Report from the jungle

I just logged on and saw that I haven't posted since the middle of June. I missed July and August's Garden Blogger Bloom Days and, looking out at the garden, it looks like the blog is not the only thing that's been missing some attention.

No excuses really but some explanation: We returned from a three-week trip late Tuesday and much of the month or so prior to the departure was consumed with trip planning and preparation as well as finishing up other (paying) work. So both the blog and the garden were ignored.

We returned from our tour of Germany and the Czech Republic to find the Bermuda grass in the back yard an astonishing three feet tall. That was all I could take in at first but once D. hacked the grass back I could see that in three weeks the garden had gone out of control. Really, truly out of control. Apparently the unusual rains of May, June, and July continued through much of our absence and my failure to cut things back before we left resulted in a mad tangle of foliage.

Yesterday and today I've been trying to make a dent in the mess — pulling out masses of purple heart that has consumed whole areas of the long bed, removing enormous quantities of weeds and encroaching Bermuda grass and a few plants that died, either from too much rain or too much competition from overgrowth surrounding them (the mallow plant in the back bed died before we left and I found that all three of the salvia nemarosas that I planted behind the new agave at the corner of the long bed had also died, shaded out or smothered by the shocking growth of the bamboo muhly behind them).

The rains have continued, starting this morning and continuing on and off all day. The forecast predicts more rain over the next few days (the result of a tropical storm that came ashore in south Texas this morning). More rain, more growth, I suppose.

Right now I look at the garden and I'm not quite sure what to do. My impulse is to rip some things up (the volunteer chile pequin's time has come, I think: It's the size of an overstuffed arm chair, much too large for the place it claimed for itself) and cut most everything else in half. I just want to restore some kind of order, give myself and the plants some breathing space.

Spring showers etc.

A winecup in this morning's soft rain


The garden came through Wednesday night's wild thunderstorms mostly unscathed, although the Old Blush rose suffered some minor injuries from a medium-sized branch that plummeted from a great height out of the neighbor's pecan tree. Fortunately it landed tip down and stabbed straight through the rose bush without inflicting serious damage. Those pecan trees, with their long, supple branches, both frighten and fascinate me in high winds. I watch them from the new porch or through the sitting room windows and their branches twist and turn in a thunderstorm as if a giant, invisible eggbeater was churning through them. In addition to the one pecan branch in our back yard, branches were down all over the neighborhood. No whole trees uprooted as a result of this most recent storm, though, at least none I saw.

The last couple of weeks of April and now the first few days of May have been remarkably wet and, until recently, cool. According to the National Weather Service we had at least a trace of rain on 15 out of 30 days in April (16 at the weather station at Bergstrom, which is closest to us, and 14 at the station at Camp Mabry). And we've already had nearly an inch and a half of rain in the first three days of May! But the temperatures have been rising these last couple of days and soon enough it will truly be summer.

With the roses mostly past their first flush of bloom, the garden has changed in the last two weeks. Maggie is still covered in blooms but Old Blush and Climbing Pinkie are resting. I expect them both to bloom again unless it gets too hot in the next few weeks. The new Cecille Brunner in a pot is covered in a new round of buds but that may be because it's so recently planted (or maybe it just blooms later; I guess I won't know until next year).

This week my new winecups (Callirhoe involucrata) started blooming. I'm quite pleased to have winecups back in the garden, even if they are the creeping rather than the standing variety (the kind I've had before, with the same flowers but held up on long rigid upright stems instead of on viney stems, is Callirhoe digitata). I'm liking the way they look in front of the agave parryii. That magenta is one of my favorite garden colors.


Also starting to bloom are the cleome, the dark blue plumbago, and the zexmenia. Even the sadly mistreated California poppies have produced a few flowers. The transplanted Pride of Barbados (Caesalpinia pulcherrima) seems to have fully recovered from the shock of being moved and is sending out new leaves at a fast clip (so much for the idea that PoBs are impossible to move; I've got several other seedlings that I may try to move in the fall). Although the various Salvia greggiis are past their first big bloom cycle, the Salvia guaranitica "Black and Blue" is about to bloom as is the Salvia "Anthony Parker" (strangely, since it's usually a fall bloomer; the two Mexican bush sages (Salvia leucantha), also fall bloomers, are sending up a few bloom stalks as well). All three of the cedar sages (Salvia roemariana), the transplanted one and the two new ones, are covered in blooms. And I discovered one large and two or three small seedlings behind the globe mallow. I'll move them as soon as the ground dries out a bit.

