A Long Suffering Project

 A few weeks ago, Shawn brought up "the hideous bed." Again. I call it "the hideous bed," not because it's hideous, or even a bed, but because Diana's husband called one of her flower beds right after she finished it "hideous" and never changed his mind, and thus "hideous bed" is now a catch-all for anything in the yard that the non-gardener/landscaper hates. Even if it is a half-finished project.

This is a "half finished project" because I originally was going to remove the rock, backfill with soil, and landscape. Unfortunately, as soon as I removed some of the rock (to use for 2 other yard projects), I realized that the area was actually graded in a way to direct runoff away from the house, so backfilling with soil was immediately out, but I was also too lazy to go get more rock, and I also wasn't sure if I wanted to try to do some sort of french drain system.  

So, while he was off on his boy's trip (mountain biking in Colorado), I decided to finally DO something about the half finished hideous bed.

Instead of getting more limestone piece like we've already got, I decided to change it up with some "shadow stone" instead. I went with angular rock just so it compacts together and provides a more stable walking medium.  Now it's officially "done" but I'm still debating on putting something in the center area - like the birdbath or the bird statue. 

Of course, now I'm also all about redoing the area between this spot and the house - removing all the plants (liriope and rough leaf dogwood) and starting over - maybe with a Rusty Blackhaw and Inland Sea Oats or Columbine

Big Freeze Clean Up: Before and After

So I left off with the big freeze having happened. This means that plants got goobered.  Plants that hadn't been cut back in eons died back to the ground, some plants, like my Arizona Ash still haven't recovered since it was already budding out right as the freeze hit. 

The Asiatic Jasmine corner. Before. On the plus side, the freeze really did kill off most of this invasive plant making it much easier to get rid of.

After.  I realize it's hard to see the difference since it was all brown before and is still brown. But hopefully the tree appreciates it.

Can you find all the toads?  There was a whole family of them living under an old grill cover which was in the Asiatic Jasmine.  The cover had been full incorporated into the jasmine. 

The Toadrys.  I had to text my "snake guy" coworker because he's into all the cool animals - like seriously, I've brought him skulls, jaw bones, snake skins, and pictures of snakes in the past to find out what they are. So naturally I texted him a photo of the toads and was like "uh...I'm doing yardwork, how do I save these guys? Do I need to use gloves or anything?" So this was the first time in my life where I went about catching toads and putting them in a bucket.

"Hey! Where do you think you're going, mister?!". The amount of talking I was doing to those toads and the spiders I found probably had my neighbors questioning my sanity.

Adult Rough Earth Snake. We have these occasionally in the yard and I love them. This was my first time actually catching and holding one. And then I had to catch him AGAIN because he was intent on needing to be in the part of the yard where the asiatic jasmine was and didn't WANT to be in the garden area.  Bonus points to me that I didn't need to contact "the snake guy" since I joined a snake identification group on Facebook and now spend a lot of time looking at snake pictures and have gotten much better at identifying them - Shawn says hopefully this means I'll actually SEE the snakes before I step on them (I've almost stepped on a racer, a bull snake, a rattlesnake, and a rat snake).

As for planting things in this area, I'm trying to generally keep it unplanted through this summer (because I predict it's going to be a summer from hell a la 2011 again). BUT, this is also an area that like years ago I had planned to plant some beauty bushes in this area - bushes that I promptly had purchased with the misguided idea that if I had the bushes on hand, I'd remove the asiatic jasmine sooner rather than later. 

Hahahahahahahaha

Yeah - the beautyberry, Mexican buckeye, and agarita sat in tiny pots for YEARS. I needed to cut the containers away from the roots and still dig them out of the ground.  BUT! I did get them dug up and then replanted in this area. But since those plants were also damaged by the freeze, they all got a severe cut back and now I'm waiting for them to leaf out more so you can actually see them in the photo. But with the warmer weather, I am getting some of the Asiatic jasmine coming back from root pieces I missed, so I need to keep the area clear for a growing season or so, just to make sure I got it all.

A (mostly) Blank Slate

After a few years, my Iris bed...drifted.  The irises didn't necessarily drift, but the Mexican Petunia sure did.

