Zilker Garden Fest and Draco Gardens

I met my friend (and coworker!) Bond at the Zilker Garden Festival on Saturday. She had likely been there for about an hour by the time I showed up . I arrived at about 330 and we walked through all the vendors, then headed over to the food station because I hadn't had lunch yet. A fajita, kettle korn and strawberry limeade later, we headed back to the vendors to purchase our plants. Bond bought a rock rose and I bought one batface cuphea and two passion vines. Had I known how many non-plant vendors there would be, I would have probably tried to buy Christmas presents 8 months early. We also walked by the kid's corner and decided that next year we are going to 'babysit' some of our friends' kids so we can get free plants (the kids were given a free plant if they went to every Zilker info booth).

Then today I went out to visit Bob and Lyn at Draco Gardens (my God I love visiting these people! they're so entertaining!). Bob had messaged a while ago that he had some plants for me if I wanted them, and I, being native plant deficient, said "absolutely!" (I mean really, how many Asian Jasmine plants can someone put on their property? the answer is 20...and that's just in the front yard--no it wasn't me, it was the previous owner).

I didn't realize that it would get me like 10 plants. Plants like Gregg's Mistflower, Turk's Cap, Giant Petunia, Artemesia, Rock Rose, and Rosemary and probably a couple others that I can't remember off the top of my head now. While I was out there, Bob said that he'd get me some Beautyberry, Flame Acanthus and Zexmenia at a later point in time (when he has them). But the joke's on him, see? I was just lamenting this morning about how I totally forgot to look for a beautyberry at the Garden Fest yesterday.

Pictures of Hail

I lied. I do not have any photos of the garden right after we planted it. This is because I was going to get tomato cages and then take a photo, but I haven't gotten tomato cages yet, so there is no "Post Planting" photo.

And Shawn was the one that took the photos of the hail, so he took photos of the most impressive stuff, and since the garden was relatively unscathed (except for the aforementioned eggplant), there wasn't anything impressive. Plus all the hail was gone in the garden by the time he got home (though according to my supervisor who lives close to Spicewood Springs Road, he said that in his garden the hail penetrated about an inch into the ground because it was nice good soft soil and not all hard and packed down, thus it looked like there was no hail in the garden).

So here are the photos that Shawn took of the hail:

The front yard area. I remember driving through the neighborhood and thinking it looked like it had snowed.

The backyard area right outside of our door. There's a wee Mountain Laurel seedling in the middle of the wrapped hose (it did survive and is actually looking great now). There was still hail in this area the next morning when I woke up--not much, but the point is, it was still there.



Here is the obligatory hail size photo. Shawn took this photo at 6 pm, and I think the hail stopped in our area around 530 or so. By the time I got home at about 730, this stuff was pea sized. My supervisor was actually home when it started hailing at his house, and he got hail that was about egg sized.

Massive Hail!

Luckily, it passed us by. Oh yes, we got hit, but we didn't have any lasting damage (unlike one of my friends--her bedroom window was busted by a racket-ball sized piece of hail). The tomato plants all look pretty good, considering. The only plant that looked like it might not make it is the eggplant.

Shawn took some pictures when he got home yesterday (he got home well before I did since I refused to leave work until I was guaranteed that there would be no hail on my drive home). I'll try to post them later.

::Okay, so I know I'm totally behind on pictures--I've got planted garden pictures to post, and flower photos to post, and now hail photos to post::

Kitty

Okay, so I guess I have to start worrying about having these kitties in my garden.

Garden: Planted

We went out and planted the garden today. Shawn even helped, which I was surprised by, I figured he would have been spreading compost on the lawn while I planted plants, but he actually helped dig holes and whatnot.

We've got all the tomato plants, the eggplant, and two pepper plants in the new garden, and the cayenne was bumped to the front yard area. We also noticed that 3 of the pepper plants from last year are starting to regenerate (I had cut off the plants at the ground after the first major frost). Which is cool. It would be even cooler if they actually produced some peppers this year.

After planting stuff we then had to compost stuff (or rather since I wanted compost tea, it meant we had to take the enviro-cycle off its base to get to the tea), and once the cycle part is off, we might as well compost the yard...which then means we gotta do yard work to get more stuff to put in the composter.

Do you have a passion for plants?

March 21, 10am - 4pm, Govalle Park: Master Gardener Passion for Plants Fair. Govalle Park is located at 5200 Bolm Road.

I want to go to this...but now my husband has some crazy ideas about going to southby-ing.

All I have to say is that he's crazy.

Spring Gardening

After the Master Gardener Presentation last night about Spring Gardening (and reading Skip Richter's article about growing tomatoes) I'm so totally jazzed about planting stuff.

Yay!

My coworker had started seedlings and then decided to move in with his girlfriend and the new landlady won't let them put in a vegetable garden. He may do some container gardening, but he's got WAY too many plants for just container gardening. So I may get some...the biggest problem of course is that I also am running a little short on garden space, too. (Damn you 6' tall tomato plants!)