Red Salvia July 22, 2012

Red salvia really pops.  This salvia is a reseeding annual.  It is easy to gather seed and sprinkle it in bare spaces in the garden.  It grows really fast so that several "generations" of plants will flower each season.  In other words, plants will spring up from seeds that dropped to the ground the summer before.  The seeds from those flowers can be sown, and they will still have time to grow to maturity and flower before the first freeze.  The salvia in the picture above is growing with Blue Fortune Agastache.

Red Salvia, Blue Fortune Agastache, and Iron Cross Oxalis.  Also in the picture above is a little tomato plant.  I don't know how these little surprises happen - probably came from a bird dropping. 

Red Salvia with Pink Muhly Grass and Maximillian Sunflowers.

Obedient Plant July 22, 2012

Obedient Plant is sometimes called False Dragonhead, I assume because of the shape of the buds.  The name Obedient Plant comes from its ability to retain its shape if you twist the stems.

The insides of the flowers have dark pink speckles like an orchid.  Very pretty.  Obedient Plant spreads by underground runners, and it can be hard to contain.  In the winter it forms a rosette of greenery, and in the spring it sends up shoots that form the flowers.  The shoots will grow about two feet tall.  They tend to flop over, so they might need to be staked.

A Weekend at the Farm July 20 - July 22, 2012

It's the end of the weekend and I'm battered and bruised with skin rashes and bug bites.  Something got me on the underside of my arm when I was reaching into some salvia to cut it back.  It's really been giving me fits, it itches like crazy, but not the mosquito or ant kind of itching (I'm an expert on those kind of bug bites).

• My husband's family came to Burton for my mother-in-law's 84th birthday on Saturday.  We had a fish fry.  It was fun.  We swam.  I played with the baby.  She's so sweet!
• I finally planted some Black Seeded Moudry grass that I dug up several months ago and had piled in the yard.  It had been sitting there for so long that it had rooted in the spot where I tossed it in a pile.  I planted it around the pool in an empty space.  I poked holes in the soaker hose with a tack because there wasn't enough water getting to end of the soaker hose where the grasses were planted.  That worked really well!  A little fountain of water is shooting up and falling down on the grass - better than no water at all.  So I poked holes in the hose everywhere I thought that not enough water was getting to the plants.  I'm happy with the results.  I think that over time the soaker hose has sort of calcified and does not deliver water very well.  Our well water is full of particulates and yucky stuff that is corrosive.  Needless to say I don't drink our well water.
• I watered the Fringe Tree, the Mexican Buckeye that is not in a watering zone, the Big Daddy Hydrangeas, and the Desert Willow.  I also watered the Butterfly Magnolia, but it is on its last leg, and I intend to dig it up in the fall and replace it.  I'm tired of waiting for the damn thing to bloom, and it looks like this year it's going to give up the ghost.
• I fertilized the asparagus.
• I mulched the daffodil bed and one of the beds in the Shade Garden with Mojito Colocasia growing in it.  I also mulched around some of the gingers I planted last spring.  The mulch is nearly gone, only a few wheelbarrows of mulch left.  And so much area left to cover!
• I cut back all the Tuber Vervain in the Master Bedroom bed.  That was a nasty job because spider mites or some other juice-sucking insects had gotten to it, and it was crispy.  It gave me a rash sticking my arms in there grabbing handfuls of it and cutting it away from the roots.  It took a long time, too - about an hour of solid work.  I had to haul away 3 wheel barrow piled high with debris and dump it in the woods.
• Worked in the Vegetable Garden for a while.  I pulled up all the squash and cucumbers.  The roots of the cucumbers were completely deformed from nematodes.  I'm going to cover all the beds with black plastic sheeting next weekend and try and get rid of the nasty things.  I'll plant my fall garden throughout the Orchard and other places or skip it altogether.  I have to get rid of the nematodes. It's a waste of time planting a garden and having such a low yield.  By the time the plants are mature enough to produce a crop, they wilt from the nematode infestation.  Totally discouraging.
• I sprayed herbicide everywhere - the Circle, the driveway, the Rose Garden, the Vegetable Garden, the Long Border, the Orchard, the Infinity Garden, around the pool, along the Boardwalk, and the Star Garden.
• I moved some more Columbine seedlings that had sprouted in the paths.  I'm moving them to the beds where I planted the Hostas.  I give up - Hostas won't grow in Texas.  It's too hot.  I accept it.  Colocasis, Sweetspire, Mock Orange, Columbine, Gingers - I will stick to those.
• My husband made a sculpture out of an old conveyor belt that his son found behind a shed in his back yard when he bought his house.  It is pretty neat looking.  He dug a hole, filled it with cement and stood it up.  Looks like art to me!
• Weeded, weeded, weeded.
• Fertilized here and there.
• Everything looks good. Although July is very hot, it can be really pretty if you get a decent amount of rain.  It's never enough, but we've had enough rain to keep things fairly healthy looking. 