Here's a picture after I planted it in 2012:

And here's a photo after the first year:

And from December of 2014 (the last time I took a photo):

The petunias only got more out of control - like to the point where they were completely shading out the irises, so I decided they had to go.  The problem with the petunias, however, is that they can be a bit problematic to pull out because the stems break easily.  This means that the best way to get rid of them is to dig them up.  Considering that it had also been 4 years since I planted the bed, I figured it would be a good time to separate the irises anyway (those that had survived in any case).  All that to say that bed now looks like this:

Surprisingly (to me) it had more irises that were still good versus those that were bad which I'll replant in the area:

Since I think I need something a little taller in the back, I'll plant some milkweed (or really just dump some milkweed seeds in the back and hope they do well).

Spring Cleanup Continues

Before

After

After

After

All Hail the Monarchs (round 2)

2nd, 3rd and 4th; or 3rd, 4th, and 5th Monarch Instars

So this last Saturday I went outside to do my normal garden walk about (mostly to check on the veggies to see if they needed water), and I came across a caterpillar on the milkweed.  So I went and grabbed my phone to research whether it was a Monarch caterpillar or a Queen caterpillar.  2 sets of antennae looking things...Monarch!  huzzah!  and then I noticed another one, and another one and so on and so forth and I'm sure at some point I went from ecstatic to forlorn and defeated because the survival rate of monarchs in the wild in caterpillar stage is about 10% (per the presentation from Chuck at the Monarch Appreciation dealie at Zilker in mid-September).  And so I decided I needed to help the caterpillars.  But I didn't really know how - it looked like, based on MonarchWatch's website that I could make a caterpillar container out of Ziploc tupperware and an old screen I use to keep cats from digging in my garden after planting seeds.  I fashioned 5 containers of monarchs, 2 per container, and balanced the screen on top; then I found another later in the day, and two more the following day.  In the end I had 13 caterpillars, mostly all at the same stage, but with 2 at least one instar behind.

My containers are set up thusly:

1. 1 tupperware-ish container approximately 3" deep.
2. 1 wetted paper towel lightly squeezed
3. 1 milkweed leaf per caterpillar in container
4. 2 caterpillars per container, maximum of 3
5. Ventilated covers (I just use an old window screen and cover all of the containers at once...this requires that all the containers are the same height in order to work, naturally)

Put the wet paper towel in the bottom - I open it up to cover the entire bottom so it catches all the catpoop.  Lay leaves on top.  Insert caterpillars. Replace the paper towel every day, replace leaves and add more leaves as needed.  The first day or so I got away with adding one leaf per caterpillar per day.  Around Monday morning I noticed that some of the containers were empty of food (I added fresh leaves Sunday night), so then I started adding one leaf per cat in the morning and one in the evening.  By Tuesday I was adding 2 leaves per cat twice a day.  Today (Thursday), I'm up to 3 leaves per cat twice a day.  But of course, most of them are in 5th instar stage so they should be pupating soon.

Pupating.  Crap.  Forgot about pupating.  Pupating in a tiny little not-super-deep container probably isn't the best.  This meant that I needed to come up with some way to allow the caterpillars to pupate and have space for emergence (enough space to allow them to hang upside down to get fluid into their wings and flap their wings about).  So I went to the good ol' Walmart (because I figured by Sunday that there was no way for me to find one of those fancy zippered butterfly cages in time for the pupating stage), and started looking for some of those screen food covers.  I didn't find any.  But I did find a 13" cube pop-up laundry baskets.  I then used some tulle and duct tape to fashion a top to the container, which attaches with clothes pins and safety pins.  Wednesday night I moved three of the tuperwares into it since those caterpillars are in 5th instar which means they should be pupating soon.

Of course, after going through this hassle, I found that I could have put my plethora of old yogurt containers to good use.  Oh well, maybe I'll do that for the next few caterpillars that are reaching the 5th instar stage to see which way works better.

