March 16 - 17, 2022

 

These are Pearlbush flowers.  Pearlbush is a very early spring flowering small tree / large shrub.  

• Wednesday.  Worked.
• I pruned grape vines during lunch.  I am about 2/3 completed.
• Thursday.  Vacation.
• I cleaned out the Copper Canyon bed in the Star Garden.  Cut back all the Copper Canyon and Cigar Plant.  Raked.  Spread mulch.
• I cut back all the grasses into little mounds throughout the shady part of the Star Garden.  And I cut down Philippine Violet stems.  They will come up from the roots.  Mulched where I worked. 
• Weeded.
• Planted some Pentas.
• I cleaned out the milk and wine crinum bed - cut away dead crinum vegetation and cut back the pink Turks Cap.  Scraped out all the old leaves and weeds.    
• I cleaned out the Indigo Spires bed in the Star Garden.  Began mulching but didn't finish.  
• I did some mulching in the Rose Garden.  
• Bert put wire fencing around the entire Rose Garden along the outside of the decorative wood fence and a low barrier across the entrance. This is a major improvement.  I am expecting a huge decrease in armadillo destruction.  This is a game changer!
• Turned the compost pile.
• Pinched side growth off my tomatoes.  
• I have been watching my Texas Kidneywoods looking for new growth, and I see some now.  I planted them last fall, and they are doing fine.  I planted one outside the Vegetable Garden and one in the wild bed in the Rose Garden.  
• The altheas have the smallest hint of green bursting forth.  Eve's Necklace also is greening up.  Spring is such a miracle. 
• My Nasturtium seeds finally sprouted.  I had assumed they were not going to germinate because the seed was old.  But I saw them finally pop up in the Vegetable Garden after what seemed to be many weeks. 
• I planted 3 Comfrey in the Medicine Garden.  I love comfrey.  The leaves are long and wide, and the flowers, while not super showy, are very pretty when you are looking closely at them.  And it is a medicinal.  I love useful plants.
• I planted a peach scented sage in the Star Garden.  
• I prepped 3 areas in the Vegetable Garden with fertilizer and compost.  I planted 2 Black Beauty eggplant.  They like it hot, and it is still pretty cool.  But I'm never sure they will still have eggplant for sale if I wait to buy it.  It might as well suffer in my garden if I plant it now rather than in a nursery.  Sowed a packet of yellow squash.
• I sowed some snake bean Chinese Python seeds on the arbor in the Vegetable Garden and along the fence line.  This is a vine that grows a long bean that looks like a green snake.  It is supposed to taste like green bean.  I'm growing it just for fun.
• Sowed some hot pink flowering buckwheat here and there in the Vegetable Garden that I will turn over into the soil before it sets seed (for green manure).
• I planted 8 Stella de Oro daylilies, some in the Star Garden and some in the Rose Garden.  Stella is kind of common, that's true, but that's because she is such a good performer. 
• Sprayed herbicide in the Orchard and here and there in the Star Garden.
• I cleaned out dead winter debris in the Orchard for a bit and pulled some weeds.  
• I sowed some seeds in the Rose Garden - balsam, cleome and Chinese Wool Flower.

Time at the Farm. March 13 - 16, 2022

 

I can't get enough of this Colonial White Verbena.  Absolutely love it!

I arrived on Sunday evening.  Bert was already here.  Monday vacation. 

