Galleries

If you happen to be near a garden center please snap a picture and email it to Julie to prove I didn’t buy EVERY plant in Austin. Our budgeting process has been fun for this. Julie asked what my budget was and I said I figured I wouldn’t spend over $1000. Julie mentioned she was thinking more like $100. Ah… gardening.

Planting tomorrow. Can’t wait!

The cactus are from East Austin Succulents. Wonderful place over there right next to the Greater Austin Creative Alliance (GACA! ACoT!) on Tillary Street. They let the kids feed the fish. So Etta repaid them by falling down and crying a lot. Also sticking her arms in the fish tank and sticking her face in the fish tank. Yay! Thomas (the owner?) was concerned about germs. I was concerned about his fish.

I took only Stella to Barton Springs Nursery while Etta napped. It’s my new favorite nursery. But don’t go there. Because it’s less busy than the Natural Gardener. And cheaper. And they have tons of the 1" containers which are what I prefer to grow since they establish with less coddling. I am horrible at coddling plants.

I checked out Northpark Mall in Dallas this weekend. What a beautiful mid-century modern mall and garden. Definitely worth the trip for anyone who loves succulents.

Took out a bunch of dandelions and more bedstraw today. I tired of bedstraw. I also think I took out a bunch of wild petunia today. Whoops.

I love the smell outside. You can almost smell things growing. Looks like I’ll have roses in a day or two, and I’m hoping to plant the front yard this weekend… 

So in previous years I’ve been known to pull up anything green that comes up in my yard. Which would make you wonder why I bother planting wildflower seeds. I’m pretty sure I’ve pulled up every wildflower that’s sprouted in my yard.
But this year is different. If I don’t recognize it, and it doesn’t have tendrils or huge seed pods, it stays put.
Which leads us to this pretty flower. I thought at first it was just a dandelion. But the leaves are subtly different, and my patience was rewarded with this beautiful flower.
So what is it? Anyone know? 

Some pictures of the backyard for a change. I’ve been doing Elder Care for my Grandmother, and I’ve been finding weeding especially therapeutic this year. I went back and did a bit more weeding after I took the pictures. Been doing a lot of weeding. I think I’ve gotten most of the bedstraw out now. 

Some pictures from cleaning up the lower garden. This is our front yard on the other side of the driveway. The pictures are from a week ago.

When we bought the house we didn’t actually know we had this lovely area. It wasn’t until we were enjoying our yard one of the first nights we moved in and wandering around that we noticed the steps and went down. There were vines strangling almost everything. When I trimmed down a nandina and pulled all the vines out of it I noticed there’s a lovely live oak on my neighbors property shading the area. I put the decomposed granite down there when we did the rest of the front yard, and it’s actually killed most of the vines since their root system was under the grassy patch in the middle and the visible parts coming up in the flower bed.
My work at making sure there’s not too much leafy buildup has really led to a increase in blooming irisis this year. But there used to be a ton of mondo grass that I let die in last years drought. I couldn’t justify using the water to keep it alive. Not sure what I’ll replace it with yet.

Man, still going with the weeding. It’s a pain, but the end is in sight. Hopefully by the end of next week. I decided that with the weather we’ve been having now would be an ok time to put in a tree, so I added the persimmon tree you see in the photo. I like it because it will provide berries and fruit.

So I figured I should update with where the yard is right now. I got my incentive check from the city and the go ahead to plant whenever I wanted. Apparently they’re not monitoring my lawn. 
I made the decision not to put down weed barrier in the main growing areas, because when planting new plants I tend to pull up the weed barrier and uproot old plants. But this lead to pretty much every sod clump I missed sprouting again. Julie gave me a lot of crap about this. So I’ve been weeding and adding more mulch. Hopefully that will tide me over until I get the plants in and they can start controlling the weeds. I’m about 5 hours into the weeding right now and I’ve only done one side. * sigh *
But the yellow bearded irises are blooming. So I’m happy. Irises are indeed fantastic shade plants. I’ve found you have to keep them from getting completely overwhelmed by leaves, but otherwise they grow really nicely and come back year after year. And they’re one of the few shade plants that doesn’t need supplementary watering. 
To make myself feel better about all my weeding I also planted 4 rose buses along the western wall of the hose, and put in 4 agaves. I needed a little carrot to keep going.

Nearly killed myself this weekend, but it is done. My Dad who is the real hero of this project was able to come over and help me both days. I had to go out for more edging. The granite seemed like it would never be done. And after dark (THANKS DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME), we managed to finish. So no photos day of. Then this morning I put the river rock in front of the retaining wall. And that’s it. Gotta submit to the city for my rebate and wait to plant. And cleanup a huge pile of granite.
I am so happy with how it turned out, and so is Julie. It definitely fits the design of the house in a way that an English garden would not.