Yard Design

So back when my parents moved into their house, they were given the option of either paying for the building company to design and install their yard, or they could do it themselves (or hire someone).  They decided that since going with option A also meant that they had no choice, or even veto power, on any plant that was planted, that they were just going to have me do it.  Of course, that also would have meant that I would have been digging holes and what have you - all on top of my normal yard work that I need to do, and all the shelter work on the weekends, and it was just pretty obvious that it was going to be bad for all parties involved.

But, I did offer to come up with a plan, or review any plan they got from the landscaping company. 

In the end, the plan they're using is one that is a modification of the plan that the landscaping company based on my original plan.

The final plan:

1. Big Muhly
2. Paleleaf Yucca
3. Purple skullcap
4. Beautyberry
5. Cast Iron Plant
6. Green Cloud Texas Sage
7. Blackfoot Daisy
8. Possumhaw Holly
9. Butterfly Iris
10. Bearded Iris
11. Gulf Muhly
12. Autumn Sage
13. Desert Wilow
14. Trailing Rosemary
15. Mexican Mint Marigold
16. Mexican Oregano
17. various Culinary Herbs
18. Gregg's Mistflower
19. Shrubby Boneset
20. Mexican Bush Sage
21. Conflower
22. Texas Ash
23. Red Oak
24. Lavender Crepe Myrtles
25. Esperanza
26. Plumbago

February Wide Angles

At the beginning of each month, we join Heather at Xericstyle in posting wide angle photos of our yards.

We will begin again with a photo of the front of the house:

Okay, okay, even with the wide angle, it's hard to see anything, so here's a close up of the front bed.  It's looking pretty pitiful.  I also don't know if the agave will make it.

Next we will move into the panoramic of the back side yard.  There isn't much difference, but I did remove the dead Philippine Violet and the (potentially not) dead Firespike.  It looks like there is a lot less stuff because the Shrimp Plant has finally been completely defoliated due to the hard freezes we've had.

Continuing on, we get to the panoramic from the back door.  I don't know if you can even see in the previous panoramic, but I did remove a Nandina bush that was in the back corner.  YAY!

Yesterday when I decided I really ought to take the wide angle photos for February, I was in the middle of planting my Caldwell Pink Rose - a tiny little 4" pot that I bought on a whim at Barton Springs Nursery.  Of course, that was also like last February.  In any case, it's planted now - but DAMN that thing had a huge taproot - the root went out the bottom of the container and down deeper than a foot (that was as far as I could dig down and it was not giving up).  You can also see the trellises that Bob made for me against the fence.  The grass removal project is almost done/just getting started, depending on how you look at it.  All the St. Augustine grass has been removed (which was the majority of the area), but now we have some patches of Bermuda grass to get rid of.

And finally, the coup d'etat - the world photo:
February Backyard World Photo

A Year in Review

So, Pam at Digging got me thinking about my favorite photos from the past year.  And hardly any of them actually made it to the blog!  HA!  No, it's actually because my favorite passionvine photo was taken with my phone, so I never uploaded it to the blog, and I never did get around to posting photos from the Florida vacation (it's still on my list of things to do).

Anyhow, I decided I'd share my favorites from those that actually DID make it to the blog. Naturally, you can click to embiggen.

Mah Cat - Ivy

The Japanese Garden bridge at Zilker Botanical Gardens

One of the many squirrels in the yard

Beetle in a coreopsis bloom

Bloom Day Pink Cosmos

North by Northwest Austin Garden Tour:  Millington Garden

North by Northwest Austin Garden Tour:  Rancho Chaotic

North by Northwest Austin Garden Tour:  Clark Garden

My "Mull-Shay" Bed

Wasp and fly on Cosmo bloom

Around the Yard - Early Sept 2013 - Back yard

Rather than do a gazillion posts (like I did for the front yard), I figure you all can handle just having one whole slew of photos of the back yard.

I'm starting to really like the back yard.  I'm also starting to really want to get back to working on it.  Unfortunately, I have a feeling that my yard is going to take a back seat to my parents yard this fall as they will have to have all their garden beds and plants designed and planted by the beginning of March.  Which is both awesome and mind boggling.  Po' Shawn.  He's always complaining that I never spend enough time doing the yard work here at the house (more like I can find better things to do with my time than shear back plants or spread a few handfuls of compost), and this year there will likely be very little headway made on my backyard plan because I will be helping my parents with theirs.

