Crappy Weather Warning

In case you didn't already know, we're supposed to have freezing rain tonight. With a chance for Snow.

Now then, I don't quite believe the snow, but I do believe the freezing rain. Because it's doing it right now.

I decided I didn't want to deal with covering all the plants, so I went and pulled all my peppers off the pepper plant, and the other plants will fend for themselves.

Bloom Day - From earlier in the month and One Day Late

So, as mentioned in my last post, the wind on Saturday was horrendous. Aside from blowing the flowers all over and making it difficult to take a photo, it also was cold. And despite having grown up in Colorado, I can't stand the cold--as soon as the temps drop below 75, I'm wearing pants, once it's cooler than 70, I'm wearing long sleeved shirts. So, because of the wind, and the cold, I would have had to get dooded up in a snow suit in order to brave going out.

The spinach is taking off in it's various planters. The strawberry is keeping on keeping on. and the carrots finally started sprouting--I did have to cover that planter with some of my green plastic mesh stuff to keep the squirrels out of digging in it. At this time of year you really have to be on top of those buggers and their need to bury all of their nuts for the winter. Of course, you run into the same problem but in reverse during the spring.

Anyhow, here are some photos of stuff that's bloomed over the last month or so.

Spiderweb (Nov 1st)



Turk's Cap (Nov. 1st). Before planting.



Yellow Snap Dragon (Nov. 1st). Before planting.



Lantana (Nov. 16th)



Lupine (Bluebonnets). Nov 16th. I like the bottom picture better, but my husband likes the top one better. Thus why you get to see both. This plant isn't blooming, but it is doing pretty good in the planters.



Cyclamen in the shade garden (Nov. 16th). This is the only plant that is showing it's full potential after the wind storm yesterday. Despite what it looks like, this photo hasn't been touched up aside from scaling the image down so it would fit better on the blog.

Rain and Weather

Rained on Tuesday. I checked the gage on Thursday and there was a quarter inch...so the plants actually probably got a little more than a quarter inch because of evaporation.

On Friday night and all day Saturday the wind was blowing with a vengeance. It made it too difficult to take pictures of flowers for Bloom Day, plus it did quite a number on whatever flowers were blooming.

I must not have been watering the pansies enough because you'd never know I planted 30 of them in the front berm area. I did, however, learn while planting them that both the berm and the area by the Shumard Oak need to have good soil added to them as what's there is complete and utter crap. This probably explains why only a few plants ever do any good in either of those locations.

Operation: Planted

I planted the rest of my plants yesterday. The Turk's Cap bushes were split--one is in the 'upper garden' the other is in the 'lower garden'. This only happened because Shawn was worried that they'll get big enough to take over the stepping stones, so the original idea I had of planting one close to the stepping stones was nixed.

I managed to plant the entire flat of pansies and they're in the front yard--a couple plants by the tree, and the rest in the berm area.

I did 3 pots of flowers and put them next to the pepper plant (hoping that the bright flowers will attract the bees and possibly, maybe, hopefully, pollinate some of the pepper flowers).

Speaking of the pepper plants! I checked yesterday and noticed 3 little peppers on one them. FINALLY! I was worried that I was going to end up with nothing to show for this last growing season.

On a completely different note, I've noticed that MSS at Zanthan reads at least one of the same blogs I do--Svensto. I find this odd if only because it is a blog that has nothing to do with gardening and I actually found it through the blogwriter's granddaughter's (I think, it's either her granddaughter or great-granddaughter) website (The Daily Coyote).

Fall Gardening

I got the gardening bug today. Okay, not really the 'gardening' bug as much as the 'container planting' bug.

I went to the Red Barn, mostly because it's closest and it's not Home Depot and got 2 bags of Lady Bug Garden Soil, 2 small Turk's Cap plants, a cyclamen, a flat of pansies (I don't know where I'm going to plant that many pansies), 2 snap dragon plants, 3 strawberries, a 6-pack of spinach, carrot seeds and a 6-pack of maroon bluebonnets.

