Sunflowers

The Sunflowers have been outstanding this year.  I read an article on the 5th that this is probably because sunflowers like having wet weather at the beginning, nice long, sunny days, and freshly turned dirt that doesn't have other stuff growing in it (hence why they're so popular right along roadways or other areas which are under construction).  This one is likely black oil sunflower as I do put out see for the birds which the squirrels tend to get to first - and boy do they make a mess.

How fitting, then, that there are several Van Gogh immersive art shows going on in Texas right now (one in Austin, one in Houston, and I think there may also be one in San Antonio)?
 

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.

Now... where'd we leave off?

Okay, so essentially 4 years after leaving you guys, I decided I should take up blogging about the garden again.  We'll see how long it lasts.  It may be only 2 weeks.  The suspense is terrible, I hope it lasts.

So I left off in March 2017. This basically coincided with me really getting into kitten fostering and volunteering at the animal shelter. So let's get you caught up - there was racist rally in Virginia in which the president refused to condemn the white supremacists and insisted that there were "very nice people on both sides."  Actually, the president never did condemn white supremacy the entire time he was in office.  Not surprising since they did (and still do) make up a significant portion of his base.  The US left the Iran Nuclear deal and the Paris Accords, killed NAFTA, and started courting Russia and North Korea as allies while telling Europe they could suck it.  the #metoo movement happened and generally abated with not a whole lot having changed (other than Harvey Weinstein going to jail and a lot of men being upset thinking that women were out to get them).  There was also something about a Hurricane that the president tried to alter it's path with a sharpie and questions about the president's mental aptitude (I mean, the man DID look directly at solar eclipse).  

And then the 2020 pandemic happened. 

That's right. A pandemic. A mother-effing flu-like pandemic that resulted in working from home, wearing masks everywhere, and avoiding elderly family member like you had, well, the plague.  Mixed in with all that, race relations came to a head because for some dumb reason cops refuse to stop killing Black people for doing normal things like "sleeping in their own home," or "going for a run," or for minor law breaking like "used a $20 counterfeit bill" or "had expired license plates."  

Other shitty things that happened in 2020: Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, as did Elijah Cummings, and John Lewis.  But here we are, on "the other side" with vaccines being stabbed in arms and things returning to "normal." Why, we've already had 2 school shootings and schools aren't even really in session. So yeah, the world is healing.

While everyone was like "oh man, at least 2021 can't be any worse," 2021 was like "here, hold my beer" and kicked off with an armed insurrection at the national capitol on January 6, followed by a polar vortex in February which caused the Texas power grid to shit itself like a newborn babe. And I mean one of those shits that shoots up out the back of the diaper and somehow covers EVERYTHING.  

And so, I feel like this is a good point to pick back up with the gardening. Because there's nothing that likes shit more than a gardener (hey oh!)

The polar vortex messed shit up, yo. It knocked enough plants back on their ass and required such a massive amount of clean up (which I'm still doing), that it really resulted in me getting everything almost back to "clean slate status."

First the ice covered everything and weighed it down

Then the snow came and covered everything.  

And then the power outages started.  Ted Cruz ran across the border into Mexico in order give his family a better life with electricity, heat, and running water (seriously, for reals, though sadly he came back). Meanwhile, the Texas grid was like minutes away from crashing to the point that it would have taken MONTHS to fix it.  The outages were meant to be "rolling" but the amount of power that needed to be off the system was so much that they had to kill every "non-essential" circuit - this is why downtowns were all lit up like Christmas while neighborhoods were blacked out - because downtown areas tend to have hospitals and police stations.  So some people went without power for almost a week.  The temperatures didn't get above like 20 degrees for that entire time.  Houses down here are not insulated like they are up north.  Houses down here don't have shut offs to their exterior facing hose bibs to keep the pipes from bursting.  Even if people wanted to leave, they couldn't because the roads were impossible to drive on since we don't have any means of removing snow/ice from the roadways.

At least the snow made for some nice, and not normal for Austin, photos

As the snow was starting to melt, and things were looking up, the water ran out.  One of the Austin water treatment plants went offline for a while because of falling trees and then no one could figure out how to get the power back on because the Water Treatment Plant hasn't been modernized since like 1950.  Because everyone was dripping or running their faucets to keep pipes from freezing, the water reserves got used up REAL QUICK LIKE.  This meant that we were frantically saving snow in buckets and coolers and even tupperware containers just so we had some type of water. Toilets were only getting flushed after pooping, everyone was drinking their beer stash instead of having to boil water, etc etc.  Thankfully, those that had been without electricity for a week, generally didn't lose their water service.

Water outage map for Austin

Thank God for rain barrels which are full of water...though they were frozen solid...dangnabbit.

