Mexicali Rose Buds July 20, 2014

My MexicaliRose is blooming.  The buds are as pretty as the flowers.  This is an extremely aggressive plant.  In fact, it's a bit alarming how fast it is spreading down the Boardwalk.

Philippine Lilies July 27, 2014

My Philippine Lilies are in full bloom right now.  So pretty.  I have many seedlings in the flowerbeds right now.  They will be of blooming size next year.  Each lily bloom produces many hundreds of seeds, so every year I sow them in different places.  These lilies like some shade.

Oakleaf Hydrangea July 20, 2014

When the Oakleaf Hydrangeas began to bloom in the spring I wrote that I love this plant because it has 4 seasons of interest.  With spring come the beautiful white blooms.  Now that it is summer the flowers have faded to a pink-brown color.  And they will remain on the plant like this for several months.  I think they are pretty like this. 

Tiger Swallowtail July 20, 2014

The Tiger Swallowtail is my favorite butterfly.  The Giant Swallowtail is really pretty also, but more common.  I don't see many Tigers.  This one is sipping nectar from my Almon Verbena.

Orange Flowers July 20, 2014

My beloved zinnias:  nothing says summer like a zinnia.

Above, this is milkweed.  I'm always ready for the Monarch butterflies, but they have been really scarce the last three years or so.  I have lots of Queen butterflies visiting my garden, and they are in the milkweed butterfly family as well.

Above and below, this is Flame Acanthus.  Hummingbirds love it, and it is the larval food for the Crimson Patch and Texas Crescent butterflies.  This is a deciduous perennial.  And it spreads like crazy.  It will root wherever it touches the ground, and it sets seed.  I find it growing in lots of flowerbeds, how it got there is anybody's guess - bird poop, wind, etc.  I cut mine back with hedge clippers just like a shrub.  It doesn't mind at all. 

Phillippine Lilies Loaded with Blooms July 20, 2014

Thanks to the Philippine Lily's phenomenal seed-setting capability, I have these beautiful plants growing everywhere in various stages of maturity.  Each flower, after it fades, sets hundreds of seeds inside a very cool-looking pod.  In addition to Tiger Lilies (which the voles seem to love since I cannot get them to return every year), Philippine Lilies are very well-suited to the south's hot weather.  Clay soil, sandy soil - they do fine in either.  In the evenings these lovely flowers release their scent, and the hummingbird moths love them.

Waste Not Want Not

I filled some old shoes with soil and stuck a couple of succulents into them.  No sense in throwing them away.

Comfrey July 20, 2014

Comfrey contains allantoin, which promotes the growth of new cells. Knowing this, comfrey is a go to herb for skin issues.  Use comfrey for eczema and insect bites, athlete's foot, and dry, cracked feet or hands.  It is also used as fertilizer, and it is an excellent compost material.  Comfrey has a deep ta root, and it will spread.  Some people plant it in a pot and sink the pot in the ground in order to prevent Comfrey from spreading aggressively.  I've never had a problem with spreading - the voles love Comfrey root.  I can't keep it alive unless it is planted in a pot.

Zinnia Border July 20, 2014

Zinnias are favorites of the butterflies.  August is the peak of butterfly season in my area, and I want to be ready.  I have stands of zinnias in other areas that are not quite blooming - it's best to stagger their plantings because they eventually get really huge and start to look kind of ratty.  So when I pull them up there are plenty to take their place. 

Rose of Attar Scented Geraniums July 20, 2014

These scented Geraniums are in a pot in the Medicine Garden.  Scented geraniums can be used in teas much like chamomile for soothing stress and anxiety.  They can be potted up and set in windowsills to keep insects away - their essential oils repel mosquitoes.  These varieties of geraniums will bloom like their close, more showy cousins, but they are grown for their wonderful scented leaves rather than their flowers.

Views of the New Deck and Surrounding Areas July 20, 2014

My husband built the deck over a three weekend span of time.  It looks fantastic, and it is a huge visual improvement.

Above, this area where the table and chairs is located is effectively encircled by the deck on one side and flowerbeds on all the other sides.  It has the potential to be kind of pretty if I give it some attention.