• I covered up all my tomatoes and a couple of other frost tender plants that I already put in the ground.  It was to drop below freezing during the night.  I have taken to planting some annuals, last year for the first time and again this year.  They are colorful and, being annuals, their bloom season is very long.  I try to plant reseeding ones, but I am not consistent with that.  This year I have almost no spring wildflowers.  I just didn't want the snarl of them in the gardens.  The decision to sow seeds for spring wildflower blooms was last fall and early winter, and I didn't sow them.  I wanted room to plant other things, and if I have wildflowers everywhere I can't plant anything until they are finished blooming so I can yank them up.  But annuals and perennials need to get in the ground in the early spring so they can get established before the heat of summer.  So.  Here I am in early March with virtually no early color in the garden which is kind of different for me.  
•  Sunday.  I pulled all the covers off my plants.  I expect no more freezes this year.  It could happen, but I'm betting against it.
• I worked in the Rose Garden all day.  I cleared most of the beds.  I pulled out leaves stuck amongst the branches of plants, pulled weeds, smoothed soil and mulched.  In the beds with the oregano, I started digging it all up, but eventually I decided to shear it down to soil level.  So I kept most of it, but it looks very neat now.  All the sticks and uneven mess is gone.  I mulched everywhere I worked.  I planted some red pentas, pink pentas and some pink cleome.  This cleome variety does not set seed.  It gets bushy and stays fairly short.  I pulled up a lot of my chicken wire enclosures and stuck them in the ground on the outside of the fence until Bert is ready to armadillo-proof the Rose Garden. I pulled up the chicken wire enclosures so that I could clean out the beds and spread the mulch.  It looks really good in there even though I am not quite finished.  That is all the work that will happen in that garden on this trip. 
• I dumped all the debris in an erosion spot.     
• A tiger swallowtail was floating around and sipping at the verbena while I was out there.  The tiger swallowtails are always the first swallowtails to appear each spring.  They are so beautiful.   
• I planted a lemon verbena, a pineapple sage and some chives in the Kitchen Herb Garden.  
• I planted 2 bee balm in the Star Garden.
• I planted an Aztec Sweet Herb in the Medicine Garden.
• I spotted a hole under the fence that surrounds the air conditioning units (and closes off that section of the Star Garden).  I had seen a very little bit of armadillo activity in the Star Garden since our barricades had been erected, and I found the entrance!  I put a trap in front of it.  Maybe we will catch the little devil.  
• I worked steady from 8:00 until 5:30 without a rest.  Worn out!  
• Monday.  Up early, coffee on the front porch.  No armadillo in the trap.
• In the morning I worked on the Long Border.  I have cleaned out and mulched about a third of the Long Border in weekends past, but it is large and it is a multi-day effort.  I raked out leaves, cut back salvia stalks, weeded.  I spread mulch everywhere I cleared.  I got another third completed.
• I cleaned out the bed at the Rose Garden entrance.  I didn't do any mulching in there. 
• Spent about 20 minutes in the Shade Garden clearing out white snakeroots stems and picking up fallen limbs.
• Next I worked on the back beds.  I finished weeding and mulching the Black and Blue sage bed.  I cut back the three Thryallis.  I cut back the grasses along the back walkway. 
• I planted 4 tomato plants in the Vegetable Garden.  Two Beefmaster, one Purple Cherokee and one German Johnson.  I planted 3 of them in buckets and one in the ground.  Mulched around all of them.  
• Turned the compost pile.   
• The last thing I did was spray herbicide in the Water Garden, the Vegetable Garden, the Shade Garden, around the pool area, and the Star Garden.  I didn't want to do it because I was tired, but it really needed to be done.
• Headed home about 5:00.   

March

 

The stormy March is come at last,

   With wind, and cloud, and changing skies,

I hear the rushing of the blast,

   That through the snowy valley flies.

Ah! passing few are they who speak, 

   Wild stormy month! in praise of thee;

Yet, though the winds are loud and bleak,

   Thou art a welcome month to me.

- William Cullen Bryant

Some of my New Armadillo Barricades March 4, 2022

 This little fenced-in area surrounds one of my front beds.  Bert built it for me.  The armadillos have always made a nightly mission of turning up my front beds, so this should really help.  And this structure is definitely an improvement over the chicken wire and bamboo stake mess I created last summer.   