So. Like I said, the polar vortex was epic and the plants did not like it. At all. Plants which hadn't died back in years were knocked to the ground (e.g. almond verbena, Philippine violet, Turk's cap), plants that had already budded are still recovering (arizona ash), plants which should have made it through with no problems are having problems recovering (yaupon holly), and some of our more tender plants are being watched on baited breath for recovery or have already been ripped out because of the time it would take to recover (lorapetalum, pitsporum, crepe myrtle).  

I'm going to try to do a post per area as it got cleaned up because in addition to cutting back things that haven't been touched in YEARS, I also added compost and mulch so everything is looking tip top - if a little bare while I wait for things to fill back in.

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).

Zinnia

Wildlife Wednesday

Clouded Sulfur on Sage plant

Gray Hairstreak

Gray Hairstreak (Strymon melinus) on Gregg's Mistflower (Conoclinium greggii)

It's butterfly migration season.  Haven't seen many Monarchs (a handful), but sure a lot of Queens.

Davis Mountain State Park & Balmorrhea State Park

In mid-September, Shawn and I took a road trip to Tucson, Arizona to visit my grandparents. It's a road trip, so that naturally means you have to drive places you normally wouldn't (or at least that's my theory). Based on coworkers' recommendations, we spent a few days in Davis Mountains State Park.

Davis Mountains State park is adjacent to Fort Davis National Historic Site.  If you plan to visit Davis Mountains, keep in mind that Indian Lodge is a popular place to visit so you may need reservations which you can schedule by calling the Texas Parks and Wildlife main office.  Other places listed here include Balmorrhea State Park and McDonald Observatory.

In the middle of the trail, there's a twisty-looking stick thing.  That, dear readers, is a rattlesnake in the middle of eating a rat.  I don't know what type of rattlesnake, but it was definitely a rattlesnake.  We saw this guy on our way out of the backpacking portion of our trip.

Me, drawing a picture on our Backpacking portion of the trip.

A hummingbird at a feeder in the Bird Blind area of Davis Mountains State Park.

Lesser gold finches

Inside the Indian Lodge

In the courtyard outside the Black Bear restaurant

Awesome agave

Cochineal scale on a cactus.  Yes, I made sure.

Little Toad buddy on a step.

Blue sky in the window

A view from the back parking lot

A view from the trail run that Shawn and I did when we first got to Davis Mountains.  The backpacking area is on the ridge on the other side of the road.

A view of Indian Lodge from the trail run

Rocks and the trail on the hike over to Old Fort Davis

One of the CCC built structures in Davis Mountains

Hiking to Fort Davis

More hiking through Flash Flood Alley

Our first view of Fort Davis.  The row of officers' houses runs north/south on Magnetic north, while the old foundations (which you can see to the right) run north/south on True north.

A view of the hospital at Fort Davis

A wagon at Fort Davis (the commissary is just to the right)

Heading out on our backpacking adventure

One of my pictures I drew while backpacking

Sunset during our backpacking trip

Hiking out in the morning.  You may have noticed that Shawn always goes first in our photos - that is because when we were backpacking in Washington, it became pretty obvious that I am oblivious to snakes when I almost stepped on a rattlesnake.

Hiking out from backpacking

Balmorrhea State Park.  After hiking out during our backpacking, we decided to drive the 45 minutes to Balmorrhea to go for a swim.  Balmorrhea was also a CCC location and everything was built by the crew.

"Come on in, the water's fine!" so says the man who has no problem swimming at Barton Springs.  He said he thinks Balmorrhea is a few degrees warmer.

Fish.  There was also a large turtle swimming around in the springs.  I almost lost my shit over it.

A view from one end of the pool.

Our room at Indian Lodge.  We only stayed one night in the lodge, but damn the room was cool.

Another view of the courtyard area.

A view of the Indian Lodge swimming pool looking toward the entrance of the park.

Yucca against a white wall.

A view from one of the lower areas of Indian Lodge

The night we stayed at Indian Lodge was the night that we had tickets for the McDonald Observatory's Star Party. We arrived around sunset, and then had to kill some time until it was dark enough for the tour to start.  Caroline at Shovel-Ready Garden went to the Big telescope viewing the following night.  If you are going to be in the area during one of their Star Parties or telescope viewings, be sure to attend.

A view of the native plant area at McDonald - this looks much better in person and obviously my cell phone camera is just crappy at capturing it at night...

Sunset at McDonald

Indian Lodge light outside our room

Garter Snake.  We also saw a tarantula (the first wild one for either of us) but it was when we didn't have our cell phones, so no picture, no proof.  Thankfully Shawn had his cell phone at the time when we saw the rattlesnake.

The area had received enough rain for the ocotillo to all have leaves.  It was actually very strange and it made me want to grow one even though I know they don't have leaves most of the year.