In lieu of...

My own posts, check out the Houston Chronicle's growing gardening community:

• The Lazy Gardener--Brenda Beust Smith's blog (http://blogs.chron.com/lazygardener/)
• Garden Scheduler--BBBS's other blog (http://blogs.chron.com/gardenscheduler/)
• Gardening tips--Readers' blog (http://www.chron.com/commons/readerblogs/gardeningtips.html)
• Gardening forum

And more to come.

Speaking Latin.

Those Latin plant names give growers fits

Looking Back.

i have little (read, no) time for gardening and blogging these days, but i did enjoy participating in Kathy Purdy's excellent (multipart!) garden blogging retrospective over at Cold Climate Gardening. she'll be publishing several more installments in the coming days--don't miss them!

Technorati tags: garden blog

Quarterly Update.

i really need to get back into the habit of regularly updating the blog, but for now i'll aim for monthly posts.

things are currently hot and dry, not unusual for this time of year. the oxblood lilies (rhodophiala bifida) bloomed on two scapes about ten days ago; a third scape bloomed this week. and it looks like there may be two more to come. this pleases me greatly since i started with just two bulbs in december 2002.

the american beautyberry (callicarpa americana) is looking beautiful. i haven't bothered taking pictures, but the berries really are as richly colored as they appear in the photos on the usda plants site, and here's a picture of my own to prove it.

'lectric Love.

we bought one of these today--a black & decker 18" electric LAWNHOG™ mulching mower.

for our first three and a half years of homeownership, we used a scotts classic reel mower. i loved the sound the reel mower made--a very therapeutic "snick, snick, snick." it was a quiet and non-smelly mower. but it really, really struggled with pine cones, twigs, anything non-grass that got caught in the blades inevitably jammed. it was incredibly frustrating to stop every other minute (so it seemed) to unjam the mower. and forget shredding pine needles or leaves. granted, the reel mower never claimed to do those things, but i sure was envious of mulching mowers.

so with a new mowing season upon us, we have a new mower. it (the mower) and i both got a thorough workout today mowing the front and back yards. it was louder than i expected, but everything else was just as advertised. a little bit of practice and i was quite adept at keeping the extension cord out of the way. it handled the as-yet unmown lawn just fine. and no nasty fumes.

now that all the weeds are chopped down, perhaps the poor st. augustine has a chance for sunlight.

Springtime.

the weather is decidedly spring-like, so i should try keeping up with this blog again. i got out of the blogging habit during the heat of summer--wasn't doing much gardening in july and august. and in august i started a new job and darin started med school. so we're still here, we've just been preoccupied with other things.

Miscellany.

• the butterfly weed (asclepias tuberosa) is on the verge of blooming, but a small herd of monarch caterpillars is grazing on the foliage and will almost certainly get to the flower buds before they open
• the summer snowflakes (leucojum aestivum) have experienced a recent growth spurt, but still no sign of flowers
• the coral honeysuckle (lonicera sempervirens) has new growth at almost every node
• to my great surprise, three chinese trumpet 'regale' lilies are sprouting under the tea olive
• narcissus "petrel" are sprouting in various places, most are about eight inches tall
• the "wisley blues" have a vase-life of about 48 hours

Weekend Reading.

• from the houston chronicle's lazy gardener -- don't be bugged by garden insects -- suggestions for organically coping with bugs in houston.
• from the seattle post-intelligencer -- 10 commandments for carefree gardening -- applicable to all gardeners, not just those in the northwest.
• also from the post-intelligencer -- 10 ways to garden with your partner and stay together -- i need to try some of these strategies.

You Know You're a Gardener When...

you wake up in the morning and remember dreaming about pulling weeds.

What a Difference a Week Makes.