Above is a picture of the Iris Bed.  you can see the original photos here.  It has obviously grown.  The only downside is that only one of the irises bloomed this year - a Cemetery White.  I also think the Jesse's Song iris died - or at least all of the leaves turned brown and disappeared.  I'm not sure what, if anything, I'm doing wrong - maybe they're getting too much water, maybe they need to be fertilized, maybe they just don't get enough sunlight, or hell, maybe irises don't bloom that first year.  I don't know.  I should probably do some research into that...  The artemisia (front) could stand to have a haircut.  I have a feeling that the iris and the artemisia need much less water than they're getting in this spot - which means the problem is the petunia (back) because I'll water when they start looking sad - which is about once a week or so.

The "Mull-shay" bed, on the other hand, looks fantastic.  Again - if we can just ignore the syrup barrel composter, the line of limestone blocks that I need to use and the fallen leaves, it would be pretty awesome.  I'm not too happy with the Firespike (it's the tallish plant on the right in the front) as it requires more water than I like to give plants.  I also, however, have a problem with removing plants...so I guess I need to hope for it to die off in some fashion.  The Yarrow (the little plants in the front) are a bit of a disappointment, but maybe they just follow the adage, "first year they creep, second year they sleep, and third year they leap."  I also have 4 Beauty Berry Bushes in little 6" pots by the Shrimp Plant (you can make out one pot in the far left of the photo).  The Liriope (the strappy foliage) looks like it's trying to take over, and I do plan on removing a large clump of it since it's right in the middle of the pathway I take to the syrup composter.  I will likely give this giant clump of liriope to my parents for their yard.

The "Grass Bed" was only ever half completed - as in I planted the grasses, but I never removed the St. Augustine.  The plan was actually that the St. Augustine was supposed to have died out over this summer.  Then we'd remove it and mulch the area and have a nice large mulched area for the clump grasses to go wild.  The husband, however, decided that this was the year that he wasn't going to let the St. Augustine die off - mostly because this area is pretty decent, so his plan is to baby this area to get it good and healthy, then cut it up in strips and go place it in areas that the grass actually has died out.  One of the Big Muhlies I planted died, so I think I'll put my little Caldwell Pink Rose in it's place - which means that there are 2 Big Muhlies and 2 Gulf Muhlies and 1 Pink Rose that's smack in the middle of them.  I think it will probably look a little weird, but maybe I can fill in with some more Gulf Muhly or something.

The Photinia Bed went a bit crazy.  It's mostly due to whatever plant it is that I seeded over there (cosmos maybe?).  And as you can tell, that is the problem - I don't remember what seeds I threw out there, only that I threw them out there and they actually did start to grow.  And grow.  And grow.  They're now 4 feet tall or so and show no signs of flowering.  The area also has some Giant Mexican Petunia (mostly hidden by the other plants), and Milkweed in the front.  I hope the Milkweed and Petunias return next year...and if I can only have one, I hope it's the milkweed. 

Possumhaw bed - nothing much here other than I added an Autumn Sage (I got it for my parents and then ended up keeping it).  And there are some self-seeded Wild Petunia.

The Rain Barrel Bed is starting to look pretty good - it has Brazos Penstemmon (in the back - and you can make out the seed heads which have fallen over), the Hamelia Patens "Nana" which is blooming, and then a "Blue Penstemmon" in the front, which also does not look like it plans to bloom anytime soon.  I may end up moving the penstemmon to the possumhaw bed to give the Hamelia more room (especially considering that the Hamelia was the only thing on the plan in this area).

The Rock Bed is filling in nicely - I really should stay on top of the Henry Duelberg sage (in the rocks, on the left) - as in, I really need to cut back the long stems.  I just never can do it because it always seems to have a small amount of blooms which the bees really appreciate.  The funny thing, of course, is that I'm sure if I cut it back and watered it, it would bloom more prolifically.  The Agave Lopantha is starting to pup (you can make out the mother plant in the rocks between, and behind, the sage and the rosemary which is front right).  In pots, there's a Plumeria (the tree looking thing on the left), and a pot full of self-seeded Thai Basil.  I should harvest it and make some more basil cubes.