Saving Heirloom Plants (or Committing Theft)

This house is the subject of a mystery that has occupied my thoughts off an on for quite some time.  In fact, it began about 9 months ago.  It was around that time that my husband and I noticed that the house seemed to be vacant.  Prior to that, although I never happened to see people around the place when I drove by, there was movement in the form of hoses that were dragged from here to there and plastic flowers that were placed in vases nailed to the fence posts along the barbed wire fence.  Several months passed.  No lights ever burned in the house at night.  The weeds and grass grew several feet tall.  The fake flowers faded and blew away.  I began to covet the sweeties (old fashioned tazetta narcissus) growing along the fence that had cheerfully bloomed and were slowly fading away as their blooming season ended.  We concluded the folks that lived in the house had died, poor things.  I continued to covet the sweeties, so my husband snuck onto the property and dug up some of the bulbs as a surprise to me.  I was thrilled.  I planted them knowing that, even if everything else dried up from the heat and drought, we had saved these heirlooms. 

Months passed.  The house began to look more and more neglected although on occasion a man could be spotted out in the pasture tending to the cows.  Okay, time to take more plants.  I wanted to explore the property.  So, on Sunday we drove over there with a shovel so that I could walk around and look for plant treasures.  It was eerie!  I kept looking at the windows expecting someone to be peering out at me.  What could have happened to these people?  I'm sure that someone died, but why hadn't a child or relative come over to clear out the house?  There was a trash bag on the back porch, the barbecue grill was sitting out on the back lawn, there were rugs hanging on a clothes line.  It looked like someone was living there one day and the next day, without preparation of any kind at all, they were gone.  Wasps nests and spider webs cover the doors.  It's such a mystery!  Did these people (or this person) have no one in the world to come behind them and clear out the house?  The barn, the sheds, the garage are all full of wonderful stuff.  Hoses are rolled up and hanging on nails - everything is out in the yard as if someone was in the house, not put away as if someone was going to go on a lengthy vacation.

I dug up some bulbs ( I think they are Johnson Amaryllis) and some bearded iris (probably Cemetery Whites).  There is a well behind the house.  This house was built before indoor plumbing.  I'm determined to explore the place more fully.  In the mean time, my husband will ask the mail man if he knows what happened.  I'm so curious.

Philippine Lilies - July 15, 2012

Philippine Lilies are great lilies for the south.  It has been written by many southern experts that they will flower from seed in only one year.  All of mine were grown from seed.  I have about 30 plants.  It took more than one year for them to bloom.  But they were blooming after only two years.  That's pretty quick.  Not all lilies set seed.  Philippine lilies have a lot of seed.  The seed pods are very pretty in fact.

 This lily was grown from seed.  The plant is 3 years old.  The older the plant is the more trumpets it has.  I didn't plant this seed in this spot, it just showed up.  This is the circle in the drive way.  My goal is to have the whole area covered in lilies.  This area is partly shady which is perfect for Philippine Lilies.   

This is the small flowerbed where my original lilies were planted.  The armadillos dug them all up - this is before we built a fence around the side yard.  But before the critters killed the mother plants, they all dropped seed.  I've scooped up all the seedlings and replanted them in various places.  I left a few in the bed.  This bed gets full sun.  They do alright here, but they thrive in partial shade with protection fron the hottest part of the day.

This plant is three years old, grown from seed.

These 6 plants are in a shady part of the yard.  They receive dappled sun.

What's Blooming Now - Indigo Spires Salvia July 6, 2012

 Basically, I like any blue flower.  Indigo Spires is a perennial plant.  The leaves have a greyish-silvery cast to them.  Very attractive.  This salvia grows very fast.  I bought 4 tiny plants a few months ago, and they all are about three feet tall and equally as wide.  I planted them to surround a Blue Satin Marina Althea.  The althea was completely covered up, so I cut away the salvia so that it was not crowding the althea quite so much.  Bees really like salvia.  So do the hummers.  Mine is growing in a flowerbed that is shady for several hours a day, but I still get some very good blooms.

Indigo Spires will die back in the winter.  That's ok because the bare ground can be used to sow winter flower seeds such as calendula or corn cockle.

What's Blooming Now - Shenandoah Canna July 6, 2012

The Shenandoah Canna is a living antique. It was bred in 1894 by canna master Leon Wintzer from Pennsylvania.  The leaves are tinged in burgundy.  Very pretty.  In cold weather areas cannas must be dug up out the ground or they will not make it.  But here in south Texas they are true carefree perennials, coming back year after year and multiplying steadily.  Cannas are heavy feeders, they should be fertilized often.  They also like a lot of water.  Cannas will bloom throughout the entire summer.  That is very useful!  Most perennials have a two to three week period when they are in bloom, and then they rest for the remainder of the year.