So my latest long time project has been swales. When our pool was dug out a lot of horrible compacted dirt was left covering a lot of the garden. I’ve been trying to slowly dig it out ever since. The pool installers oftened to grade it, but I was terried of what would happen if they did so.

As I’ve been moving this leftover dirt around, I’ve been building swales. I’ve always stared at what happens when it rains in dismay. Previously our gutters would just dump most of the water into our driveway to go into the street. We didn’t have gutters on the west roof of our house, and a drain that went from beside the house down into the lower part of the garden had been severed as part of some sewer work a decade ago.

I had some odd stairstepping on the north east side of the house that was slowly being taken over by erosion as the yard slid down the hill. So at the top of the wall I laid out some large pruned tree branches and covered them with dirt. Making a little ridge to keep the water from just immediately running down the hill. Then I constructed another one about 18 inches from my neighbors fence.

When we lost the Loquats in the horrible freeze a few years back we also lost all screening from our neighbor. I planted the tops of the swales with kidneywoods and mountain laurel. I also got an Italian Stone Pine from a friend who needed to re-home it, and I’ve planted various sages and little bits of leftovers from around the garden. The nice thing is that because they’re on the top of the swale the screening bushes have a little bit of a head start. And this year they’re just starting to peak over the top of the fence.

We got the gutters replaced this year and went with AUstin Gutter King who did an amazing job of actually coming up with a better way to reclaim water and not just dump it into the driveway. We ended up putting all of the water in the front-yard into the garden. In the backyard they hooked up to one of my rain barrels, and I got the old drain working again and the majority of the water is being channled into my swale system. I filled the area where the drain empties with a couple of inches of mulch and it now just sucks in the moisture.

The rain this summer loosed up a lot of the ground that had been compacted while digging out our pool and I was finally able to dig out some paths. I created a new swale at the edge of our native grass yard, and we now have a gentle grade from our brick path to back gate. It used to be a small hill you needed some speed to get up.

I’ve planted the hog plum bushes that survived the summer in front of the swale, so hopefully they’ll cover it in time, and my goal is to add some wildflower seeds on top of it. The gigantic amount of mulch was just to hopefully keep improving the soil until I could plant something on it.

I’ve been very happy with it. We’ve had a lot of rain this summer and in the last two weeks and I’ve been able to check out how it all works. I’m definitely retaining a lot more water. There are still some edges around the shed that needed to be better at absorbing water, but might not be good candidates for swales. I’m thinking maybe some more native grass brorders that we can just trim down if we need to replace the fence. It seems like a perfect job for my old friend switch grass.

• xeric
• swales
• water

Last year was Julie and my 25th wedding anniversary. And we had a kid graduate from high school. So we put the anniversary on the back burner and promised ourselves we would do something special this year.

Well this year the world continues to become more complicated, so we looked for places to explore close-ish to home. Several months ago I was looking at a map of Texas’ regions and noticed one labeled “South Texas Brush Country”. I don’t think this was an official term, but it got me thinking, “What made that different from West Texas or South Texas”?

Julie was similarly intrigued. So we found a big enough town for a hotel and restaraunts that could meet our dietary restrictions and then looked for state parks. We setteled on Seminole Canyon State Park and History Site and Kickapoo Cavern State Park.

Heading to Del Rio was fun. We hit one of our favorite San Antonio restaruants - Vegan Avenue, and then did some vintage shopping. We never head west out of San Antonio so we hadn’t been to the Alsatian bakery - “Haby’s”.

We headed out and had another stop for vintage shopping at Homer’s on the Square in Uvalde. Uvalde is still a hard place to visit.

Then we headed towards Del Rio. As we headed west we got to see the brush country. A lot of ranches rather than being cleared had dense thickets of bushes with nothing much more than 8 feet tall. Mountain Laurels and cenizo were everywhere. On the way in we passed Lackland Airforce Base, and a jet of some kind took off right in front of us. It was really fast and as I am married to a woman who wanted to be a fighter pilot this may have been her favorite moment of the trip. We spent the night and then headed out to, but had to pass through a border patrol stop on our way to

Seminole Canyon State Park

Once we knew where we were going we signed up for the Fate Bell Shelter Tour. Just a heads up. When they say it’s a bit intense they’re not lying. While it has very well developed stairs, it’s a LOT of stairs in direct Texas sun. This is coming from someone who likes to run in the afternoon heat. Our tour was the last before the heat breaks in the fall.

I don’t want to spoil the cave art with my bad photography. When they say it’s spectacular, they’re not joking. The artists did some very large art over a lot of space and used 4 different colors of paint. It’s worth the trip. But there are border checkpoints on the way, so obviously not everyone can.

But plants!

The number of beautiful delciate flowers growing in rocks was unreal. When you see the overall view it looks very harsh, but there are so many delicate plants.

After being out in the sun all morning we went back for showers and spent the day exploring Del Rio. And we did that! Yes we did. All explored.