The arbor is completely covered by wisteria now.  In fact it is quite dark under since all the sun is blocked out.

Weekend at the Farm July 19 - 20, 2014

This is my Paw Paw tree that I planted among some African Hostas.  The armadillos are already uprooting the hostas.  Just when they look great and have totally filled out for the season the armadillos find them - every year.  This weekend I'm going to surround the bed with chicken wire.  It will look terrible, and my husband will hate it.
I drove up by myself on Thursday evening after work and stayed until Friday afternoon.  Went back to Houston for dinner at my parents' house.  Gretchen and Becket are visiting.  Gretchen is leaving Beckett for two weeks while she goes to L.A. to make a movie with Annie Potts based on the events surrounding Beckett's birth and my sister's death.  It's a comedy, not sure what's funny about that, but if anyone can make it funny its is Gretchen, she is a good writer.  Back to Burton Saturday morning with my husband and mother-in-law - her birthday weekend.

• Friday I noticed something on top of the pool skimmer.  Went to investigate.  It was a vole, stranded on a little piece of the skimmer that floats on top of the water.  It obviously fell in while trying to drink from the pool and managed to crawl up out of the water.  I've never gotten to take such a close look at one.  They live underground and, I surmise, come up out of the ground to drink water at night.  They are practically blind.  I fished it out with the net, considered killing it (they certainly have killed lots of my plants!), but I set it free instead.
• It has rained 3 inches over the last several days.  Wonderful.  It's wearing my poor husband out with all the mowing, but rain is always a good thing.
• Friday I worked in the Orchard from 7:30 until 1:30.  It was threatening rain the whole time but never rained.  Cut away dead blackberry vines, pulled weeds, and turned over several flower beds.  Hauled away three truckloads of debris to the burn pile.
• Came inside and washed and boiled 12 8 oz. preserve jars.  I filled them all with honey to bring home to Houston.  
• Pulled weeds.
• Went to the hardware store and bought a few succulents.  I planted them in an old pair of shoes that I'm using as planters. 
• Saturday morning I went to the grocery store and bought ingredients to make a rabbit ragu.  We have so many rabbits, we might as well eat some of them.  
• Pool sweep is broken.  I guess that will be a $1,000 which makes that a disastrous event.
• Sunday morning I got up early, drank coffee, and watched the sun rise.  
• Staked a couple of my Castor Bean plants in the Vegetable Garden that fell over during the heavy rains we got last week.
• Spread grass clippings over several beds in the Orchard. 
• Trimmed away all the plants that were leaning over the Boardwalk - Sweetspire, Mexicali Rose, and Turk's Cap.
• Pulled up Blackberry vines that were growing amongst my cannas next to the Orchard and cut back some that were leaning over the cannas. 
• Pulled weeds, pulled weeds, pulled weeds.
• Made Spanish Bean soup and beef broth on Sunday.
• My husband shot and cleaned a rabbit.  I made rabbit ragu on Sunday evening for dinner using the broth that I simmered all day.  I thought it was delicious, but traditional ragus have clove and cinnamon spices in them, and my husband cannot abide the flavor.  The rabbit carcass was thrown into the woods.  Rocky found it and carried the head around proudly in his mouth for most of the morning.
• Cut back lantana around the pool.
• Started clearing out the flowerbed outside the master bedroom door, but it was too hot to get it finished.
• Mopped and cleaned the mater bathroom.
• Headed back to Houston on Monday morning.

Mojito Colocasia July 19, 2014

I love this variety of elephant ears so much that I planted some further down the Boardwalk and also in the Shade Garden.  Above: gingers, oakleaf hydrangea, Mexicali Rose, and gingers line the upper section of the Boardwalk.

My Honey Harvest July 12, 2014

 We got over three gallons of honey this year.  I'm going to harvest again in the fall.

Weekend at the Farm July 11 - 13, 2014

 Janine gave me these bulbs.  This is the first time this one has bloomed.  It's so pretty!  I'm not sure what it is.  She told me it was a crinum, but I've never seen one like this before.

Went up on Friday morning.  Stayed through Sunday and left from there Monday morning to go to work.