[i meant to post this monday but i've been sick. much better now.]

on sunday darin and i returned from a week-long vacation with various members of my family. when we left houston september 21, high temperatures had been in the mid-80s, lows in the low-70s. we returned to high temperatures in the low-80s and lows in the (gasp!) 50s. and beautifully clear blue skies.

it's not every year that houstonians get to experience a "real" fall. usually it seems we go directly from searing summer heat (combined with sauna-like humidity) to the cool, overcast, wet days that pass for winter here on the upper gulf coast. sure, there are some scattered "fall" days with pleasant daytime temperatures, crisp evenings and clear skies, but seldom do we get a whole week of them strung together.

if we're really lucky the trees and perennials will treat us to some decent fall color instead of just turning brown and looking dead.

all the plants appear to have thrived in our absence. the tomatoes -- the volunteers as well as the spring plants -- are intent on taking over the world. or at least our backyard. in addition to growing madly, there are also oodles of flowers and green tomatoes with a few red ones starting to appear.

the serrano peppers and the bell peppers (i gave up on the banana peppers before we left last week and yanked them out) have also rebounded nicely. the serrano plants are rewarding us with more than we can possibly use and while the bell peppers are much more restrained, there are several peppers in various stages of development.

evidence in the form of dried up flowers indicates that the larger gardenia bush put on a very nice display in our absence. harrumph. i should have asked the cat sitter to take pictures of any attractive events. and i should have predicted that one based on the number of buds when we left.

Nursery Reality.

from the new york times' home & garden section: You Want a Nursery? Here's a Reality Check

i'd much rather work at a nursery than have the headaches associated with owning my own.

besides, in addition to the many large chain stores that carry various live plants and their accessories, there are also some very good smaller nurseries near us that offer a greater variety of plants (and much more knowledgeable staff). i just can't imagine trying to compete against all of them.

Little Green Lies.

(catching up on the nytimes home & garden section) -- this article addresses the "tales told by gardeners who do no work".

skip about two-thirds of the way down to get to the bit that describes how to recognize the "lying gardeners" -- they're the ones with cheap tools (or clean, expensive tools), perfect manicures and the ability to walk past a weed without pulling it.

i confess, i have an assortment of cheap tools, but my hands are a wreck and i often get sidetracked for 30 minutes at a time pulling weeds when i only meant to go pick some basil.

the best looking yards / gardens around us are most definitely maintained by the owners themselves -- i see them at it year-round. while i would certainly not turn down the services of a professional landscape designer (assuming i liked their work), darin and i both feel an awful lot of pride in planning and doing things ourselves. and i find gardening therapeutic, too.

2002: The Garden in Review.

(in no particular order)

• plumbago is virtually no-care and provides lots of beautiful foliage and flowers for most of the year
  • i do have to trim it back a couple of times
  • the two that get more sun bloom more freely and grow more quickly than the one that is in mostly shade
• crinums are also great plants for the lazy gardener, and although they can be a bit stingy with the blooms, they're worth it
  • very easy to separate the offsets
  • the downside is that a happy crinum will produce a lot of offsets that tend to travel far and wide from the parent
• star jasmine has beautiful, fragrant flowers for about two weeks; the rest of the year the vines just grow like mad and it's a constant struggle to keep them under control
  
• gardenia and mexican heather cuttings root easily in water
  
• pentas are excellent for many months of blooms (even in part shade) and will attract hummingbirds
  
• liriope is hard to kill
  
• elephant ears will sprout from the smallest sliver of root
  
• planting new transplants in july / august / september and failing to water regularly is a sure way to kill anything
  
• squirrels and birds "harvested" more figs than we did
  
• the sickly 4-inch rosemary has exploded since being transplanted into the raised bed
  
• raised beds may not solve all your problems, but they'll take care of a lot of them
  
• nandina stakes will root if stuck in dirt
  
• monarch butterfly caterpillars can eat every single leaf of the butterfly weed and it will still grow back
  
• parsley is a must-have for the winter months
  • two 4-inch transplants have kept the two of us in all the parsley we need
  • it seems to grow even better when regularly harvested
• once i got it started from seed, the cilantro has also been a very good winter choice
  