Wisteria (and other) updates

I meant to take a picture of the wisteria blossoms each day so I could track the progression from bud to flower but the recent rain foiled that plan (not that I'm complaining about the rain!).

Here is a picture of some of the wisteria flowers as they look today and an overall shot of the whole vine in early stages of its bloom. The flowers are probably 1/3 to 1/2 open. It will probably be in full bloom by the weekend.






The rain has, in fact, been lovely. A deluge Sunday night, continuing all night, and then almost constant steady soaking rain on Tuesday. I wish we had a rain guage so I would know exactly how much we've gotten over the past few days. I estimate 2 to 3 inches.

As I poked around this afternoon I found the first sprouts from the stumps of the two hamelia plants and definite signs of life in the til-now lifeless clumps of Mexican flame vine. I even think I see the very first hints of new, red growth at the base of the Pride of Barbados in the far back. I had just about given it up for dead and was pondering its replacement.

The rain has bent the Old Blush rose almost to the ground, leading me to belive that I didn't prune it enough last week. I really don't know how much such a rose should be pruned. It's been in the ground about 4 years, I think, and has gotten quite large, about 5 feet tall and probably 7 or 8 feet wide. I pruned back some of the lower branches and some interior canes a week or so ago but, since it was already budded out I hate to chop it back too much (it was covered with buds before the last freeze and those buds were damaged, shriveled and not fully developed when they opened, but it's developed additional buds since then).

Oh and the first salvia greggi flowers have opened, on the plant to the left of the Old Blush. The other two haven't shown any signs of buds yet.

A damp morning

When I woke up this morning the ground was wet and rain water was dripping from the eaves. The dripping has continued all morning, just a light sprinkle but continuous. Probably not much in total inches but a pleasant change, especially with the temperature in low 70s. Almost 30 degrees cooler than last week this time. Oy!

The blooms on the Mexican bush sage are opening, either just because it's their time or because they're celebrating the cool and damp as well. I noticed bloom stalks on the salvia Anthony Parker (why do I always want to call it Arnold Palmer?) too but they haven't opened yet. That's the salvia that I saw in luxurious bloom at the nursery Alisa and I stop at when we're on our way back from Port Aransas, along Highway 183 somewhere north of Goliad (or maybe closer to Gonzales? I'll have to pay better attention next time). They have a great selection of plants, especially shrubby things, along with a couple of huge basset hounds. Anyway, I saw the saliva Anthony Parker, which has dark blueish purple blooms, and admired it but they didn't have any for sale (I did score a Mexican bush sage, maybe even the one that's blooming now, with solid purple flowers, which I've always prefered to the white-tipped variety). Some time later, maybe the next year, I saw the Anthony Parker at Barton Springs Nursery and bought it. It's never been as dramatically beautiful as the one I saw on the way back from Port A but lovely at this time of year nonetheless. I'll post a picture once it starts blooming.

A few drops

This morning, a little before 7, as I was fixing the kid's breakfasts, I heard the the pinging sound of raindrops on the stove vent pipe. The rain, steady but not drenching, fell for 10 or 15 minutes and the temperature dropped 5 degrees or so. The sky to the north and west stayed dark for an hour and rumbles of thunder in the distance continued but so far no more rain.

Here are some pictures of the garden after the rain fell. The far back with the blooming Pride of Barbados, yellow bells (Tecoma stans), and red hamelia, as well as masses of volunteer Turk's cap and purple heart; the bench with Climbing Pinkie on the teepee behind, a glimpse of the terra cotta pig Laura gave me at the party a couple of years ago behind an out of control patch of bulbine along with a few blooms of pavonia, and my Mother's Day urn in front of Old Blush.