Pretty Apple Blossoms February 25, 2018

Pretty Plum Tree February 25, 2018

One of my plum trees looked so pretty this weekend.  The other two plum trees are loaded with buds, and they will be in full bloom this week.

Bears Breeches February 25, 2018

I'm always looking for large-leaved plants.  I just love them.  Bears Breeches are shade-loving and clump-forming.  They send up tall spikes of flowers, white with purple bracts.  I planted four of them over the past two weeks.  In late summer they start to look pretty ratty.  Cut away all the leaves and they will sprout new leaves and look good all through the fall and into the winter.

 

Spotted Dead Nettle 'Orchid Frost' February 25, 2018

This spotted dead nettle is a shade-loving ground cover.  I'm always looking for low-growing plants, for some reason I have a difficult time finding them (or perhaps more accurately I have a difficult time growing them successfully).  This is pretty and it has purple flowers.  The light color will show up very well in the shade.  

Dead nettle is an herb.  This flowering plant possesses high amounts of tannins and has been effective for dressing injuries,  cuts and burns owing to its anti-inflammatory as well as astringent attributes.  In earlier days, dead nettle was held in repute in England for its supposed efficacy in curing scrofula (tuberculosis of the lymphatic glands) purported as the King's Evil, since people believed that the ailment could be cured by the touch of a monarch. The young leaves can be eaten in salads.

Inwood Daylilies February 24, 2018

I bought these 8 bare root daylilies at Buchanan's Nursery in The Heights.  I planted them in the bed at the front of the Rose Garden.  There is a Lady Banks rose growing on an arbor at the entrance to the Rose Garden, and it will soon over-shadow whatever grows in that front bed.  So I didn't want to plant a rose in that bed.

Weekend at the Farm February 24 - 25, 2018

Arrived about 4:30, Bert was already here.  He put quarter rounds at the top and bottom of the baseboards around the entire house.  A lot of work!  Looks much better.  Met with a painter as well.  Rainy weekend.