• Spent Friday morning working in the Orchard.  Cleaning up the Orchard was my primary focus all weekend.  Turned over the soil and pulled weeds in the bed with the Mayhaw tree.  Covered the soil with two bags of grass clippings that I filched out of yards by my house in Houston.  Grass clippings rot pretty quickly, but they make pretty mulch for a while. And they are free.  Trimmed the blackberry vines in the rear bed.  Pulled up Brown Eyed Susans in all the beds.  They have all died and gone to seed.  Cut back Mexican Hat that was leaning into the paths.  Pulled up Larkspur, it has all gone to seed.  Still lots more to do, but this is hard work, so once it got to noon I quit.  Began again on Saturday morning.
• Noticed my Harlequin Glorybower has buds on it.  Three years and finally some blooms.  This must be the year of blooming because my Mexicali Rose has buds on it as well for the first time in as many years.
• Watched a pair of Cardinals feeding each other. Very sweet.
• Dead headed the Butterfly Bush.
• Saturday morning I got out to the Orchard by 7:30.  Worked until 11:00.  Cleared out another bed and spread leaf mulch around the edges, left the center open for zinnias seeds.  Cut away dead blackberry vines.  Wasn't as bad as last year because I wore my rose gloves.  They are elbow length and leather.  Stickers don't penetrate them.  Lots more to do.  I haven't tackled the biggest bed yet.  I'll do that one tomorrow morning.
• Harvested my honey on Saturday.  I used a couple of pieces of equipment that my neighbors loaned me.  (They live next door, and they have two hives. )  One of them was a board that fit over a container.  A nail protrudes from the top.  You rest the super on the nail and you can easily scrape the wax off the comb, the rotate the super and scrape the wax off the other side.  Simple, but a definite improvement over sitting the super in the sink.  The wax gets everywhere when you use the sink.    They also told me that the bees will clean out the spinner.  The spinner is about three feet tall, and it gets covered with wax and honey.  It's basically a nightmare to clean.  Problem solved!
• Josh and I are going to make mead with some of the honey.  I poured a lot of it into two one-gallon jugs because I didn't have enough preserve jars.  A gallon of honey weighs about twelve pounds.  A typical mead uses about fifteen gallons of honey.  We harvested a little over three gallons from my hive.  I'll give a lot of it away.  But I'll keep enough to make mead.  That should be fun. 
• Sunday morning I tackled the biggest bed in the Orchard.  I totally cleared it except for a few clumps of perennials.  I edged it with leaf mulch and left the center area clear for zinnia seeds.  There are still four or five beds in the Orchard that need to be cleared out.  But it looks much better.  I harvested a baggy full of mammoth sunflower seeds last year that I plan to sow in all the beds remaining to be cleared.
• There are pumpkin vines crawling all over my mulch pile.  They seeded themselves from a  pumpkin that was thrown into the mulch pile last year.  The vines are rooting into the mulch at the leaf intersections - I didn't know they would do that.  I've never been able to grow a pumpkin despite many tries, so I don't want to pull up the vines.  But I can't use my mulch or I will break the vines. It's a dilemma because this time of year the weeds grow really agressively.    
• Spread zinnia seeds in all the beds I cleared.  
• Sprayed herbicide in the Orchard, the Vegetable Garden, and around the pool.
• Mopped the kitchen and dining area - honey is sticky!
• Transplanted some red Turk's Cap from the Boardwalk Gardens to the Shade Garden.
• Transplanted some Mexicali Rose from the Boardwalk Gardens to the round bed in the Infinity Garden that has been empty forever.  The deck is finished, and it has created an enclosed area between the Infinity Garden and the deck that has the potential of being very charming.  I need that bed to have things growing in it to complete the look. 
• Dead headed in the Star Garden.
• Thinned zinnia seedlings that planted over the last several weekends.
• Weeded in the Star Garden and mulched in the bare spots I created.  If I don't mulch, the weeds are back in a matter of days.  Everything grows so quickly in the summer.
• My husband and I swam in the pool for a long time on Sunday. 
• The gingers are about to bloom.  That's always a pretty spectacle.  I have them growing along the Boardwalk, in the Star Garden, in the Shade Garden, and in the Infinity Garden. 
• The armadillos are back, digging up everything, leaving plants gasping in the sun.