I've already got the strawberries and 2 of the spinach plants in a planter, and I put the snap dragons, a bluebonnet and a pansy in another planter.

I plan on drilling holes in the bottom of one of those plastic cat litter buckets and planting carrots and 2 more spinach in that. (I'll wash it out first, of course)

And I'll probably put the remaining spinach and some of the bluebonnets and pansies in another planter.

The Turk's Cap is meant to go in the "shade garden" otherwise known as "the dirt patch where nothing grows because of lack of sun", as is the cyclamen. I think I'll put the cyclamen in a planter though and put it over in the shade area, mostly because I doubt it's in any way cold hardy. I'll probably also totally baby the Turk's Cap this winter to give it a better chance of making it through.

And yes I know it's totally the wrong season to be planting some of this stuff (the bluebonnets, turk's cap and probably the cyclamen), but when I get in these moods, I just can't help it. And so, I baby the plants through the winter instead of just waiting until the spring to plant them.

Tomatoes

No, my tomato plants did not do well. I finally pulled them out about a week ago (they were attacked by leaf miners). But it just makes me so sad to see my Mom's and her neighbor's plants growing 6' tall and covered in tomatoes.

of course, they are in Colorado, not Texas, so they had a much better growing season for the tomatoes this year. And from back when I had a garden here, I do remember that you either had a 'squash year' or a 'tomato year' meaning that either your squash plants did awesome and the tomatoes sucked, or vice versa. And I know Austin has that, too. The only difference was that in Colorado it almost seemed that you could predict at planting time if it was going to be squash or tomatoes. Which probably means it has something to do with it being a hot summer, or a cooler summer.

And of course the problem in Austin is that it's ALWAYS a hot summer.

Watermelon Cantaloupe, Round 2

Round two for the cantaloupe and watermelon. I don't hold out much hope. Though I do highly recommend the little peat pots. Mostly because they cut down on the whole disturbing the root system thing AND you can put seedlings in the ground instead of seeds...which seem to get eaten alive out here.

Grapefruit trees and Basil Plants

with my anti-squirrel device on the grapefruit (stupid animals keep digging in my plants and uprooting them.

From the Archives

(aka beginning of the month)

Yay for Dolly!

Hurricane Dolly (tropical storm, whatever) made landfall at South Padre island last week (second to last week in July). Since we were on the "dirty" side this time, it actually meant we got some rain (last year when Rita hit, we were on the 'clean' side and so we got 105* temps, no rain, and 85% humidity, with no breeze, at all).

We didn't get a ton of rain, only maybe about an inch or so, but it was definitely a much needed inch.

Plus, it brought the temperature down, and it's actually been downright nice outside...sure, a little hot in the sun, but not bad.

Also, yesterday I transplanted my watermelon and cantaloupe plants in the back garden where I had a brandywine tomato that died.

July Updates

Things that have died:
The watermelon plant,
The cantaloupe plant in the back yard
the tomato in the back yard
most of the parsley plants

Things that have produced fruit:
Nothing. Okay, that's a lie. The Lemon Boy tomato plant produced 2 tomatoes, but I didn't eat them because we had leaf miners and the got to the fruit too, so everything was thrown away. Plus one of the tomatoes split the day before I picked it anyhow.

Things that are still surviving:
The basil plants in a planter
The oregano plants in the back yard
The new lantana plant (though barely, and the old plants are just fine)
The tomato plants our front (since I had leaf miners all the plants got a pretty drastic pruning)
The pepper plants (one has flowers now, so hopefully there will be peppers)
Texas Mountain Laurel trees (YES!!!!)
my grapefruit trees (YES!!!!)

Next steps:
According to the Natural Gardener Garden shop, it's time to start tomato seeds again. I don't know if I'll go for it, if only because my tomato plants are currently okay...though they're not producing flowers or fruit, but still, I don't know if I want to go through the energy of starting more plants when I don't really have anywhere to put them.

Also, I started another batch of cantaloupe and watermelon seeds last week. Hopefully I can keep them alive this time.

