The Ox Blood Lily Caper

In September of last year I drove by this deserted house, and I was amazed to see the entire front yard ablaze in red flowers.  They were Ox Blood Lilies, affectionately called School House Lilies because of where they are often found growing.  These lilies are traditional, old Southern passalong plants.  Hundreds - maybe even thousands of lilies were blooming around this ramshackle house.  It was an unforgettable sight, so much so that I didn't forget it!  I HAD to have some.  So this weekend my husband and I drove over there with a bucket and a shovel - nerve racking!  Stealing (I mean RESCUING) some of these old time favorites is a little scary.  He stayed in the car (for a fast getaway), and I hopped out and dug into several clumps very near the road (technically not even in the yard - government property, right?)  Ox Blood Lilies are notoriously deep dwellers.  They have a very interesting ability to literally claw their way deep into the earth when the ground is dry.  And, with no regular water for decades, these bulbs were more than two feet deep under the ground.  Because of that, I wasn't able to dig out the really mature bulbs (in my haste), so the bulbs I managed to pull up were small.  But they get bigger each year, and they multiply.  This is a real find!  Ox Blood Lilies are expensive - about $3 apiece.  To have a really good display, you need a lot of them.  Hmm.  There might be another rescue in my future.

My treasures.

You can see how deep even these small bulbs were buried in the ground, some of them a foot deep as evidenced by the long brown shoots.

Blue Bottles Starting to Bloom February 9, 2013

These little bulbs are Muscari Neglectum, affectionately called Blue Bottles.  They are just starting to
bloom.  What cheerful little "shoes and socks" plants!  They are great little bulbs to plant under roses (which is where I have all of mine planted).  They multiply really aggressively.  Normally I would love that because I have so much space to fill.  But Muscari just gets really crowded, and you have to separate the bulbs every few years or they stop blooming.  What I normally do is dig them up by the handful, find a good spot to plant them, dig a two inch deep trench with my spade, lay them like little soldiers in the trench, and then push some dirt over them.  It's quick, but every few years?  That's high maintenance.
Muscari are great bulbs to naturalize in a lawn.  The greenery doesn't get very tall.  And as soon as the weather gets hot, the greenery disappears.

 

A Day at the Farm Feb 2, 2013

These bulbs are called Avalanche, also known as Seven Sisters.  The first blooms have begun to appear.  They are in a Narcissus group commonly referred to as Paper Whites.  Paper Whites bloom in February.  They have white or mostly white petals, and the flowers bloom in clusters.  All the Paper Whites that I grow (Erhlicheer, Grand Primo, Seven Sisters, and the "found" ones I dug out of someone's abandoned yard) have an intensely sweet scent.  That's why I call them Sweeties.

• Arrived on Friday evening.
• Planted a Mayhaw tree in the Orchard on Saturday morning.  Mayhaws are not good fruit to eat right off the tree, but they make very good jelly.  
• Watered the roses I transplanted several weeks ago, the Olive tree I just planted, the Fringe Tree I just transplanted, and the Tangerine tree I just pulled out of a pot and planted in the ground.
• Spring will be beautiful this year.  Everything is greening up.  Next weekend I will begin pruning the roses.  I have a lot of roses, so it is quite an event. 
• Left Saturday morning for Austin to visit Will, Kim and the baby.  Set a date for the Crawfish Boil.
• Came back to Burton on Sunday to drop off some groceries, headed home to Houston  to do Superbowl festivities.  

Work in the Shade Garden

I raked all the paths in the Shade Garden this weekend, shredded all the leaves and used the leaves to mulch various flowerbeds.  I haven't raked the beds yet.  I will wait until the end of February to do that.  The fallen leaves protect the dormant plants underneath.  I will also wait to clean out the dead plant material until the end of February.  Summer is this garden's time to shine.  It is full of elephant ears, gingers, caladiums, and ferns.  Very tropical and verdant.

Expanding - Now and Later

I added these two beds - one last weekend and one this weekend.  These beds get filtered sunlight.  I'm planning to plant Aesculus Parviflora Serotina (Late Blooming Bottlebrush Buckeyes) and Spigelia Marilandica (Indian Pink) in these beds.  And I will bring some gingers from my home in Houston.  Winter is the best time to order plants on line because they are dormant.  They can withstand the travel better and they don't get so hot in the boxes.