This barrier blocks front porch and driveway access into the Star Garden.  It is movable (with handles at the top) so that during the day we can move it aside so I can get my wheelbarrow in there if necessary.  And Rocky is so old that he can't jump over it.

This barrier blocks access into the Star Garden from the back yard area and the woods.  There is a square cut away in the middle where we have an armadillo trap set up.  If they try to get in this way they will walk into the trap.  

Still more to do (the other half of the front beds, the Rose Garden, the Orchard, possibly the Kitchen Herb Garden and the Water Garden) but I am very happy with the progress!

At the Farm March 3 - 5, 2022

 

Arrived in the evening on Thursday.  Bert was already here.

• Major, exciting development.  Bert constructed attractive movable barriers that block every entrance in to the Star Garden.  All the horrible-looking chicken wire enclosures that I have created can be removed!  These wooden barriers are about two feet tall, maybe a bit taller.  They will be used to keep the armadillos out.  I think (emphasis on the "think" that they will successfully keep the armadillos out.  They have very bad eyesight, and when they bump into the barrier, I believe they will just move on rather than trying to climb over.  Of course, they know that this wonderful moist oasis exists, so perhaps the barriers will prove to be too short.  But that is easily adjusted if necessary.  Right now I can easily step over them or move them aside.  I'm very, very excited about them.  Next he is going to construct a short fence around my front beds.  Then he is going to work on the fencing around the Rose Garden.  Finally, I will have respite from one of my arch enemies.  There is nothing I can do about the voles.  It's not clear if my castor experiment has been having success.  There is no question I am still losing plants to voles - but would I be losing more plants if I wasn't planting castor?  And the deer, well, that wasn't a problem until very recently.  And it is not a rampant problem.  There are so many forbs to eat around here on the property.  Anyway, March is off to to a wonderful start with my new armadillo barriers.  
• Friday morning.  Up before sunrise.  I sat on the porch listening to the birds and watched the sun come up.  Walked around the Star Garden in the dawn light looking at the plants I put in the ground last weekend.
• Before work I prepped the beds and planted 6 tomato plants in the Vegetable Garden.  3 Celebrity, 1 Brandywine, 1 Mortgage Lifter and 1 Bella Rosa.
• I continued my project of cutting away dead winter vegetation in the Star Garden - salvia and canna mostly.
• I dug up a Colonial White Verbena in the Vegetable Garden (No idea how that got all the way from Mom's Garden to the Vegetable Garden!!) and moved it to the Star Garden.
• During lunch I cut away more dead vegetation in the Star Garden.
• I worked in the Long Border for awhile cutting away canna, salvia and crinum debris.  
• I pruned the two blue Vitex in the Star Garden.  Yay me.
• Bert spent part of the day erecting the barriers in the front beds. Very exciting.  He got one side of the front bed finished.
• After work I did more debris clearing.  I worked in the Rose Garden until dark cutting things back, raking.  I cut back the trailing purple lantana which took some time because there is a lot of it.  It grows inside the Rose Garden fence adjacent to the length of the Daffodil Border. Now the Peggy Martin rose that is trained along the fence will really show up when it blooms.  Peggy Martin is a once blooming rose.
• I rearranged my armadillo trap in the front bed that is not fenced.  I think I'm going to get one! 
• Saturday.  No armadillo in the trap.  
• I spent the whole morning in the Water Garden doing some watering, cutting back salvias, cutting morning glory and Moonflower vine off the fence, raking, and mulching.  
• I mulched the bed with the sweet shrub and the Creeping Jenny bed adjacent to the greenhouse.
• I mulched around the other sweet shrub in front of the greenhouse. 
• I prepped the bed and planted a Celebrity tomato.  I didn't realize I bought so many Celebrity tomatoes.  I bought 4 of them.  Very unobservant on my part.
• I mulched around the tomatoes and onions.  I mulched the large and the small asparagus beds.
• I see that a vole has gotten one of my onions, so I am expecting them all to be gone soon.  I planted them in 3 places hoping to save at least one area from devastation.  
• I worked in one of the Belinda's Dream beds in the Rose Garden.  I pulled up all the oregano.  That was an okay idea when I planted it at the time, but I want to move on with something that is more showy.  I planted 2 red yarrow.  
• I planted a red yarrow in the other Belinda's Dream bed.   There will come a time when all I will be doing will be pulling up yarrow because it spreads invasively.  But, I want to see how it does.  I am hoping that it will grow faster than the voles eat.
• Planted 3 red yarrow (Cerise Queen is the name of this variety) in another bed in the Rose Garden.
• I planted 4 silver ponyfoot in 4 of my new tubs in the Rose Garden.  A ground cover that will drape over the edges of the buckets and cover the top will help keep the soil from drying out. 
• I planted 3 Mexican Mint Marigold in the Star Garden.  They provide great fall color in addition to being a  great herb - Texas Tarragon is its nickname.
• I cleaned up lots of debris in the Rose Garden that I created last weekend.  Dumped it in an erosion spot.
• Watered my herbs in the Kitchen Herb Garden.
• Watered my young camellias.  
• Watered my new plantings from last weekend.
• Headed home to Houston.  Nancy's birthday at Caracol.