Future:
I may eventually opt to go the route of getting some Earth Boxes instead of planting stuff in the garden. Then I'd just need to find some nice flowers to go in the garden and hopefully then I wouldn't have to spend so much time doing stuff...

tomato pinworms

I've known it for a while, just didn't care...until all of my tomato plants were attacked. Sigh.

RAIN!

Oh praise the baby jesus! we had RAIN last night. A whopping 1.25" of it. Hallelujah!

The rain barrel is full again (it had been empty for the entire week and I was forced to water my plants with ACTUAL water), and the grass is already looking good because of the rain.

Not to mention that it's cloudy today so it's not 100billionty degrees out.

Too hot

it's too freaking hot right now.

the tomatoes are all stunted, the watermelon is almost dead, the peppers keep growing, but they're not flowering.

most of the native plants have gone into hibernation mode.

yep, the only thing doing well is the oregano and the parsley.

Oh, I planted some texas mountain laurel seeds. Again. And I started some basil in a planter. Of course I had to make an anti-squirrel device on the planter because those rodents will dig in anything...and I can't have them going about pulling up all the basil plants!

6-5-08

As mentioned earlier, we've had nasty ultra windy weather.

And my tomatoes have the habit of pulling their cages out of the ground. Since I really, really, really didn't want to lose the Lemon Boy to the wind, I decided to get up early on Thursday the 5th and go out and engineer a better tomato cage.

I ended up just using a left over tree spike (the things you put by the trees to keep them growing straight) and stuck it in the ground near the tomato plant, then went and got some twine and tied the tomato to the spike. I also put a rock next to the spike to help make sure it stayed in place until the dirt compacts more.

Weather

Finally, a respite from the heat.

Last night we heard some thunder, but seeing as how it was insanely windy and likely we weren't going to get any rain, we figured we wouldn't see anything. When I woke up this morning, the roads/sidewalks/driveways were wet and there was rain water coming off the roof.

The only problem is it seems like all the rain happened in the front yard, and we just got a dusting in the back yard. In any case, there wasn't much rain at all--maybe about a tenth of an inch.

But still, it made it so the temp only got up to 90.

Tomatoes

Today, while I was doing my daily check of the plants, I noticed the Lemon Boy Tomato has very small tiny tomatoes on it. Yum Yum.

Also, on a sad note, my husband ran over one of my watermelon plants with the lawn mower. He told me it was a run-away lawn mower accident. I'm not sure if I believe him. :)

It has not rained, and it doesn't look like we'll get any appreciable rain in the near future. It's also been very hot and very windy. Sigh...last year we had too much rain, this year not enough. Why can't we just have perfect weather?

Blanket Flower

Seemingly only difference between Blanket Flower and Indian Blanket? Blanket Flower has a yellow center...well, that and this whole perennial vs annual thing

Bad Weather...just the other way around

We haven't had rain in the past week or so, and of course it's been mighty toasty out there (as Lee says "[We're] in the great frying pan that is Austin, Tx"

I've been watering the pepper plants every day. But I still claim I have to water them because the wind and the heat is too much for them, if it were just the heat I'd probably leave them alone. I've also been watering the watermelon in the front berm--that one has been getting crispy around the edges. I've also been watering the Lemon Boy plant every day because the leaves are all wilty...but they've always been wilty, so I'm beginning to think it's just the way the plant likes to look.

Of course, at this time last year, we had spiders everywhere, but with the lack of rain, it seems we have lizards everywhere instead. Pictures to come soon...oh trust me, I got some gems.

Bad Weather

I know, I'm a little late in posting this...

On May 14 we had our first real scare with bad weather (Tornadoes, hail, torrential rain, wind). Or at least, we were supposed to. There was a funnel cloud confirmed in Lago Vista, and a possible funnel in the 620/183 area. We did not get any wind, nor did we get any hail. We did, however, get to sit on our bathroom floor for 30 minutes while the neighborhood tornado siren went off.

After that whole debacle, we ultimately got 0.7" of rain according to our rain gage.