A Day at the Farm 02/27-28-10

Beautiful weather both days.

• Cleaned house on Saturday morning.
• Parents visited on Saturday.
• Planted some Southern Wood Fern in the Shade Garden.
• Raked and shredded leaves with my super-duper leaf shredder. Used the leaves to mulch the azaleas and hydrangeas. That took all day Sunday.
• Fertilized and watered the azaleas and hydrangeas.
• Cut away dead brush in the Star Garden.
• Laid down some crushed granite in the paths of my new beds around the Greenhouse. I made pretty good progress. It looks much better than the dirt that's there now. I'll probably do the same in the Star Garden.
• Sowed seeds in lots of places - Verbena Bonariensis and Tidy Tips. I need a few more hoses to keep things watered. I have an ounce of Tidy Tips, that is thousands of seeds.
• Looked at every little thing. So much is about to leaf out. And the Forsythia is about to bloom brilliant yellow flowers. One of the peach trees is about to bloom hot pink flowers. The other peach tree has not broken dormancy. That may be a problem since they need to cross-pollinate. Hmm, maybe I did some poor figuring on my selections. Too soon to tell.
• I think it's time to feed the bees. In the late winter / early spring before the flowers start blooming, bees need to be fed sugar water. I will have to do that next Saturday.
• The leaf cutter ants are starting to get really active. Time to do ant patrol. They love roses!

Holllyhocks

Progress on the Long Border

Winter in the Orchard

A Day at the Farm 02/20-22/10

Varied weather - cool and cloudy, rainy, sunny.

• Had a gang of dogs here this weekend. My three dogs, my daughter's dog and the two dogs of my husband's son. A lot of activity.
  
• Finished fertilizing the fruit trees.
  
• Fertilized some of the native trees I have planted throughout the property. I still need to fertilize one of the Red Buckeyes, and my Eve's Necklace. The hoses don't reach that far so it's a bit more complicated to water them. Poor planning on my part.
  
• Mulched four of the trees referenced above and several fruit trees.
  
• Fertilized my columbine and Clyde Redmond Iris in the Circle Drive, raked away fallen leaves.
  
• In the Long Border I planted the following:


• Six Sea Star Sedum (Sedum pulchellum) - this is a low, spreading, succulent ground cover that blooms pink flowers.


• Six Ox-Eye Daisy 'May Queen' (Leucanthemum vulgare) - these get about two feet tall, they are for the middle of the border.


• Three Jerusalem Sage (Phlomis russelliana) - there is a slight silvery cast to the foliage and wonderful yellow flowers that make a whorl around the stems. Very unusual.


• Six Pink Double Delight Coneflower (Echinaceal purpurea) - very attractive to butterflies.


• Three Sangria Crinums - crinums are very Southern bulbs. A garden of the South without some crinums would be, well, un-Southern. This variety has dark red leaf growth and pink flowers. If you want bulbs blooming in your garden year round then crinums will be an important addition. They will cover the summertime period - the unbelievably hot Southern summertimes. They don't mind poor soil - clay or sand. They make quite a statement because they have a lot of foliage (it forms large clumps that do not die back, so if you like the foliage of your bulbs to disappear after the blooming period then crinums are not for you). They are extremely long lived. You can see them in all the yards of small towns as you drive past. There are hundreds of varieties of crinums.


• In the Medicinal Garden I planted five Digitalis (Foxglove). The common foxglove is the source of the cardiac stimulant digitalis, I believe no synthetic has yet been developed to replace it, therefore it is very important in medicine and essential in a "physic" garden. All of the plant is poinsonous.

• In the Rose Garden I planted a Souvenir de la Malmaison rose. This is a Bourbon rose dating back to 1843. It was originally known as 'Queen of Beauty and Fragrance' until one of the Grand Dukes of Russia obtained a specimen from the gardens at Malmaison for the Imperial Garden in St. Petersberg. The blooms are large, quartered, fragrant, and very pale pink. It gets 3-4 feet tall.

A Day at the Farm 02/17/10

New spring growth on my Coralberry (Symphoricarpus orbicularis). Coralberry is an an understory, small shrub. In the fall the underside of the branches are lined with purple berries.

Beautiful day! Sunny and cool.

• Began fertilizing the fruit trees with cottonseed meal. Still need to fertilize the grapes, apples, blackberries, and cherries. It took a long time to weed around each tree and water-in the fertilizer. So I am only half finished. I need to spray dormant oil on my stone fruit. I will finish Friday.



• Worked in the Rose Garden trying to mend some of the erosion from the heavy rains last week. My husband built a barrier across the front of the Rose Garden and Long Border that we hope will direct the water towards the woods rather than straight down the side of both gardens. But nature has a funny way of telling you what it wants to do rather than the opposite. We have probably created a new, equally destructive area of erosion. When you tug on a single thing in nature you pull the whole world.



• I planted three Texas Native Barbados Cherries (Malpighia glabra) near the pool. Late summer bloomer with big red, shiny,edible berries in fall, evergreen if the winter is mild. I also planted a Sweet Olive (Osmanthus fragrans) next to the Greenhouse. Wonderful fragrance, one of my mother's favorites. Spring bloomer, evergreen.



• Lots of things beginning to leaf out. So much to do to get ready for spring!

A Project Completed

My Bees in the Winter

Spring

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?

- To Autumn, John Keats

Beautiful Leaf Buds

I took pictures of these leaf buds just sprouting from the branches. They are so beautiful!

The picture below is a Red Buckeye tree. This tree is a Texas native. It blooms red flowers in the spring.

The picture below is also a Red Buckeye. The camera is aimed directly into the center of the leaf bud rather than a side view as in the picture above. Interesting-looking, very sensual.

This next picture is a Minnie Royal Cherry tree. I love the soft green and pink of the new growth. And the interesting shapes - fuzzy and wrinkled.

Take a look at the trees in your own landscape. All shrubs and trees are undergoing a beautiful transformation right now. It is an amazing show.

A Day at the Farm 02/10/10

Cold!

• Today I built the flowerbed in the back of the photograph to the left. I planted a Fringe Tree (Chionanthus virginicus) there. The Fringe Tree likes to be in shade or part shade. This Fringe Tree is a Texas native. There are only two species in this genus; the other tree is native to China - the Chinese Fringe tree (Chionanthus retusus). Imagine, there are only two species in this genus and one of them is a native of Texas, my state! Fringe trees are highly prized ornamental trees. They bloom in the spring, and they put on quite a show. The flowers are white and cover the tree just like fringe. Very pretty.
• I plan to plant Barbados Cherry shrubs (also Texas natives) in the three flowerbeds with the light colored mulch in the above photograph. These shrubs have shiny green leaves, and they are evergreen if the winter is mild. In the early fall these shrubs will be covered with little pink flowers which are followed by shiny red berries. These berries are edible but sour. They are much loved by the birds which is one of my motivations for planting them. Another motivation for planting these shrubs is so that I have some fall interest in my garden. Also, they will create a screen between the pool and the flowerbeds to the right of the three light-colored beds. To the right I plan to plant medicinal and other unusual herbs. And those kinds of plants are not always attractive. The Barbados Cherry shrubs will hide them from the pool's line of sight.
• I mulched the 20 foot area where I planted my Kiowa blackberries.
• Watched the birds.
• Pulled some weeds.
• The heavy rains earlier in the week caused a lot of erosion in the Rose Garden. There are deep ruts in the gravel paths. And a lot of the soil I just hauled into the Long Border that borders the Rose Garden was washed away. Very, very discouraging. All that work! My husband and I will have to figure something out so that does not happen again. The Rose Garden is on a slope and all the water wants to move that way.