Yuletide Camellia November 21, 2018

I've had this camellia for many years, but the last two years have been particularly rewarding.  What a gorgeous show this shrub has put on in the recent years.  I love it!

Day at the Farm November 10, 2018

When the weather gets cool the blue of the salvias get beautifully intense.

Arrived Saturday morning.  Bert was already here.  Left Sunday around 10:00 to go visit my mom and dad. Cool and cloudy, but that suits me fine.  I can work like a robot in this weather.

• I put mulch around the Velchenblau that I planted a couple of weeks ago.  I mulched all the roses I planted except this one - I missed it.
• I dug up about 20 plugs of Ox Eye daisy growing in paths.  I planted them in the bed alongside the path that leads to the Boardwalk.  It sorely needed something growing in it. About a month ago I covered one half of the bed with chicken wire to keep the armadillos away.  The remaining half, the half I worked on Saturday, was covered with a layer of sand.  The drainage is bad in this spot and water runs down the hill, depositing silt, right in the path of this bed.  I dug a trench along the landscaping edge - that usually works for 4 or 5 months, and I turned over the soil, then I planted the daisies.  It should be pretty next spring if nothing befalls them between now and April.
• I saw that the Columbine seeds  I sowed a month ago have sprouted.  I should have read the package because I think Columbine germination period is long.  At any rate, two weeks ago when I was at the farm, I was disappointed that my Columbine hadn't sprouted.  The seedlings were tiny, but had sprouted none the less.  I'm sure no one would have noticed them unless they had been looking for them.  Trying to save a little money by sowing Columbine seed rather than replacing plants in the spring. 
• I spent some time on Saturday gathering Phillippine Lily seeds and planting little lily bulbs that I dug up from paths in the Cirlce Drive.  I spread the seeds everywhere - the Star Garden, the Medicine Garden, the Orchards, the Shade Garden, and anywhere I could tuck a few seeds.
• Sunday morning I took the last of my wildflower seeds and sowed them in the Meadow.  Bert mowed a big section of the meadow last week or so.  I walked along in the mowed area and sowed seed wherever I saw a bare area of dirt.  I finished off the last of three pounds of seed - Tall Poppy Mallow, Moss Verbena, and Standing Cypress.  My general thoughts on my meadow at this point are that, at the very least, I can have a lovely wildflower meadow.  The crab grass might be too much to overcome, and I will possibly just content my self with a spring wildflower meadow and then mow it down before the grass gets too tall for the mower.   But I will press on in my goal to have a native grass meadow for now.  I will probably need at least two more years of effort before I can judge whether or not it's worth it to keep trying for the next 10 years.  Definitely a long-term project.
• I raked an area of the Star Garden, the paths that lead from the back door to the shed.  We have had a bumper year for acorns.  The paths are strewn with acorns and some leaves, but not nearly as many leaves as we will have in a couple of weeks.
•  I transplanted some Wooly Stemodia from one bed in the Star Garden to several others.  It had taken root in the paths, so I cut it away from the mother plants, scooped it up with some soil, and planted it in several beds in the Star Garden.  It will help keep the weeds down in these beds.  
• The Camellias are beginning to bloom.  I love my camellias.
• I picked lots of tender lettuces for our salad on Saturday evening, then totally forgot to make the salads.  Next week I'll try again.
• I adjusted the sprinklers  The soil is wet.  
• Inspected all my roses.  They look okay.  No leaf cutter ant onslaught or deer destruction.
• I meant to fertilize all my emerging bulbs - there are some peeping through in the Rose Garden, and my snowbells (that's not the right name, but it alludes me right now) in the Star Garden.  And I meant to fertilize my asparagus.  I didn't get around to either of those chores.  Asparagus is a heavy feeder.  It's important not to neglect it in the winter months.
• I sowed an ounce of larkspur and corn poppies in the Star Garden. 
• Bert and I moved the avocado tree into the house.  I don't want to get caught with an unexpected freeze and it gets left outside.  One day when it forms a bark around the trunk I will put it in the ground in the Orchard.  Until then it has to be babied through the freezing temperatures. 
• Headed home to Houston about 10:00 on Sunday morning.

Some of My Fall Flowers November 11, 2018

Red Canna

Butterfly Weed and Mexican Mint Marigold

Mexican Mint Marigold

White Mist Flower

Pink Salvia

Red Firespike

Prairie Aster

La Marne Rose

African Blue Basil

Butter Pat Chrysanthemum

Standing Cypress

Debutante Camellia

Mexican Sunflower

Autumn Sage

Sowing Philippine Lily Seeds November 10, 2018

I have been sowing Philippine Lily seeds for the better part of the ten years I have been gardening here at the farm.  I have - let's call it - 100 lilies that bloom every summer, and many, many hundreds of seedlings in various stages of maturity.  I have read that you can get blooms from this lily within two years after you sow the seeds, but that would be the Superman of seedlings if you experience that.  However, in four to five years (maybe a year sooner) you will likely get a bloom.  Over time you will get eight or ten blooms on a single bulb. They make quite a sight standing 6 feet tall blooming in the worst part of summer.  Very spectacular, and they take up very little room.  I throw seeds in every corner of my gardens, and they fit right in to tiny spaces.

Today I sowed seeds in the Circle Drive Garden, the bed next to the dining room window, the Boardwalk Gardens, various beds in the Star Garden, I sowed lots of seeds under my pink Vitex and completely covered the bed underneath the big apple tree in the Orchard, and in several places in the Medicine Garden.

The seeds tend to take root in the white rock in the Circle Drive paths.  I dug up about twenty tiny little bulbs and planted them in the Shade Garden.  The heavy leaf drop discourages the seeds to sprout, but the little plants that I stuck in the ground last fall seem to be doing fine. So I'm trying that again.  I'd love for them to line the driveway along the edge of the Shade Garden.  That would be quite a display.

Below are the seed pods of the Philippine Lily and the seeds inside the pods.