Back to Blogging.

One of my goals for 2013 is to revive my blog. Twitter and Facebook came along and I let my blog languish.

I enjoy blogging about my garden and the wildlife that visit my part of Texas. We are lucky to have 30 acres of land surrounding our house. I attempt to garden and landscape about 2 acres. The rest is woodland and pasture.

Below are some photos from last summer and fall. I am getting excited about spring 2013 and starting to prepare beds for planting.

Painted Buntings.

We are lucky to have many birds that visit our backyard.  One of my favorites is the Painted Bunting.  Although it looks tropical, the Painted Bunting is native to our part of Texas. 

As is usual for birds the male is the more colorful bird.  The female is kind of hard to see in the upper part of the picture below.  She is mostly green in color.

We normally see painted buntings at the bird baths so it was unusual to see them under the bird feeders.

Below is a male Cardinal sharing space with a Painted Bunting. We have many Cardinal pairs at our feeders and bird baths every day. 

 

Texas Wildflowers.

The wildflowers are spectacular this year. 

Indian Paintbrush and Texas Bluebonnets.

Lucy enjoys the bluebonnets.

Yucca blooming among bluebonnets.

Spring at Last!

Spring has been slow to get started this year after our wet and colder than normal winter.  Everything is greening up now and the blooming trees have been so pretty this year.  Above is my Aristocrat Pear in bloom.

My snowdrops were beautiful this winter and are still blooming into Spring.  Here are some of them with Columbine growing in front.

My tomato plants are finally in the ground and I have wrapped the cages with muslin fabric to protect them from strong winds while they are small.  I will remove the fabric when they get bigger and the weather heats up.

Getting an early start with Tomatoes.

I always get impatient as spring approaches to get my tomato plants going.  Since our last average frost date is March 15 it is a gamble to put the plants in the ground this early.  When I found some small pots of healthy looking tomato plants in varieties that I like to grow I grabbed them.  I know I will take better care of them then they would get sitting on the shelf at Home Depot.

I watered them well and let them rest for a day or two on the workbench in our garage under a flourescent light during the day.  Today I repotted them into larger pots.  I gently cut and peeled off the peat pots they were in.  (They say you can plant the whole pot but I don't like to; it takes time for the pot to disintegrate and the roots to spread out.)  The plants had lots of healthy looking roots.  I cut off the lower stems and planted the plants deep in the pots.  This encourages lots of roots and makes strong plants.  When I plant them in the ground in a few weeks I will again take off some lower branches and plant them deep.

These pots will stay in the garage under the light on cold days and sit outside on mild days like today.  I will put them in the garage at night.  A few days before I plan to plant them outside I will leave them out day and night to acclimate them to the outdoors.  When I plant them outside I put large tomato cages around them and wrap the outside of the cages with muslin fabric.  This serves as a protection from strong wind.

This may sound like a lot of work but it really isn't..  It surely is worth it to have those wonderful home grown tomatoes all summer.  I can't wait!  

February to March.

This was the scene at our house on Feb. 22, 2010

This was March 4, 2010 after plant shopping.

Spring has sprung and I can't wait to start planting and gardening!

Stop Crape Murder..

Well, it is that time of year when the butchering of crape myrtles runs rampant. Many of these crimes are committed by so called "professional" landscape people who advise homeowners and businesses who don't know any better that this is a good idea. I took this photo at a local apartment complex. Someone had done this to all of the many crape myrtles in the complex.

This "topping" is totally unnecessary and ruins the shape of these beautiful trees. Every year my frustration grows when I see this all over town. Crape myrtles can be shaped up from the bottom by taking out small limbs and any suckers that start to grow. Other pruning should be confined to twigs smaller than a pencil in diameter.

Many varieties will grow into beautiful medium sized trees that bloom nearly all summer, love the heat, are drought tolerant and give much needed shade.

When choosing a crape myrtle for your landscape be sure you are getting a variety that will fit the space you have. Dwarf, intermediate, tall and weeping forms are available.

Crape myrtles are listed as hardy in zones 7 and 8.

Signs of Life.

I went out for a walk around the yard today to look for signs of life after our long cold spell. We had a record low of 8 degrees one night and several nights in the teens with days not above freezing. That is unusual for us and hard on our plants. I was pleased to see most things look pretty good. Nature is truly resilient.


Cast iron plant looks fine.

Bluebonnets are happy.

Oregano hanging in there.

Fig tree has some green tips so I am hopeful.

This butterfly was flitting around landing on leaves to sun itself. Wonder how it survived?

Christmas photos.

Snacking before opening.



The tree and presents.

Our White Christmas.

New Year.

One of my goals for 2010 is to update my blog more often.

The year is starting out very cold here with a severe freeze predicted this week. When temps stay below freezing for 50 hours or so in Texas we are bound to lose some of our usually perennial plants. I guess that is part of gardening - perhaps an opportunityfor something new in the spring.