Some Flowers Blooming Now March 5, 2022

 There is not much blooming now.  My paperwhites have made a very, very poor display this year.  And all over town the same - no blooms.  I don't know what that's about.  I've never seen such poor displays.  The paperwhites have always been my winter flowering display.  But, this year I only have one here and there.

My new garden workhorse - Colonial White Verbena.  It is in full bloom.   

A few camellias are in bloom.  And I have several with lots of buds.

Emerging Daylilies March 5, 2022

 I love the look of daylilies when they first begin their spring growth.  It's a favorite of mine.

Some Pops of Green in Winter March 4, 2020

 

The shrub in the background (past the bare branches of a hydrangea) is my Heart a Burstin' shrub - also called Strawberry Bush.  This is a native shrub for those who are always looking to plant native.  It likes shade.  The only year that it lost its leaves was last year as a result of winter storm Uri in February 2021.  So I can safely call this evergreen since I doubt we will ever have a winter like that again.   This shrub suckers, but not aggressively at all.  The flowers in spring are insignificant, but the fruit in the fall is what gives this shrub its name.  It makes spiny balls.  They turn red.  Then they burst open and reveal 4 red seeds.  Wildlife eat the seeds.  So, this is a really neat shrub.  Evergreen, fall color, wildlife friendly and native. 

The little groundcover in the foreground of the picture is woodland violet.  They stay green all winter as well.  They are blooming right now.  They love this cold / cool weather.  They spread by runners.  It is easy to transplant the offsets, they don't resent being moved. I've done it at all times of year, hot and cold weather.

I garden primarily for spring and summer, and my gardens tend to be pretty grey in the winter months.  So it's nice to have a few plants that provide some green color.  Other green plants right now in my garden are Giant Rudbeckia, Ox Eye Daisies, daffodils, yarrow, and iris.  

February 24 - 27, 2022

 

Hello, Johnny Jump Up!

Arrived on Thursday evening.  