• lettuce seeds really do need light to get started
  
• pineapple sage blooms to provide welcome color late in the year
  
• species tulip bulbs are much smaller and easier to plant than "regular" tulip bulbs, but it still gets tedious after the first 25 or so; daffodil bulbs are huge and a major pain to plant
  
• don't let darin plant things without supervision

Productive Day.

i've just spent the last five hours with the rake and vac, cleaning up the backyard and driveway area. lots and lots and lots of leaves and pine needles. most went onto the compost piles (with an ample dose of coffee grounds), but some of the chopped leaves went to mulch the rose, liriope, salvia and lantana along the driveway.

three observations for the day:

• the rake and vac picks up leaves much better than it does pine needles, but once it picks up the pine needles it chops them reasonably well.
  
• coffee grounds help pine needles compost much, much faster than they do otherwise.
  
• the red salvia looks really good while the blue salvia looks so ragged that i cut it down to about 3 inches tall. hopefully it will return from the roots.

Being a Naturalist.

today's new york times has an essay on the taxonomy of the naturalist (registration may be required, but it's free and then you can also do crossword puzzles from the archives).

very interesting reading. i did not know that texas has a master naturalist program. i'll have to check it out. unfortunately, the gulf coast chapter starts its training year in august, so i'll have to wait a bit.

i looked into the texas master gardener program a while back, but the training classes / activities of the harris county chapter all seem to be during work hours. rather limits their audience, i think.

there is also a second texas master naturalist site. it has much the same information as the texas parks and wildlife master naturalist site, lots of "under construction"pages, and a page of other nature sites and links.

Lawn Mowers.

friday's episode of engines of our ingenuity was about lawn mowers. from the transcript:

Today we burn a half billion gallons of gas a year powering rotary mowers. We pour tens of thousands of tons of chemicals on our lawns. Lawns reflect a 200-year-old Romantic dream of fusing ourselves with nature. Yet that very dream now poses a major threat to the nature it so lovingly celebrates.

What a crowning irony! We so want the loveliness of nature that we put nature under assault to have it. We lay ourselves open to that sort of thing when we take our technologies for granted -- when we let them slip into invisibility.

darin and i (okay, mostly darin) use a scotts reel mower. i love that it doesn't smell of gasoline and the only sound it makes is a very hypnotic "snick-snick-snick" as the blades turn.

we also don't use herbicides or pesticides or fungicides or other chemicals in the yard or garden. everything looks nice and green and i believe we have more "good" bugs, lizards, toads, frogs, snakes and birds than we would have if chemicals were used. i like knowing that my plants aren't coated in chemicals.

interesting, somewhat related links:

• history of landscape architecture (kenneth helphand, university of oregon)
  
• museum of garden history
  
• hearth & home: cutting the grass (andy wasowski, author of various books for texas gardeners)
  
• american landscape and architectural design, 1850-1920

Flood + Drought = Houston.

brenda beust smith - houston's lazy gardener - writes about the combined challenges of flood and drought faced by houston gardeners. remember, it's all about raised beds and choosing appropriate plants.

Native Plants.

today's lazy gardener column in the houston chronicle: native plant movement is flourishing.

Heirloom Gardening.

one of the many neat things about moving into an older house (1940/1) in an older neighborhood, is that you never know what you'll discover growing: gardenias, rain lilies, african iris, plumbago, crinums, tea olive.

with the exception of gardenias, i'd never heard these plants but now they are among my favorites.

Composting.

first of all, the "compost pile" over there in the left column is, in fact, the archive section for past posts. get it? it's the pile of old stuff of dubious worth (my dad's words, not mine).

yesterday i spent some quality time with the compost piles behind the garage. i managed to finally finish moving pile #2 to its "new" spot, thus emptying its original enclosure so that i could move pile #1 there. got about 90% of pile #1 turned into the vacated spot. happily, pile #1 is very nearly, almost totally "finished" compost; it has that nice, clean earthy smell and is almost unrecognizable as leaves, etc. maybe this weekend i'll do something useful with it.

this is what goes into our compost pile: pine needles (ideally, chopped up), vegetable kitchen waste, egg shells (crumbled), pine needles, grass clippings, coffee grounds, leaves and pine needles.

the texas agriculture extension service has lots of composting info.