• Friday afternoon as soon as I arrived I went straight out to the Orchard and begain pruning my muscadine grape vines.  I worked until dusk, about two and a half hours.  I made great progress, I probably only have another hour of pruning left.  It's a lot of work for a grape arbor that I have not gotten a single grape from in the years I have been growing and pruning and growing and pruning.  I have a new thought on how to handle my grape vines, though.  I'm going to cut the green vines that hang low and start shooting out all over the place in the summer in an effort to try and minimize the shade that gets throw on the grapes.  We'll see.  You know you have a brown thumb when you can't get grapes off of muscadine grape vines...
• I got bitten by some mosquitoes while I was pruning my grape vines - mosquitoes already!  The rain and the standing water that results has really brought them out.
• I walked around my Medicine and Star gardens all through the evening - strategizing and planning.  I passed a very pleasant time walking and walking.
• Saturday.  I bought some more stain to continue painting the Rose Garden fence, but it was too drizzly all weekend to paint. 
• I spent several hours digging up thyme from the bed in the Star Garden where it had totally taken over.  I transplanted 15 or so large plugs into the Kitchen Herb Garden.  After that I just yanked out the rest of it.   
• I planted 8 Inwood daylilies in the bed at the front of the Rose Garden.  No sense in putting in a rose there because the Lady Banks will soon overtake it.
• I raked out the Long Border and fertilized all the salvias, roses, the Linleyanas, cannas, crinums, and Almond Verbena.  That bed is going to need some mulch soon or it will get taken over by weeds.  It looks really good right now though.
• I spent a long time in the Star Garden cutting away dead debris and fertilizing what I didn't get to last weekend - cutting back Black Mulhly grass, Firespike, gingers, Cigar Plant, salvia greggii, etc.  I did some more raking and dumping the leaves in the edges of the Star Garden.  I'm almost done cleaning out winter debris in the Star Garden.  I still need to clean out the bed with the Copper Canyon daisies and the Senna tree.
• I pruned my two blue Vitex.
• I planted another Bears Breeches next to one I planted last week.
• I raked away the leaves around my Nikko Blue Hydrangeas and my Strawberry Bush in the Medicine Garden and spread fertilizer.  I left the leaves all bunched up in the bed, I will get rid of those next weekend.
• I planted 2 Phlox Subulata as a ground cover in the area where the Four O'Clocks were that I dug up  a couple weeks ago.  I have always wanted to grow some of that.  I plan to spread Cosmos seed in the rest of the area.  That is not very good soil, and Cosmos won't bloom well if they are in rich soil, so that works out perfectly. I will have to work hard to keep the Four O'Clocks from coming back, there are already a hundred seedlings popping up.   
• I pruned the two Marie Pavie roses in the bed by the dining room and fertilized them as well as the Pink Texas Phlox and Clyde Redmond Iris nearby.  Both of the Marie Pavie roses have tip rooted.  Next week I will dig at least one of them up and move it to the Rose Garden.
• Sunday.  It rained throughout the day but I worked through it.
• I pulled up what was left of the dead Yuletide Camellia by the Greenhouse and planted a Bears Breeches.
• Raked out the bed on the side of the Greenhouse, cleared out a vine that was growing there, pulled out a dead plant (name escapes me right now).  I dug up 2 Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow shrubs and put them into plastic pots.  I intended to bring them to Houston and plant them at my house there, but I forgot to do it .  I'll haul them home next weekend.  The winters are just too cold in Burton to make them useful.  They never bloom.  I planted 3 Nikko Blue Hydrangeas in that bed.  I found three small ones at Arbor Gate last week, only $10.00 apiece.  That's a deal!  I just need to be careful to keep them wet all summer, the root ball is small, so they will dry out easily.  I mulched them really well. 
• I raked the other beds in the Greenhouse Garden and took many wheel barrows full of leaves over to the compost pile.
• I mulched here and there in the Greenhouse Gardens.
• I planted four Spotted Dead Nettle 'Orchid Frost' in the shady part of the Star Garden by the shed.  It is a ground cover and very pretty.
• In the area where I cleared out the thyme I planted three Stokes Aster Peachy's Pick.  One of them I moved from the spot where I planted it several years ago, the other two I bought a couple of days ago.  They will make a better show if they are massed together.  Mulched around them and fertilized. 
• I planted 4 purple Summer Jewel reseeding annual salvias in the Star Garden and one small purple greggii.
• I weeded for a long time and mulched the spots I weeded. 
• I went down to the Orchard and finished pruning my grape vines.
• That's that, spent the night on Sunday and drove in to work on Monday morning.

Daffodil Season Begins February 210, 2018

The paperwhites are the first daffodils to bloom.  My Ehrlicheer greenery took a hit during the 3 day freeze we had in January.  But the flowers are reliable as always.  I have moved a lot of the bulbs that used to be in this bed throughout last year, some of them were uprooted by armadillos and some of them I dug up.  I want to make room for other plants, and when the greenery starts to brown and die this bed looks really bad.  It takes about a month for the greenery to die.  So I started moving the bulbs to other places where they don't take center stage.  This flower bed is near the house and so it is very visible.

Below, these are Grand Primo paperwhites, the most famous of all the old Southern paperwhites.



Below, these are Ehrlicheers.

Below, Ehrlicheers again.

Below, these are the paperwhites I dug up from Nixon Lake Road.  They are very, very similar the Grand Primo, but their bloom time is slightly different.  The other greenery in the picture are my Philippine lilies starting to pop up.



Below, a closer look at the Nixon Lake paperwhites.

Below, another picture of Nixon Lake paperwhites.

And one more.

Below, I have to do some research to remember what the name of these little darlings are.

As you can see the flower bloom is below the top of the foliage.

These are the little dog-eared Narcissus Ordorous.

Below, this is Ice Follies.



Yet another variety - I think this is Trevithian, notice the flower holds its head above the foliage.

A close-up of the flower.

Ice Follies again.



Weekend at the Farm February 17 - 18, 2017

Baby sat for Koy and Cleo on Friday night while all my kids went to dinner at mom and dad's restaurant at their new new place.  Saturday night Bert and I had Zelda, Henry, Oliver and Wes at our house for a sleepover.  Arrived at the farm at 1:00 on Sunday.