Back on the other side of the yard, and next to the Mull-shay Bed, is the Turk's Cap Bed.  The grasshoppers really did a number on all of my Turk's Cap this year - 4 plants and not a one looks good.  The Turk's Cap is on the left (in case anyone didn't already know that), the Passion Vine (on the fence) has bloomed off and on all summer - would probably bloom more if I bothered to fertilize (aka Seaweeded or Fish Emulsioned) and water with some consistency.  The Mexican Petunia (the tall plant right in front of the thermometer) likes this area a bunch - it's probably it's favorite location, but I'll eventually remove it all; once the Yaupon (which you can't even see) gets bigger.  While I like the blooms of the White Philippine Violet (right), I don't like how much water it needs - between it and the Firespike mentioned above, I'm always watering one or the other with a bucket of water.  I think I like this one just a tad more than the other, so I don't really want this one to die.

Around the Yard - Early Sept 2013 - Rose Bed

Out front, I have the area that I call "The Rose Bed."  It is named as such since the only things that the bed has ever had in it is a rose bush (Dr. Huey), and Asiatic Jasmine.  The jasmine died during the great heat wave of "aught 8" [note:  Really it was 2011, but I think "aught 8" has a nice ring to it, so I shall go with it].  In summer 2012, I decided it was time to remove the dead jasmine; you can see pictures of the process here.  I planted Zexmenia (front left) because I like the yellow/orange flowers and the fact that the plant can survive handily without additional water.  Of course, I also watered this bed a bit more frequently in 2012 because I was trying to get the plants established.  And established they did become.  The zexmenia seeded out prolifically, you can't even see the Chocolate Daisy anymore and the Summer Thyme is beginning to be overtaken (right in front of the rose).  The Dwarf Lion's tail (in the back on the left) is relatively huge, and the Blackfoot Daisies (with white flowers) are doing swimmingly.  All that being said...this bed needs a haircut. 

Around the Yard - Early Sept 2013 - Hell Strip

My dad is now on the mend, and the 'rents will be moving out of the house tomorrow, so I hope to maybe, possibly, have more time to blog in the near future. The problem, of course, is the husband - he now has it in his head that we must exercise every day. EVERY DAY! We exercise after we come home; so after getting home, exercising, showering and eating dinner, we usually have about an hour before we go to bed. Not much time for blogging when we do things that way. So I may end up resorting to creating blog entries to be posted at a later date (not like I don't do that already).

Anyhoo - I figured, since it's been a while, that I would start with some photos from around the yard - just so you can see what it looks like in all its crispy glory. (Don't worry - I'll get to the 'how to water trees in a drought' eventually - probably next weekend)

In the photo above, the Artemisia (the silvery plant) looks pretty darn good - and the Alamo Vine (on the mail box) as well.  Other plants that seem to be doing pretty well include Santolina (both gray and green - you can see them close to the car tire), and the Ruby Crystals grass (next to the Santolina).  Plants that aren't doing so well include a plethora of some type of sage that was a tag-a-long plant from some plant that I purchased (I let it reseed - when it gets enough water it looks pretty darn good), and Tahoka Daisy (I just think it's at the end of it's life cycle because it usually looks really good in the spring).  The neighbor's patch of grass is pretty crisp-i-fied and there is a giant Fire Ant mound.  Yippie!

In the above picture, there really isn't anything that's doing exceptionally well.  This is because all the Dahlberg Daisies are reseeding and will die off soon.  There really isn't a whole lot else in this bed - there's a Mexican Feather Grass which is dead (or dying), and Prairie Fleabane (currently reseeding).  And a bunch of weeds...A whole bunch of weeds.  I will probably be tackling this next weekend.

The Rose Bed

The front rose bed - Dr. Huey Rose, Blackfoot Daisy, Zexmenia, Chocolate Daisy, Dwarf Lion's Tail and Larkspur.  Hell Strip - Mexican Feathergrass, Prairie Fleabane, Dahlberg Daisy, Blanket Flower.