a photo op for the hungriest caterpillar.
Not only was it the hungriest I’ve seen (our poor small pecan lost nearly every leaf in such a short span of time) it was (likely as a direct result of its voracious eating) also the largest caterpillar I’ve ever seen.
If you haven’t seen the caterpillar for a Sphinx Moth before, I hope you get to some day (outside of your own gardens, that is!)
It was easily more than two inches long, and bigger around than my thumb. Not unlike this photo I found:
I am grateful, however, that I didn’t come upon it when it had reached this stage:
As that guy actually creeps me out a bit.
The one in our yard had unfortunately nearly finished off every leaf by the time I found it.
But thankfully, a few short weeks later, the tree looks to be making a solid come-back.
Lesson learned: Don’t leave your trees to fend for themselves.
I’d never really considered checking trees for caterpillars or other pests before. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, there are so many trees that to do so would be a full-time job that never ended. Here though, where our trees are more sparse, it would be easy to simply do a quick walk-by and make sure that I found the smooth criminal (or fuzzy!) long before an entire tree was in danger of being eaten.
The Thai basil from the front bed that froze to the ground last December and showed no signs of returning?
Yeah. It hasn’t returned.
It has finally had some self-seeded sprouts reach maturity though! The bees around here must love licorice, because they cannot get enough of the blossoms on these ones.
Speaking of self-seeding herbs, it took me two years of trying to get my Texas Hummingbird Sage seeds to sow, another year after that to get them to put on their first real leaves before kicking the pot, and finally last year, in my fourth year, with the last of the seeds in the packet, four seedlings reached transplant strength…only to lose three their first night out in the world. You had better believe that that fourth transplant last year received some serious babysitting and careful attention!
Lessons learned?
All of that effort finally paid off when it survived the summer, flowered, and went to seed. Then came the next test – would I have to order another seed packet? Or would it really prove it was “Texas” Hummingbird Sage and successfully self-sow?
We don’t eat this herb (yet.) It has a curious flavor profile to DH, and I downright don’t like it. What I do like? Those beautiful scarlet blossoms that emerge from the Japanese-Temple-style buds.
July around here was lovely. We stopped with the triple digits for a few weeks. It rained (yay!) multiple times. It was actually a summer I could call “lovely” by Texas standards and was such a mental relief to so many local residents after the built up anxiety of having another year like last year.
That loveliness translated into a resurgence of growth in my Heat Bed! Totally unexpected, and such a pleasant surprise.
This little gentleman tried to die in his pot on the porch. Then he nearly died his first week in the ground. Again he looked like a thicket of dead twigs nearing the end of June. He’s even happier now than he looks here.
And this one has managed to bloom and re-bloom, grow and grow some more, and barely blinks when it hits 100. (Shh…it secretly gets to hide in the late afternoon shade of the Fragrant Mimosa.)
There are a few mysteries growing in my wild bed that are starting to look more like trees than is appropriate for a plant living in such close quarters with the garage foundation and front walk.
Any ideas as to the general variety? If they’re this intent on surviving (and miraculously non-invasive and yet invading my bed) I’d like to attempt a transplant. If they are invasive, I’ll have to turn them into soil food.
Nancy Drew requested a close-up on the first one:
And from a distance:
Second on the agenda for Encyclopedia Brown is this one with a less tree-like habit:
And the Hardy Boys had to have their turn as well. I’m fresh out of Tree-like Mysteries, but here’s a tall mystery all the same:
You can tell how busy I’ve been not-gardening…think the Holly may need a trim?
This is not the whole story. The majority of the story is shrouded in mystery and intrigue. This is only the latest chapter.
My mother has an Oxalis. It lives in a pot. If memory serves, the pot lives atop a stereo in the storm corner of the House on a Hill. The stereo plays its stories for the House on the Hill. Ballads and rocky stories. Long sad songs, dancing in the kitchen songs, and teenage acoustic love songs. The Oxalis soaks it all in, root to clover-leaf-tip. It turns up its leaves in protest at times. Turning a sea of dark cheeks to the House. Other days, the sun shines, the wood warms, the rainbows dance along the dust motes and the Oxalis unfurls a blossom. Then two. Then seven. This dance has been going on for decades now. Decades. Plural.
I vaguely recall the Oxalis before the House on the Hill. It resides in a foggy recollection of an indoor passage between dark wood and historic plaster. Although that may have been where the spider plant nested. For all of the spit-shined memories of that life, the Oxalis resides in the recesses. Years before that life, this life, my life, the Oxalis was. It was with my mother for decades prior. Now years ago, not a decade yet, she carefully, lovingly, removed a few of its tubers. A few pockets of life. A few layers of story. She packaged them up. Each in its own small vessel. A twine-handled gift bag, from a birthday or a shower, one carried on in my hand through the air to Texas. The other found its way to a quaint urban kitchen.
My chapter found its home on a mini-fridge in the living room. It inhaled, exhaled, and swelled within its confines. I went on the prowl. A hermit crab for a new shell – not for me, but for this. This life. This story. I found one. Just right. I brought it home only to discover it couldn’t breathe. Carefully. Ever so delicately, as delicately as you can with power tools, I drilled through the shell. It held. I drilled again. Still it held. A third and fourth time. The shell remained whole. The Oxalis moved in. It moved back to the mini-fridge. I waited.
Not once did it flash its upset blush, but neither did it share a blossoming beam of joy with the sun. Again it moved, and again. To a kitchen window sill, to a bathroom’s frosty light, to a guest bed’s bright view of the world it stayed green, but I wasn’t sure it knew how to dance. I wasn’t sure it cared what music was playing, which storms were coming, or knew that wood could warm in the rays.
And then it was too late. They’d found it. They moved in like an army. Soft, white as snow, and innocent as the Ice Queen. I tried to fight them off. I marched into battle each morning, but each night they would emerge with renewed forces. I coaxed the Oxalis to find its strength. It fought valiantly. It drank the elixirs. It sacrificed stalk after stalk in an attempt to save the rest. It withstood painful downpours and finally chemically burns until it could take no more. With a heavy heart weighted with loss and defeat, I set the scarred, empty soil, still in its shell, outside. I couldn’t stand to bury it just yet.
Spring came and went. Summer landed with an earth-vibrating heat, and the empty shell baked in the outdoor oven. It was the least of my worries. I scurried here and there, begging my seedlings to hang on. I arranged shelter for them in the garden. I collected empty pots full of lost causes on the front porch waiting for an afternoon to re-sow. To re-plant. To try again.
It was months later before the heat broke and I’d thought I’d found such an afternoon. I soaked the empty pots gathered on the porch in preparation. I gathered my seeds. I gathered my notes. I gathered myself. And I was called away. I was needed over here. That bed needed me there. Work needed me out of town. And again. And again.
And there it was. A little bent hiccup. A little elbow of green. I gasped. I showed DH. He grinned at me and nodded. The Oxalis was returning. Marching slowly, steadily, it was returning and this time, it knew just what to do.
plumdirt 