• Sunday, started right away staining the fence around the Rose Garden.  I got 3 sides finished before I ran of paint (that means one side of two).  I was so surprised at how fast I ran out of paint!  It will take 2 more gallons to finish.
• I cut down to ground level all my elderberry in the Medicine Garden.  This time is all about cutting away dead vegetation and pruning back to the ground.
• Monday.  I pruned the pink Chaste Tree.  I still have to get up on the ladder and cut back the highest branches.  Chaste Tree should be cut back by a third every year.  I never cut it back that much, but I do take a lot off.
•  Bert and I drove to Leroy Shroeder's and had a yard of mushroom compost loaded into the trailer. We are determined to grow corn (actually Bert really wants to grow corn).  He expanded the Vegetable Garden to make room for it.  We drove the trailer next to the fence and I shoveled the compost into the new space - that took about 30 minutes.  We cut down some dead cedars to edge the new bed.  While we were trying to roll one of the cedars off the cadet and over the fence into the garden I let go of it too soon, and the tree hit Bert's head.  He was knocked to the ground - blood everywhere.  Frightening.  We doctored him up, no concussion, so we soldiered on with a bandage on his head.  I turned the soil over, the new space is about 5 feet by 25 feet, so that was an effort - took about 30 minutes.  We are ready for corn. 
• Watered in the Rose Garden throughout the day.  Fertilized the roses I missed last weekend.  While I was in there I cut my trailing purple lantana to the ground.  Fertilized it as well.
• Raked out two sections of the Long Border and cut away dead vegetation - salvias and cannas.  Dumped all the leaves and pine needles in the area next to the Long Border.
• I fertilized the shady part of the Star Garden closest to the Rose Garden.  
• Cut back lots of Autumn Sage in the Star Garden.  It roots like crazy.  I have small plants everywhere, but I don't have the heart to pull it up.  Cut Ehamanii down to the ground.  Pruned my white mist flower.
• Did some weeding in the long bed in the Star Garden.
• I pruned my Butterfly rose, it was an unruly mess.  The center bed in the Star Garden looks much better now.  I pulled up some Obedient Plant and raked the paths.  
• I worked until dusk.
• Tuesday.  I fertilized all my fruit trees in the Orchard.  Raked and cleared away leaves.  I fertilized the four roses and all my salvias and other perennials.  Cut away the dead vegetation.  I still need to prune my grape vines, but that is a chore for another day.
• Next along the Boardwalk I pulled up all my ginger dead vegetation and raked the entire area.  Fertilized.  
• Next I raked the area around my White-by-the-Gate Camellias and fertilized.  
• Next I cut away all the red canna dead vegetation at the front of the Orchard and raked away all the leaves.  Fertilized the area. Raked the area adjacent to the cannas where the elephant ears grow and fertilized.
• Next I cut away the white butterfly ginger dead vegetation and fertilized.
• After that I spent about an hour cutting down the tall stems of Mexicali Rose.  No fertilizer !  Those things do not need any encouragement.  
• Moved on to the Philippine Violets at the top of the Boardwalk.  I raked the area and fertilized.
• There is more to do along the Boardwalk, but I changed course and headed to the Star Garden.
• I cut away the red canna dead vegetation in both places where it is growing.  Fertilized the Climbing Pinkie and surrounding cannas.  Fertilized the Veilchenbleu rose and Snowball  Viburnum.  I fertilized the entire Bulb Bed where the Pearlbush, white altheas, and Spicebush grow.
• I cut back the Indigo Spires and transplanted two clumps that were growing too close to the edge of the bed.
• Transplanted several clumps of Ox Eye Daisies from paths over to beds (one in the front bed, one next to the Snowball Viburnum).
• I planted 3 Moody Blues Veronicas in the front flower bed.  Fertilized all the Perl d'Or roses and the Franziska Kruger and the Marie D'Orleans.
• I planted a Bears Breeches in the space where I dug up all the yellow cannas a month or so ago. I plant to put another one in that bed sometime in the next week or so.
• I cut back three or four Autum Sages.  
• Next I moved to the back flower beds.  I cut back all the Autumn Sages along the back of the house and all the Thryallis in the back bed and the side bed.  It was raining pretty hard by this time, and I was soaked through.
• Still raining, but I was determined to push on - I wanted to use up all five bags of fertilizer, and I had one more. So I went to the Shade Garden.  I managed to fertilize all the gingers, the coralberry, the Toad Lily, all the George Tabor azaleas, the acubas, the mahonias, most of the ferns - the only thing that didn't get a hit of fertilizer was the Firespike.  Unlike the other gardens, I threw the fertilizer right on the layer of heavy leaf drop.  The Shade Garden is self-cleaning.  I don't weed in there.  The heavy leave drop smothers all weed growth, so I don't rake. 
• I transplanted several more Ox Eyes and Homestead Verbena in various places.
• That's that.  I stopped at dusk.
• Drove in to work on Wednesday morning. 