Kickapoo Cavern State Park

Our third day we headed out early. Because of the route we were going we went through Bracketsville. North of Bracketsville was a border patrol stop. It was not the professional border patrol agents. One of the agents walked to the car with his finger on the trigger of an AR-15. There were so few cars on the road it felt like an “accident” could find our bodies in a ditch. I wouldn’t really recommend going that way to anyone. It was unpleasant and being near the Alamo film set it felt appropriate to highlight that the brutal, violent history of Texas is not the past.

I can’t decide if either of these parks are worth the risk, but they are amazing.

In any case, we were both really glad we went. This was very different country from Big Bend or the Hill Country. As we drove into Kerrville on 10 it really it HOW different it was.

• xeric
• south texas
• brush country

Sometimes you just need to record what is happening in the garden and take in the beauty. It’s something I am learning as I grow older.

• xeric

I have not been doing enough garden photography. Despite pessimism about Bluebonnets I’ve had quite a few. Of course a lot of the times when you hear rain forecasts you’ll hear “especially East of IH-35”. I think we’ve definitely seen a lot more rain than many parts of Austin.

P.S. I’ve still got 4 hogplum bushes growing. We’ll see, we’ll see…

• hogplum
• xeric

We went on a New Year’s Day hike this year at Hornsby Bend. It was a nice hike, but I saw a tall bush I hadn’t really noticed before. I looked it up and it’s Colubrina texensis - Texas Snakewood or Texas Hog Plum.

After all of our Loquat trees died in the great freeze I’ve been trying to restablish screening plants. I noticed that Texas Kidneywood is a good screening plant in Winter, even though it’s decidious. Its branches are so fine and interwoven that it provides pretty good screening. I noticed the Hog Plum has a similar habit.

I ordered some seeds off of Etsy. I’m still very amatuer when it comes to growing things from seeds. I think most of my success is just accidental. In any case I squealed the other night when I saw this. Julie came running to see what was going on.

Fingers crossed, we’ll be getting some new bushes this year, and I’ll have some to share!

• hogplum
• xeric

We’ve had some spectacular full moons recently. I have an Android phone with Night Sight which helped me take these photos. I thought they were cool and surreal.

Not a lot of attention was put into taking these as Julie was waiting to go to bed.

• moon
• xeric

I tend to get warm and discouraged in the summer because weeks of hundred plus weather is rough. But then I remembered I have a summer garden. So I went out to get some pictures. We’ve had a decent amount of rain this summer. I’ve only watered twice. But these plants also love the sun. Because we did the front yard remodel a lot of this doesn’t look like I’d like, but I’m trying to be better about seeing the trees and not obsessing about the forest.

Greg’s mist-flower is visited by butterflies constantly.

Sotol backed by weeping love grass and purple three awn. There’s a wasps nest in there I need to clean out. The mail person is getting grumpy. Also there are still bluebonnets in there.

Lost a native agave, but the gopher plant and daisies are more than making up for it. 

The lower garden has been filling in nicely with more grasses and mistflower. A Mexican Buckeye will eventually lord over the proceedings. 

White lantana bordered by the ever popular pride of barbados. 

And this front bed always looks effortless (even when it is 25% weeds).

• summer-garden
• xeric

I’m currently in Nyborg, Denmark for Unity’s Hackweek. They brought a bunch of employees to a seaside resort and let us program for a week. It’s tempting to just stay inside, but I’ve managed to sneak away a few times to look around.

For gardening fans the most amazing discovery was Nyborg Cemetery. We walked by it on the way to see the Nyborg Slot (a castle), but I had to return and check out this amazing garden.

The first thing you noticed walking into the garden were the terraces. Graves were built into them.

I took a closeup of the following plant. From above it looked live a succulent. But up close it looked almost like a fir. A very low growing ground cover.

The garden was built for discovery. I went one way while the rest of my companions went the other. I found this lovely fountain which was somehow completely hidden until you turned a corner.

Ultimately the thing I enjoyed the most was the geometry of the foliage. It felt very elegant, very much in keeping with the strong lines of modernest Danish design while staying incredibly lush and verdant.

You can see how the garden interacts with the neighboring homes in this picture. It’s delightful.

I feel like modernism is so frequently associated with spare rather than lush. Love these lines.

Although from some vantages the repetition can fell a bit overwhelming. 

And finally I took a photo of this lovely grave. I just really enjoyed the detail. Forgive the zoom, I try not to tromp around on top of things in graveyards. 

Now I really want to visit more graveyards like this. I’ve visited some in New Orleans. Which are your favorites?

• xeric

Cutting flowers before the deluge. I should do this more often.

• xeric

It’s not true we don’t have fall color in Texas. We just don’t plant enough of it focusing a little too much on our oaks. This is the lovely flame leaf sumac in greens, and reds, and oranges.

• xeric