The big project I plan to begin at the end of winter / early spring is to extend the gardens around my cute little Greenhouse.  We've lost so many trees due to the drought that the area around the Greenhouse is becoming pretty sunny.  I'm going to make a path that circles the Greenhouse with beds along the path and extending out on either side of the Greenhouse and behind it.  $350 of crushed granite for the paths, $200 of landscaping strips, $300 of dirt, and $20 of new hose and water set-up should get it built.  That's $870 - let's call it $900.  All that money, and I'm doing all the labor myself plus I will not have put a single plant in the ground!  Expensive.

A Weekend at the Farm January 27, 2012

These are my busy garden companions, the vociferous defenders of my territory, my loyal fan club.

• My husband laid out another flowerbed in the Star Garden, and I filled it with mulch, soil, and compost.
• I shredded lots of leaves on Saturday that I raked up in the Shade Garden.  I dumped them in several beds in the Circle Drive, the ginger bed in the Star Garden, over the Spanish Bluebells in the Shade Garden, the ginger bed in the Shade Garden, and the La Marne Rose bed I'm extending in the Star Garden.
• Put some mulch around one of the peach trees in the Orchard.
• Laid some mulch in a path.  
• Put some mulch around the Snowball Viburnum and the Harlequin Glorybower.
• Put some mulch in the Bulb Bed.
• Watered the roses I transplanted last week.
• Watered the Olive Tree I planted last week and the shrubs in the dry parts of the yard.
• Raked the Infinity Garden.
• Weeded, weeded, weeded.
• Adjusted the sprinklers.
• Made suet for the birds:  sugar, bacon grease, peanut butter, nuts and dried fruit, cornmeal.
• The neighbors came over for dinner Saturday evening.
• Fertilized the camellias and banana shrub with Ammonium Sulphate.
• The plum trees are already starting to bloom because of the warm weather.  If it freezes again, I'll lose everything.  And it surely will freeze again since we haven't even gotten into February yet.

A Day at the Farm January 20, 2013

This is the first sweetie of the season.  This bulb was dug up from the yard of the deserted house that I am so fascinated by.  My husband dug it up last January, and I planted it in one of my flowerbeds.  I am wondering if it is a Grand Primo because of the sweet little yellow cups.  I guess I will never know.

• Arrived at the farm on Saturday evening.  My mother in law came with me.
• Dug up the Fringe Tree and planted it in a sunnier spot in the back yard.  I was going to plant it in the back yard in a different spot, but when I dug the hole I ran into a rock.  I tried to uproot the rock by digging around it.  I dug and dug and dug trying the find the end of the rock.  I tried to wedge the shovel under the rock.  No way was this rock going to to beat me!  I had quite a ditch dug through the yard trying to find the end of this massive rock.  Then I realized the rock was the septic tank.  A rock might not be able to beat me but a septic tank will win every time.  Needless to say, I planted the tree in another spot.
• I pulled my Clementine Honey Mandarin tree out of a pot and planted it in the Blueberry bed in the Orchard.  
• I dug up a Brightwell Blueberry and planted it in the pot from which I pulled the orange tree.  I'm hoping that I can control the acidity of the soil if the Blueberries are in pots.  They aren't thriving at all in the ground.  There are two more Blueberry shrubs that I'm going to dig up and plant in pots.
• Mulched my Lady Hillingdon and Living Easy roses.
• Mulched one of my George Tabor azaleas in the Shade Garden.
• Pruned my Muscadine Grape Vines.
• Pruned my Eversweet Pomegranate.
• Pruned the apple trees.
• Cut away dead debris of Tuber Vervain in a flowerbed in the Orchard so that the larkspur seedlings underneath can get some sun.
• The neighboring rancher's cows came through the barbed wire fence and wandered around our place for awhile.  My husband repaired the fence.  And I gathered all the manure they left behind and put it in my compost pile.
• I added one wheelbarrow of soil to the flowerbed that I expanded last weekend.  But that's all I had the strength to do.
• I cut away all the dead debris of the asparagus in the Vegetable Garden and covered both raised beds with compost.  I turned the soil in one of the raised beds that has nothing growing in it (in preparation for spring planting).  Raked up fallen leaves.
• Listened to the birds singing.