• Friday.  Worked. Very cold and no sun ever broke through.
• I had another load of mulch delivered, this time 12 yards.  I avoid a delivery charge with 12 or more yards.
• During lunch I loaded 2 truckloads of mulch and laid it down in the ginger bed and the Climbing Pinkie bed in the Star Garden.  I fertilized before I put down the mulch.
• Trimmed dead vegetation off nearby milk and wine crinums growing in the wild part of the Star Garden.
• I cut back a Henry Duelberg salvia and cut away debris from a clump of spider lilies in the Star Garden.
• After work I braved the cold and loaded up a truckload of mulch.  I cleaned leaves out from around my hydrangeas and camellia in the Medicine Garden.  Pulled up horsetail reed that had spread here and there.  I fertilized and mulched around the hydrangeas and the camellia.  
• I fertilized my big camellia in the Shade Garden.
• Pruned several roses in the Star Garden and fertilized.
• I dug up a salvia clump growing too near one of my roses.  Moved it to an open space nearby.
• Saturday.  Very cold and drizzly all day.  I went out and worked in the rain, no time to lose with spring on the way.
• The first thing I did was prune the pink Vitex in the Star Garden.  A lot of the branches are really thick, and it was pretty hard cutting through them.  I had to use the ladder to get to a lot of the branches.  That took over an hour.  
• I cut down all the dead wood on the Veilchenblau rose - planted in the wrong spot years ago, it spends most of its time here on earth trying to die.  
• I cut some dead branches off of my Snowball Bush.  
• Loaded the cadet with mulch.  I cleaned out the Black and Blue sage bed of leaves and winter weeds.  Fertilized.  Spread mulch.  Almost finished, but not quite.  It's a big space.
• Went out to the Vegetable Garden to look around.  Lots more carrots have sprung up.  The turnips I planted last week have popped up as well as the lettuce.  Using my scissors, I snipped the tiny larkspur seedlings that have sprouted amongst my carrots.  When I turned over the soil, to prep the carrot bed, it prompted lots of larkspur to germinate.  I don't want them in there.  
• Loaded the cadet with mulch and spread mulch in the Dining Room bed.  Weeded winter weeds a bit before laying down the mulch.  Still more to do there.  
• I worked in the Greenhouse Gardens for a bit.  I gathered up all the ginger dead vegetation.  I raked leaves out of the bed with the gingers, Turks Cap, hydrangeas and Hearts a Burstin'.  I cut back Turks Cap, fertilized around the gingers and hydrangeas.  More to do there.
• I spent quite a bit of time in the Rose Garden cutting away dead vegetation:  lantanas, cigar plant, verbena, yarrow, salvia.  I pulled up oregano that was crowding other plants.  I pruned roses. 
•  Weeded here and there in the Star Garden.
• Sunday.  Drove to Houston to help Mom and Dad clear out their storage closet.  Lunch.  Over to Nancy's to plan our Utah road trip.  Back to Burton.
• Monday.  Worked from Burton.  Last day of February, the permanent work schedule begins on Tuesday March 1. 
• I sowed some nasturtium seeds in the Vegetable Garden.  I had a really big pack from 2020 so I decided to sow some before they got any older.  
• I cut away dead winter debris in the Star Garden.  Weeded.
• I planted a flat of Colonial White Verbena that has quickly become one of my favorite plants.  It was an excellent performer for me last hear.  Never stopped blooming all winter, spring, summer and fall.  Stayed green through the harshest freeze.  I planted it in the Star Garden.  
  Planted 2 red yarrow in the Star Garden.
• I set up 2 more anti-deer barriers in the Rose Garden.  Tall rebar with chicken wire that sort of surrounds the rose.  I think, but time will tell, that the deer can't get to the roses.  On a positive note, Bert has finally had it with the horrible looking chicken wire enclosures that I have been making around all my flowerbeds to keep the armadillos out.  He has a plan to close off all the entrances to the Star Garden that will look much better that what I'm doing.  And he is going to build enclosures around the front beds.  And he is going to work on the Rose Garden as well.  It won't keep out the deer, but I have high hopes for keeping the armadillos out.
• Filled the cadet with mulch and mulched around the hydrangea, gingers and Hearts a Burstin'   where I raked out the leaves on Saturday.  Mulched around my clumps of woodland violets.  They are in bloom.  They like this cool weather.
• I mulched around two small hydrangeas in the Greenhouse Gardens.  
• Headed home to Houston with a heavy heart.  I hate to leave when the weather is so beautiful.  I am greatly affected by the changing of the seasons, and the passage of time is never so poignant as during these transitions.