GrowLively

American Gardenators...

So the other evening my husband and I, along with our friend Jenny (who also gardens), were entertaining ourselves by parodying American Gladiators gardener style...I dubbed it "American Gardenators". We like to call these little plays of ours "vignettes". Yes, we need lives.

Anyway, just imagine two aggressive looking ladies..."Love-lies-bleeding Leslie" and "Johnny Jump-up Jenny"...in their pumped up gardening garb, favorite hand tools at their hip, going head to head in garden combat. Events such as "turn that compost' or "show those weeds who's boss"...it made me giggle incessantly. I'm easily entertained. Obviously.

 

 

 

What even started this downward spiral into sillyness you ask? Oh, let me show you a few photos of the latest carnage in my garden. You already know of my murderous thoughts towards the peach stealing squirrels...now "they" are

picking off my corn...one precious stalk at a time. I had some good sweet corn coming on too. Lot's of ears developing nicely. "They" are decapitating my precious corn stalks, and then digging into the ears. They don't even have the courtesy to eat the whole thing. They eat half of the ear and leave the rest just to taunt me. Just to get a rise out of me. I don't know if it's the squirrels...or perhaps racoons. Racoons would make more sense.

Not only are the rodents devouring my garden goodies, but now that the heat of summer is set upon us, lots of other nasty garden pests are making their debut as well. Potato beetles, stink bugs (still...), second round of slugs, caterpillars. I'm in my second round of Bt sprays and am now resorting to spinosad to try and take out the beetles and stinkbugs. I do have some awesome assasin bugs around the garden right now and masses of lizards. Not to mention a few butterfly larvae etc. Now if I could figure out how to get the lizards to take out the racoons, we'd be in business.  Let the garden battles begin!

Chaos in the garden...

May is generally what I call a "transition" month here in North Central Texas. The blooms of spring are fading and the beginnings of summer are emerging. The leftover violas and pansies don't look their best any longer but they still have enough blooms left on them to extend their stay just a little longer. The time to pull out spent tulip foliage is far overdue...but I'm just now getting to it. The last of the cool season residents such as fennel, parsley, chard and the like are beginning to flower and bolt but still look too pretty to pull. Cool season weeds left un-pulled have taken up a firm residency by now and are quickly being flanked by the warm season invaders - dandelions, wild carrot, Bermuda grass (yes...it's a weed in my book). Being a professional horticulturist, I don't get much time to work in my garden in spring. So I let them all run a muck! Why not. Come May I look around and say "oh jeez, what must the neighbor's think of me!" They all claim to be fascinated by and enjoy my garden chaos, but at some point you've just got to get to clean up! Today I'm having all my trees trimmed...long overdue. Heavy branches were encroaching upon the precious sunlight for the veggie garden, not to mention the overall poor condition of most of my trees...Ashes, hackberries and the like. Full of trash. So today they've all gotten a haircut. It's like I have a whole new back yard...twice the size. The veggie plants are squealing with thank yous..I swear I can hear them. I spent the day cleaning in the front garden, pulling weeds and such while the crew worked. Still have some things to pull and new color to plant, which is overdue, but will hopefully get to that in the next week or so. Right now I'll post some photos of things blooming in the garden. Later, after the tree crew is done and cleaned up, I'll post some veggie garden updates.

 

Ah, the scent of spring...

I stayed home sick yesterday..yuck, but I usually walk early on weekend mornings and even though I'm not feeling so great I still felt like I needed to get outside...the weather is so pretty this morning. I'm so glad I went.On my early morning walk today, I was hit with the most wonderful scents of spring. I live in an old East Dallas neighborhood called Little Forest Hills. Just down the street from the Dallas Arboretum and White Rock Lake. It's a neighborhood of tiny funky houses built in the 30's and 40's. So the neighborhood is filled with lots of "volunteer" plants as well as old varieties exchanged by neighbors over the years, like daffodils, irises and honeysuckle....lot's of honeysuckle! There were points along my lovely quiet walk where I was hit...almost physically hit...in the face with the most intoxicating waves of honeysuckle scent. It's a scent so powerful for me that it creates one of those moments where your brain just can't focus on anything else, and life feels pretty good. It takes me back to when I was 6 or 7, playing in our huge yard in Silver Springs, Maryland, where we had tons of honeysuckle along the back fence. Everyday my younger sister Laura and I would pluck handfuls of honeysuckle flowers and suck out the nectar...good times...  :)

Parade of new blooms continues...