Expanding the Vegetable Garden February 19, 2018

Bert has wanted to grow corn for the longest time.  So a couple of days ago he expanded the Vegetable Garden about 8 feet.  The goat wire arbor used to be where the fence was.

We went to Leroy Shroeder's and loaded a yard of mushroom compost onto our trailer.

 I stood on the trailer and shoveled all the compost out into the new area.

 In the above picture you can see that I have begun to turn over the soil. 

 All finished turning over the soil.  It took about 30 minutes.  The bed is 5 x 25.  I still have to loosen the compacted soil and mix it together real well. 

Here is my corn farmer.  We cut down dead cedars and put an edge around the bed.  Bert is wearing a bandana because we had an accident and he hit his head as we were trying to lift one of the logs over the fence (my fault).  He was knocked to the ground.  Blood everywhere.  Head injuries bleed a lot! But he powered through and cut down two more trees before he went inside.

Weekend at the Farm February10 - 11, 2018

This is an apple blossom bud from my three-in-one apple tree.  Spring is just around the corner!

Cleo's first birthday on Saturday, to the farm after that.  Bitter cold weather all weekend and drizzles on and off.

• My main activity for Sunday was pruning roses.  It was so cold that the tips of my fingers would start to ache.  Inside to warm up, back outside to prune roses.  
• I managed to prune my Franziska Kruger (which needed a lot of pruning) and my  Archduke Charles and Marie d Orleans (which required very little pruning) before I retreated back into the house.  Brr!  All of those roses are in flower beds around the house.
• After lying on the couch for twenty minutes trying to relax, I popped up and decided to plant the roses I brought with me.  Cold be damned!
• I filled the wheelbarrow with compost from my compost pile and planted four Perl d' Or roses along the front of the house.  I got rid of the shrubs that were planted there.  Bert wrapped a tow strap around each of them and pulled them out of the ground with the cadet.  He did several last weekend, and he pulled out four Sunday morning.  I had one more spot in the bed on the left side of the house to plant and I planted three in the bed on the right side of the house.  I filled each of the holes with compost and mixed it in real well - there is a lot of clay and sand in those beds if you dig down a foot or so because they are so near the house.  I have enough space to put in two more Perl d'Or roses or maybe I will do something different.  I haven't decided.  Very shortly I will order my Strawberry Candy Daylilies to plant between the roses. 
• I had some compost left so I wheeled it over to the Vegetable Garden.  I planted my Yukon Gold seed potatoes sitting in scoops of compost.  I have never planted potatoes so early, but I think they will be fine.  Even if we have another freeze and they have sprouted, it won't kill the plant.
• I went out to the Rose Garden and fertilized roses until I ran out of fertilizer.  There are still a dozen or so roses in the Rose Garden, several in the Star Garden, the roses in the front beds, and the roses in the Orchard that I still need to fertilizer.  I also need to fertilize my fruit trees.  And I always throw fertilizer on everything else.  Spring is an expensive time of year for fertilizer, but necessary.  Certainly, if you're going to grow fruit trees and roses, and you're going to care for them all year, spring is not the time to blow off that tender loving care.  Two years ago I bought a huge pile of compost, and I side-dressed everything.  That is really good too, but a heck of a lot more work.
• While I was there I pruned my Belinda's Dreams, several of my young roses (lightly), Mrs. Dudley Cross, Heritage, La Vesuve, Cadenza, and Graham Thomas.  I might be finished.  The old roses don't really need pruning, but I like to take off a little every year - at least to neaten up their shape.  And definitely I always remove dead wood and crossing branches.
• I walked around the Orchard.  The day lilies are coming up.  I love their little green pointy sprouts.  The roses are loaded with leaf buds.  And my three-in-one apple tree has lots of flower buds.  So now is the time I begin hoping we have no more freezes or I lose all my fruit.  The branches on my Lider #9 Satsuma are still green even though all the leaves have fallen off.  Looks like it might have survived our sustained freezes several weeks ago.  

