Tag: gardening

Florae and faunae. And Friday.

Florae.

Yay Friday!   This was a great Friday though.   I got to sleep in until 7:30AM (!).  Then I finished my last meeting at 3:00, so that I could run to a couple of non-work related appointments, one of which was a well-deserved, self-indulgent, overdue pedicure.  🙂

Then we went to dinner at one of our favorites, and the best Indian restaurant in Austin, in my opinion, Bombay Bistro.

Monte planted a huge patch of basil from seed earlier this spring.   Today he thinned out the patch and brought some inside.   It’s gonna be a great year for basil!

Then, i saw our resident deer grazing in the front yard, munching on grass and the leaves of the crepe myrtles.  He, or she, was not very startled by us tapping on the window to get it to look our way for a shot.   I think this is the same deer that we saw a few months ago with an injured leg nesting next to the window of our guest room.  The leg looks like it has healed, but there’s a huge knob on the knee of its right foreleg.  I’m glad to see it grown up and fending for itself.

Faunae.

Unfortunately, the light wasn’t great, as the deer was standing in the shade of the red oak out front.  But he did strike a great pose.

Have a great weekend!

Robert Plant, age 25.

Born again – Dracaena marginata.

August 1987.  I had just flown across the country to attend graduate school, and moved into a small 1 bedroom apartment.  I bought myself a small 3″ potted plant – a dracaena.  I thought it would brighten up the place.  It didn’t even reach to the bottom of the power outlet when it was sitting on the floor.  I christened him Robert Plant.

As I moved from place to place, i dragged Robert along with me – 25 years, 6 moves, 3 states.

In the past few years Robert grew to tower 11 or 12 feet high, with three or four trunks.  But, this last winter, I left Robert out one night too many – and he experienced a hard freeze.  I thought it was the end for my green friend.  He sat in the garage untended all winter and most of the spring with brown leaves, showing no signs of life.

A couple of months ago, we hauled a dead Robert out into the backyard and cut off all his stalks.  Monte was thinking about reusing the pot.  But we didn’t dump out the pot; left it there for a while, and it was watered along with all the other plants nearby.

And, just a few weeks back, what to my wondering eyes did appear?  But a tiny green tuft of leaves growing bigger every day.  Robert lives!  Welcome back, buddy!

18 carrot gold.

1st batch o carrots from the garden.

When I planted the carrot seeds, I put them way too close together.  They really need to be thinned out.  This is the first batch of carrots from the garden.  They are small, but this will hopefully help thin out the bed, allowing the others to grow bigger.

They’re small, but they’re tasty!

Springtime.

Red Yucca - orton-ish.

Oh My.  How fast the weekends fly by.

This is a shot of one of the flowers on the red yucca out back.   So pretty, yet so fleeting.

And, this is the tickseed that I planted several weeks ago.

Tickseed. Jethro Tull. Coreopsis.

Pretty yellow flowers.  It is also called jethro tull flower.  So, I’ll leave you with this:

Jethro Tull’s Songs from the Wood.

G’nite!

Home-made.

Black Seeded Simpson, all grown up.

This is the last of the lettuce that Monte planted about 6 weeks ago.  It’s all rinsed and spun and ready to eat.

In its place, lots of basil seed has been sown —  right next to the carrots, broccoli, and mystery squash.

Day and night.

Pink Pentas.

This morning started early, as usual.  I’m leaving for NY again this morning and I still had to pack.  I took a walk out back after a few calls.  This is a shot of one of the recently planted pentas, well in bloom;  with droplets from this morning’s watering still there.

I made it to La Guardia without incident.  This is a shot going over the Whitestone Bridge – perennially under construction.   The sunset was pretty.  I was hoping to get a shot of Manhattan from the port side of the plane, but for some reason, the plane approached from the east on landing, instead of the west, so I missed getting a shot.

Westchester bound.

 

My favorite lantana.

Multi-colored lantana bloom.

Lantana grows here in abundance, without needing anything from humans to help it along.  It is one of the great native flowering plants in Central Texas.

We have yellow, orange, purple and white lantana in different places in our yard.   But my favorite is the multi-colored pink & yellow lantana.  Before we built the shop, there was a beautiful, huge multi-colored lantana growing right in the middle of where the slab was to be poured.   It ended up getting torn out.  I’ve mourned the loss of that lantana ever since.

So, today I was very happy to see a new lantana growing in the backyard that is just starting to pop out with those great multi-colored blooms.

Yay!

So pretty.

Little lilies.

Alstroemeria.

We had a very nice weekend at the homestead.  Soon weekends will be full of lake activity, so it’s nice to play homebodies for a while.  We watched the Master’s final round coverage yesterday.  And I grilled a ham on the weber, and topped it off with sweet potato casserole and baked beans.  Everything turned out great.