We had a great Christmas with all the kids and grandkids here. It snowed on Christmas Eve and was still on the ground Christmas morning so I call that a White Christmas. Very unusual for us.
Well, I have tried several times to add some pictures to this post. No luck. I will try again in my next post.

Garden Blooms.

Our recent welcome rains have brought some blooms to the garden. The Cenizo (Texas Sage) only blooms after a rain (just watering won't do it). Mine burst into bloom the first day it rained!




I have several clumps of Blood Lily that bloom every fall. It's one of my favorite plants. There was no sign of them until the rain and they shot up overnight and are now in full bloom. Amazing!

Rain at last!!

Can't believe it has been a month since I posted to my blog. The month of August has been really bad as far as gardening goes around here. Had to water way too much just to keep things alive. I hope we have turned a corner this weekend with the beneficial rains we are having.

Now I can start thinking about some fall planting. Planning to plant lots of herbs and some fall veggies including lettuce, brocolli, kale, spinach, etc. First I have to clear weeds - they are the only things that have thrived this summer!

The photo above is from my yard earlier in the summer - a swallowtail butterfly feeding on a phlox bloom.

Class of '61

I have had so much fun the past 2 weeks catching up with some of my best friends from high school. Even though we are spread out over many miles, the internet allows us to talk like we are all together. We have exchanged photos and info about our lives, kids and grandkids. Such fun, and we all agree we feel much younger remembering our "teen years." Here is a photo of some of the graduates. Aren't they the cutest! Such promise in their smiles. (I am not in this photo, by the way.) We hope to have an "in person" reunion soon.

(photo courtesy of Judy W.)

Garden Survivors.

This has been a tough summer in Central Texas. Extreme heat and drought - a bad combination. However, a few of my plants are tough and doing pretty well. They are survivors for sure.

Rose Mallow perennial hibiscus

Verbena Bonariensis and Portulaca

Esperanza (Yellow Bells)

Gulf Fritillary on Passion Vine laying eggs.

Gulf Frittilary caterpillar on passion vine (passion vine and perennial morning glory growing on fence together).

Barn Owl

We have a beautiful barn owl living on our property. We see him in the backyard nearly every day or evening. He swoops in and sits in a tree and sometimes even goes to the bird bath (water is scarce these days). He will sit and seem to look straight at me and doesn't move if I don't get too close. This year we have seen bobcat, deer, raccoons, opposums, armadillos, skunks and snakes on our property, in addition to the usual array of squirrels and birds. All are interesting and mostly good to have (not sure what armadillos are good for, except digging up the yard), but I think the barn owl is the most interesting of all. I hope to get more photos of the owl when my Canon returns from the repair shop.

Houseboat.

This summer has been terrible for gardening around here so not much to talk about there. We are staying busy with our new project - a houseboat. It is a fixer upper but we are enjoying the challenge. We still have the pontoon boat for actually going out on the lake. The houseboat is more like a floating cabin. Jerry has been doing some carpenter work on the exterior and I have been on cleanup duty inside. We will be painting inside and putting down new flooring. Also new ceiling tiles are needed. Here are a few photos. I plan to post updates as work progresses.

View out the back. Bunk beds on left.

View out to front deck.Side view and upper deck.

Cameron on the front deck.

Curtains for sliding door.

Trip to Smoky Mountains.

The travelers.





Smoky Mountain beauty.

The forest.

Mountain stream.

We had a great trip to the Smoky Mountains, Memphis, Nashville and Biltmore Estate in Asheville. Beautiful country that I had not visited before. We drove and hiked through Great Smoky Mountains National Park. What a rich history we found there! Biltmore Estate was amazing, Memphis and Nashville are both great cities to visit.

Birds, birds, birds.

This is a painted bunting in my small fountain. Had to shoot through window screen, so not a very good photo. The colors are spectacular on this bird and we have some every year. They nest in our wooded area and come in to bathe.

Another shot of the painted bunting. So pretty!

Just a few of the cardinals under our bird feeder today. Mostly pairs, the males are red and the females have an orange beak and are brownish with some reddish orange. Love cardinals, and we have many around here!

Earth Day.

Well, I have been spending too much time on Twitter and have not taken care of my blog. Spring is in full swing, we have gotten some rain and everything is green right now. I have taken some photos to show how beautiful spring is in our part of Texas. The top photo is Coral Honeysuckle in bloom - the hummingbirds love it! The other photo is of the path Jerry and I cleared in the woods. I have been walking on it every day and it is so peaceful. The birds are really singing and flying through the trees every morning. As you can see, Lucy enjoys the path also.

Hummingbird Moth.

This has been a weird spring with lots of ups and downs in temperature. Hopefully we will settle down now. I have lost some tomato plants (even though I covered them) and lots of new growth has frozen on plants. This afternoon I was out watering and saw a pair of hummingbird moths feeding on my columbine and dianthus. They are some of my favorite insects - not really related to hummingbirds but they remind you of them. Their wings go so fast and they feed on tubular flowers like hummingbirds do. Here are a couple of photos I took.