Woodland Violets February 4, 2017

My sweet little woodland violets are blooming.  Their foliage is a little freeze-burned from the three days of freezing weather we had a couple of weeks ago, but they are in bloom right in the middle of winter.

Weekend at the Farm February 2 - 4, 2018

This is one of my camellias. The blooms look pretty good considering we just came out of a three-day freeze.  The blooms and buds on my other camellias all died.  I don't know the name of this variety unfortunately.  I bought it long before I began to record the names of my plant varieties.  I moved it from my Houston house when I lived on Adkins Forest.  It was a sad little branch when I moved it.  Now it is healthy, large, and green.  It seems to love it in the Shade Garden where I planted it.

February 2nd was Bert and my 18 year anniversary.  We helped Mom and Dad with some of their move into their new place on Friday.  Arrived at the farm on Friday evening.

• Saturday morning I met up with a group of folks at Amy Thomeson's house to go on some site visits to small restoration projects like mine (in fact, our house was one of the visits).  We started at Amy's property where she gave us a talk about various topics related to doing a restoration ( herbicides, invasives, tools, the history and use of her property, etc.).  We walked her property and she identified grasses - both natives and non-natives, and also invasives.  Next we drove to my place just down the road and walked my small prairie restoration project.  I am just beginning, so I didn't have much to show, it was more a discussion of my vision for the area.  The last house on the tour belonged to Polly and Joe.  They have 40 acres, and their place is very impressive, all converted to grasslands.  They are having a lot of trouble with KR Bluestem which is, apparently, a scourge.  You can't burn it because it thrives after controlled burns.  Quail can't move through it, and it crowds out everything.  We talked a lot about the methods for eradicating it.  It was very cold and rainy, so I was glad to get home in front of the fire!
• When I got home I loaded the cadet with mulch and spread a load in the large bed behind the house.  
• I loaded the cadet with mulch again and decided to mulch the asparagus beds.  I cut back all the dead vegetation, I spread fertilizer (asparagus needs fertilizer all the time, winter and summer), and then I mulched the beds.
• I raked all the leaves out of the Vegetable Garden and did some weeding and general clean-up.
• I used the rest of the second load of mulch in the big bed, one more load ought to do it.
• I pulled out the ladder to tie back my Climbing Pinkie on its support.  Two large canes have been chewed off right at the base.  Mice?  Voles?  Not sure, but it took about 20 minutes to cut the dead canes away from the support (which is a conveyor belt that we set upright in some concrete) because they were wound all through it. 
• Pulled weeds in the Orchard and the Star Garden.  
• Sunday morning I started right out sowing the seed that Amy gave me on Saturday.  She gave me two plastic grocery sacks, one was full of little blue stem and various grasses from a relic grassland and the other was full of Indian blanket flower. I used the last of my native grass bales and surrounded my seed areas with the hay.  My purpose was to mulch around my seeds, try to keep the crab grass from encroaching and basically to help me identify the areas that I want to keep weed-free.  All of that took about three hours.  Then I remembered that I had several sacks full of seed that Amy and I collected last fall.  I had a sack of silver bluestem, and sack of mixed wildflowers - Illinois bundleflower, an annual sunflower, horsemint, and a native rye grass.  I scraped the soil and ground it into the soil.
• I loaded the cadet with mulch twice and finished mulching the big bed in the back.  Yay!  That took a lot of effort.  
• Bert helped me tie up canes of my Peggy Martin rose onto the chain we have it trained on.
• I raked the entire Rose Garden and dumped wheelbarrows of leaves in the edges of the Star Garden and the area adjacent to the Long Border.  I don't garden those areas, I keep them well mulched with leaves to keep the weeds from growing.  It works very well.
• Watered in the Rose Garden. 
• We stayed Sunday night and watched the Superbowl.