Updating the workings

I finally decided to update to the new layouts version of Blogger. I'd been avoiding the upgrade out of some sense that everything would disappear or that I'd have to go back in and recreate all my links but this morning I took the plunge and all looks well.

I added a way to access the post labels and changed the way the archives are displayed but other than that it all looks about the same.

Here's a look at my current favorite garden combination: the sprawling winecups, whose vine-like stems have reached out three or four feet in every direction and the California poppies that were planted so late but, with this continued cool weather, have continued to bloom.



And can I just exclaim one more time about this weather: I was in Dallas from Wednesday through Saturday and it was so lovely and cool up there. I assumed the coolness must be limited to north Texas but when I got back I found it almost as cool in Austin.

Right now the whole family (except me, in here typing away) is sitting out on the back porch, reading. A rare sight any time, but especially in the last days of May.

Visitors and then some

On Saturday ninety people descended on our newly expanded house and garden for our 11th annual spring party. (Question: If we skipped last year because of the construction is it still the 11th annual or should it be called something else?)

And then on Sunday seven Austin garden bloggers arrived as part of a progressive garden tour of five of our gardens (R. Sorrell's of The Great Experiment, Annie's of The Transplantable Rose, my garden, M. Sinclair Steven's of Zanthan Gardens, and Pam's of Digging) plus a walk-through of the beautiful and inspiring garden of Austin-based garden designer and writer Jill Nokes.

Both Saturday and Sunday were overcast, misty days — the sun peeking through from time to time — with highs in the 70s, perfect for showing off a garden. All the buds and blooms were rimed with dampness, nothing was droopy or blasted by the sun. Having old friends in the garden on Saturday was wonderful and then having seven Austin gardeners — and bloggers — visit on Sunday was the most attention this garden and gardener have ever known.

This morning I got up and found a wonderful description of the experience on Zanthan Gardens' site. Like MSS, I worried all week — what would be in bloom, would Climbing Pinkie continue looking glorious, might the buds of the zexmenia or the winecups open in time. And then I was so astonished by the variety and beauty of all the gardens that, when it came my time to act the host, I forgot to worry. I forgot to ask any of the questions or request any of the advice that I had thought about beforehand. And then, all too soon, we were off to the next stop on the tour.

The afternoon sped by, the names and scents of roses — oh, such magnificent roses — a delicious confusion. Last night, after six hours of touring and talking, I lay on the couch in my sitting room, my garden in darkness outside. I should have gone to bed but I wanted to take just a few more minutes to remember the woodland meadow and the rose-covered picket fence, the mystery roses and the brilliant yellow and black caterpillers on a volunteer fennel. I wanted to hold onto the rush of words and the images and scents and textures of plants — clematis and sweet peas, lilies and coneflowers, agave and iris — for just a few minutes longer.

Comments and community

When I started this blog I didn't think much about readers. But within a few short weeks, the blog was discovered, first by Annie of The Transplantable Rose and shortly thereafter by Pam of Digging. I'd left a comment on another Austin garden blog (The Great Experiment, I think) and from there they tracked me down. As Pam said, once you comment, you can run but you can't hide. They, and a few others, left comments here and there and my perspective on blogging started to change. Blogging wasn't just writing for myself, record-keeping or navel gazing. I wasn't exactly sure what it was but I started looking forward to seeing those comments.

It took me a while to understand something about the communal nature of blogging, that thing that Annie was writing about the other day. I started out reading food blogs and there is certainly community there. The same people — from Paris to Seattle to Munich to Bloomington, Indiana — cheer and gripe and share, back and forth and around and around. When one travels, another throws a dinner party and invites bloggers from the neighborhood to join in. The food blogging community has contests and fundraisers and gift exchanges.

As I started reading more garden blogs I saw that a similar, if apparently smaller, community exists here as well (smaller maybe because it's easier to share a recipe than a plant? Or because everyone eats and only the discriminating garden?). Events like Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, sponsored by May Dreams Gardens, and the Mouse & Trowel Awards (have you submitted your nominations?) bring garden bloggers together. And shortly after I was found out by the Austin garden bloggers, they kindly invited me to an actual gathering, face to actual face, in Annie's garden. Now we're planning an all-afternoon tour of our Austin gardens, north to south and back, with snacks and, no doubt, lots of garden questions and advice along the way. Being part of that community is certainly welcome (especially since my friend/next-door neighbor/fellow gardner moved a few years ago, reducing my garden gossip chances by at least half).

I have to admit that, although I check on about 20 garden blogs a day (among the 50 or so blogs that I get feeds for through Bloglines), I mostly lurk. So maybe, in that sense, I'm not truly participating in the garden blogging community. I don't know. I enjoy getting comments, I like knowing that someone is reading, I like that sense of connection. But for some reason I wasn't commenting much.

Then, over the past week or so, I put up several posts and no one seemed to notice. No comments at all (okay, since then several people have commented so I guess someone is reading). Every time my e-mail dinged (I get notified of comments by e-mail) I'd stop what I was doing and check to see if it was a comment. I realized how much I enjoyed getting comments and became determined to comment myself more often. Turnaround is only fair play, right? Or should that be, what goes around, comes around?

I still have some more pondering to do about the difference between personal reflection and a larger readership. About keeping notes for myself and writing something that might be interesting to others. But plenty of time for that.

Oh, and the picture at the top is my attempt this morning to catch Climbing Pinkie at what is absolutely her best moment ever (why do I think of my roses as she? Do you do that?).