Sunday.

on sunday i started thinning the liriope/lily turf circling two of our backyard trees.

the plumbago i pruned last weekend is putting out lots of new growth and looks great. i took a couple of cuttings from it to try to root, along with the mexican heather.

we have two miniature roses in the backyard - one looks great, nice and bushy, i pinched the tops back a bit to encourage it; the other mini has been pretty sad since i discovered it last fall, lost in all the groundcover gone amok. i think the outlook for this one was greatly helped by the removal of the playset that had been shading it and the creeping groundcover that had buried it. in fact, it was while i was cleaning out all the creep that i discovered the "lost" rose. this one still looks very scraggly, but it is beginning to put out new growth, so i'm hopeful that it will pull through.

The Jungle. speaking of creeping groundcover, the southeast corner of our backyard is what i refer to as "the jungle". the centerpiece (and the only thing i care to keep) is a very nice fig tree. the rest is a mess of some aggressive creeping vine (no, not kudzu; i recognize it, but don't know what it is, need to take a piece to a nursery for ID); elephant ear and some spiny, tropical-looking plant. there are also two huge pots of asparagus fern. these will get relocated. hmmm, maybe they can go by the front walk.

darin and i talked about the jungle yesterday and he agrees with me that it all must go (except the fig). i think it gets enough mid-day / afternoon sun for some veggies and herbs, so last night i ordered seeds! i probably should have started seeds (indoors) a few weeks ago, but i'll see what happens.

Saturday Chores.

i spent yesterday afternoon cleaning out the beds beside the driveway and by the front door. mostly this meant lots of leaf-raking, a bit of weeding and thinning lots (and lots) of liriope (aka lily turf). i also cleaned up the two mexican heathers by the front door. they seem to have established themselves very well since i put them in last fall. one is even blooming! this is what i love about being in houston. i saved some of the trimmings from the heather and am trying to root them.

Pruning.

i like pruning. i'm anxious about the roses; i've never grown roses before, but they weren't very well cared for the last couple of years and definitely need some trimming. so i've been very conservative with the roses thus far. there is one that i want to relocate, but i haven't decided where it should go. the poor plant gets bumped by the driveway gate every time the gate is opened; either the rose predates the gate (possible), or someone wasn't thinking when they decided to plant a rose behind a gate.

the plumbago by the side fence was getting unruly last fall, even after i cut it back a few times. so this weekend i cut most of it back. all the branches spreading into the yard have been cut to 12-18 inches long, and the bits that were damaged by a couple of cold nights have been removed.

then there are the hollies. i don't like hollies to start with, and ours don't appear to have been trimmed for a couple of years so they are very overgrown - too tall, too wide. last weekend i was pretty brutal with them, although i think they'll be fine. as i told darin, if it doesn't kill them, it will make them stronger. if it does kill them, we can put in something we like better.

Fall Plantings. last fall, when the local nurseries were having their end-of-season clearouts, we bought some miscellaneous plants. i'm most pleased with the butterfly weed and mexican heather. this weekend i'd like to try to start some cuttings. i'll also trying some cuttings from the plumbago, since the three we have in the back yard are so wonderful.

What's Growing.

good question, actually. we moved into our (first) house in august 2001. part of our attraction to this particular house was (is) the generously-sized lot and the towering pine trees. and all the other greenery, not all of which we've identified. here's what i do know we have:
- crape myrtle
- plumbago
- roses
- ixora
- several holly bushes
- asparagus ferns
- Mexican false heather (Cuphea hyssopifolia)
- Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) - the butterfly weed really does draw monarchs. we had caterpillars in december!

there are lilies of some sort; maybe a couple of azaleas. lots of shrubby things of uncertain heritage. oh, and several non-pine trees.

slowly, slowly, i'm identifing the rest. although at this point, we still don't know what kind of grass we have.

we also seem to have a fine crop of squirrels.