Just a few more new bloomers in the garden...thrift, Phlox subulata 'Emerald Blue', an iris I planted this past fall called 'Orange Glaze'...it's certainly yummy. Hellebore 'Corsican Green" is putting on tons of new flowers. The purple smoke tree is just starting to leaf out. The leaves are such a stunning crimson color. Lovely fragrant little jonquil, Narcissus 'Baby Sun'. Tiny Iris reticulata popping up next to some grape hyacinth in the lawn. More to come...

Peachy Keen...

The ornamental peaches 'Peppermint' are blooming. I planted three of them last summer. So they're still small, but they have lots of blooms. The flowers are double and are mixed white, white/reddish pink stripes and red. Pretty! Also got the first flower on the 'Ranger' fruiting peach I espaliered on the back fence.

Spring bloomers update...

As it warms up, the garden is really starting to pop (as are the weeds....)
I usually plant mid- to late- blooming daffodils, so they are just now starting to come into bloom. 'Thalia' my favorite white triandrus narcissus has just put out its first two blooms. They are also fragrant. 'Tete a Tete' is a great little fragrant jonquil. I love working edibles into the ornamental garden for the cool season. Curled parsley, bronze fennel and Swiss chard are great for this - and you get to harvest. Summer snowflake, Leucojum aestivum, is in full bloom. Anemone 'Mr. Fokker' is blooming in a few places in the garden as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sucker for Poppies...

I'm a sucker for Iceland Poppies. But you know, they so pull their weight in the spring garden. And you get the most lovely photos. Here in Texas, plant them in the fall and they'll bloom gangbusters for you in spring. Just a few new photos from today.

 

And then there was snow...

So spring happened...and then snow happened....and then tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and 70 degrees...ya gotta love Tejas....

Organic Gardening Magazine

FYI, starting this year I'll be a test gardener for OG magazine. How fun! Veggies mostly. Of course OG gets dibs on results so be sure to check out their online blog and magazine. I'm hoping I get to eat lots of extra goodies as a result...  :)   http://www.organicgardening.com/

Spring is coming...

Just a few little  updates on some of the babies on their way...The first of 'Blue Poppy' Anemone's made it's appearance a few days ago. They start off slow, but once a number of them are in bloom it's quite the show. Summer Snowflake (Leucojum aestivum) have just begun to produce their first flowers. We don't do well with Lily of the Valley down here in the South, but these make a great visual alternative. You don't get the fragrance, but the Leucojum provide a similar flower and are a super tough naturalizer  for us here in Texas. Awww, aren't those just the cutest little violas? They're just so happy. I want to pinch their little cheeks! Lots of Narcissus (daffodills) popping up in the lawn. There wasn't much else in the landscape when we bought this 1941 cottage, but there were a number of this daffodil residing in the yard. It's an old fashioned species of some sort I've yet to spend the time to identify. But because in the 3 or so years we've been in the house we haven't mowed over the foliage in the spring, the bulbs have finally regained vigor and are really blooming nicely for the first time since we moved in. Yay daffodils! The Swiss chard I use for foliage accent in the beds really starts to shine late winter/early spring. The bright red mid-veins are so pretty. The great thing about gardening organically is that I also harvest the chard for cooking. Yum. Iceland poppies 'Champagne Bubbles' are producing buds en masse and will so be the darlings of the garden. Shown here budding up with companions curly parsley and bronze-leafed fennel. More to come...