Looking better

I've been frustrated by my inability to get good images of the garden, especially close-ups of individual buds or flowers, to include with the blog. Yesterday I e-mailed Pam, whose images at Digging I've admired (and envied) for months. I asked her some questions about what kind of camera she uses and for any other advice.

I was amazed to hear from her that she is using basically the same camera we have (a Canon Powershot A85). She made some suggestions about using the macro feature and about stabilizing the camera and the results, if I don't say so myself, are an immense improvement (and I've finally got the close-ups with the background out of focus that have been eluding me!). The thanks go to Pam, both for the inspiration to attempt to improve the images and for the encouragement to try to get the best out of my camera. Thanks Pam.

In addition to taking her advice, I spent some time with the manual (I've tried to parse it before but it puts me to sleep) and at the same time my techie husband went off to do some experiments that mostly involved increasing the resolution of the images we were shooting and changing the compression factor from normal to superfine.

The image at the top is the corner of the long L-shaped bed in the upstairs backyard; the pink rose is Climbing Pinkie, growing up through and spilling out of a steel teepee-like thing (I'm sure there's a name for it — tuteur?). Below is a cluster of Climbing Pinkie buds, with one bloom open; the plant is covered in bud clusters.




This is the first flower on the yellow columbine plant that the foundation crew had to dig up last spring when they were building the giant french drain through the garden. They positioned the drain so carefully that the columbine was the only plant that was disturbed and they dug it up and I've saved it in a pot ever since. I just got it in the ground this week and now it's flowering.



And these are the buds at the end of one of eight bloom stalks on the clump of red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora). I mention the number of stalks because last year it didn't bloom at all. Not one stalk. I was ready to dig the whole clump up (it's been in the ground for 12 years and I thought maybe it was too old to bloom) but now it's redeeming itself (although the salmon color of the blooms does clash with the pink roses on either side. Oh well).




And finally, this is one of many clusters of flowers covering the Anacacho orchid tree (Bauhinia congesta). I'm going to try to get a close-up of one of the unopened bunch of buds when the light is better later; they look like tiny bananas to me.

Not gone forever

I haven't posted since Halloween. Every day I walk out into the garden and think, I'll go in there and write something. Just a few words. And then I get back into my office and get sucked into something else and don't do it. I think one reason I haven't been posting is that I feel like I must have a picture (I look at Pam's postings, with their beautiful images and feel even more intimidated). But getting the camera out is just one more thing and sometimes its one thing too many.

So, no picture today. Just words.

After the freezes of the past few weeks, the garden is in a crispy, limp place, at least most of it. The two hamelias were the first to feel the cold, the outer layers of foliage going a reddish brown and then, with even colder weather, actually crisping up and falling. Same with the yellow bells, the purple heart, the Mexican flame vine, and the Pride of Barbados. All semi-frozen but not down to the ground. I need to get in and whack things back but I'm always wary at this point of more of this 75, 80 degree weather that just encourages everything to send up new growth. Maybe I'll wait a bit.

All three roses made it through the freezes with no damage. All three were covered in buds before the first freeze and I was sure I would lose all those flowers but so far they're blooming away. Maggie is much happier with the various things — hypericum, flame vine, salvia leucantha — trimmed away. The flowers are as fabulous, both in looks and scent, as I remembered. Old Blush has been covered in blooms. I was out this morning examining it, trying to decide whether to prune back the stalks where the petals have fallen. Again the question of encouraging new growth. Hmmm . . .

Speaking of the hypericum, it's coming back with a vengence. I chopped it all the way to the ground and it's sending up new growth from every bare stalk. One tough plant. I think I'll dig it up and move it. If it's that tough even my manhandling style of transplanting probably won't kill it.

I brought all the succulents in, either to the screened porch or to my office, before the first freeze. Now I can't decide whether to move them back or leave them inside. Some of them are unwieldy but others look a little sad indoors. Sure as anything, the day I move them out another cold front will swoop down. The perils of Austin gardening.

I did leave the manfreda Macho Mocha outside in its pot, which was just too big to move. I covered it with a sheet and it's doing just fine. We covered the big agave Americana in the front with a couple of sheets too. Last winter it sustained serious damage, even covered. My theory was that it's reaching the end of its life (the mother plant, anyway) and was therefore more fragile. But so far this year it's fine. Maybe it was just colder last year.

Out of hiding

I was astonished this morning to find comments on several of the (few) entries in the blog. Entries from people whose blogs I've been reading for several months. And then I went to one of those sites, Digging, and found an entry about my site. Pretty cool. And thanks so much, Pam, for the kind words.

When I started writing here I mostly thought of it as something for myself, a way to keep better track of where I am and where I'm going with the garden. Since I was banished from most of the garden from January until July while the construction was going on, the moment when I got back to it seemed a good time to start something else new. And since I sit in front of a computer most of the day (in my fabulous new office that looks right out into the garden; am I lucky or what?), a blog seemed like the thing to try.

Anyway, even though I never considered that others might be interested in it, it's exciting that someone is.

A couple of years ago my fabulous next-door neighbor moved. She was my garden confidante. We shared plants and tales of woe and eventually the gardens between our two houses merged, her poppies and larkspur seeding themselves into my bed and my Copper Canyon daisy finding a happier spot on her sunnier side. My new neighbor is also a gardener but we have different tastes (she's a bit tidier, more orderly than I) and, sadly, I've all but abandoned the bit of my garden that adjoins hers as well as the sense of garden companionship. So having some kind of gardening community again is welcome. Thanks for the welcome.

(Oh, and I have changed the Blogger settings so that I think anyone can post comments now. Let me know if it doesn't work.)