These little lilies have been blooming every spring that we’ve lived here.  The bulbs are extremely hardy, and can stand drought and hard freezes.   But, their blooms are short lived, lasting only a week or so.  I looked up their name online and am pretty sure they are alstroemeria, aka peruvian lily or lily of the incas.  Your flower factoid of the day:  alstroemeria flowers symbolize friendship and devotion — faithful bloomers.

 

Good Saturday.

Yet another volunteer

Today was beautiful.  Hit Home Depot.   Worked outside in the yard.  Got my new flowers planted.  Fertilized the lawn out back and watered it in.  Hoping a lawn will spring up any day now.  Dug out a dead yaupon holly and replaced it with a new one.  Grocery shopping.  Filled the bird feeders.  Some indoor cleaning.  Reversed the ceiling fans – it’s officially spring now.   (In case you were wondering:  counter-clockwise for summer, clockwise for winter, as you look at the fan from below).  Some work-work.  Cooked a couple of yummy steaks.  Watched Darjeeling Limited with Monte.  Fell asleep on the couch.  Just yer average Saturday.  Waiting for the Easter bunny to show.

My cactus.

My prickly pear cactus out back.

When we bought this house, we went from a yard that was about 1/10 of an acre to one that was about 3/4 of an acre.  I enjoyed taking the first walks around the back to discover the trees, flowers and other features that came with the deal.  One of them was a tiny little cactus, which uncharacteristically started growing in the very shady wooded part of our back yard.  But, still it was my first cactus, and the only one on our property, so I wanted to keep an eye on it.   In that first year it was pretty small, and ended up being run over by the lawnmower a couple times (you can see a cut on the top of one of the pads in the middle of the plant).  So a couple years ago I marked it with stones.

Several years I’ve had to go out and dust it to deter an infestation of cactus-sucker-bugs. The droughts have been tough, too, but, hey, it’s a cactus.   This is the 6th year since I discovered it, and this spring it is covered with lots of new pads.  And it’s finally getting some height.  The spines on the new pads are soft and green… but will soon turn into those horrible little spikes that you never want to touch.

Baby cactus pad.

Maybe next year we’ll be treated to a flower.

Red yucca shoot.

Red Yucca.

One of the 4 red yuccas out back is going to bloom this year.  Woot, woot!

After the rain.

Field of blue.

May the blessing of the rain be on you—
the soft sweet rain.
May it fall upon your spirit
so that all the little flowers may spring up,
and shed their sweetness on the air.
May the blessing of the great rains be on you,
may they beat upon your spirit
and wash it fair and clean,
and leave there many a shining pool
where the blue of heaven shines,
and sometimes a star.

— Irish blessing

New growth.

Crepe Myrtle buds.

I have several large pots filled with dirt in various spots in the back yard.  They are leftovers from plants that have either died or been replanted, and I haven’t gotten around to planting something new in them yet.  Two years ago (or maybe 3?) I noticed a shoot growing in one of these pots.  Another volunteer.  I let it go for a while and realized it was a crepe myrtle.  The first year it grew a bit and leafed out.  The second year, it had a few more shoots and it even had a few flowers.  This year I want to start to shape it into a taller tree, rather than a bushy shrub.  So, a couple of weeks ago, I pruned it back to two bare, woody stalks about 3 feet high.

In the shot above, you can see some of the big buds that have popped out along the main branches.   Glad to see that I didn’t kill it.  🙂

Bye-bye Winter (and a few other items of miscellany).

pea-knuckle.

We met Doray & Tom at BB Rover’s tonight for dinner and to play a few rounds of pinochle.  The ladies won a tightly contested best-of-three match.

Today is the last day of winter.   Spring will officially be upon us at 12:14 AM local time tomorrow morning.

I have a couple of unrelated other shots I wanted to post…  one is of a deer that has taken to laying outside the guest bedroom window.  He’s got an injured foreleg, and has been back here a couple of times.   This shot is from the bedroom window.  He’s only inches away.  Forgive the crummy shot through the solar screen on the window.  You get the idea.

Oh deer!

And this is a shot of a bunch of Texas Mountain Laurel seeds that I harvested from a bush growing in the greenbelt when we were there on Saturday afternoon.  I looked online to learn how to prepare the seeds for germination.  These seeds are from last season, they are hard and red and have shrunk a bit.  Conventional wisdom says to knick them and then soak them till they swell a bit, and then plant them about an inch deep.  The little dimples on the seeds in the picture below are where I cut through the shell of the seed.  The seeds soaked for about 8 hours, so they are plumped up a bit from when I knicked them.   I’ve got these guys in pots in the back room now so that I can tend them.  I hope they take!  We want to plant a bunch of mountain laurels along the back fence line.  I’ll let you know how they turn out…  FYI these are supposed to be poisonous, so if you try this at home… don’t eat them  🙂

Texas Mountain Laurel seeds.

There is rain in the forecast…it’s been slow getting here.  But as I type this post, there’s a big red line just moving into our area.   I’ll have to sign off now to watch the weather channel (my favorite).

Good night!