A Chilly January GBBD with Foliage Added

May Dreams Carol started Garden Bloggers Bloom Day in February 2007 and I joined in right away. Sometimes I've skipped a few months and sometimes I put a list on Annie's Addendum without a post. A funny thing happened... taking bloom photos around the 15th of the month has become a habit. Even when there was no post or list on the blog, it's quite likely that I have taken pictures, images stored in a file, ready to inform and remind me what happened that month.

The weather has been chilly for Austin - not unreasonably cold but with enough freezing nights to knock off tender plants. I wasn't sure it was worth going out to take photos yesterday. The inside plants had flowers... wasn't that enough?

In April 2006 I took an out-the-window photo past a potted florist geranium, Pelargonium 'Fantasia Salmon' on the sill. A few months later I started the Transplantable Rose & that geranium has popped up on many a bloom day.


This is the same geranium today - woody but still blooming.

My Divas of the Dirt friend Mindy gave me a cutting from her florist-type Kalanchoe in summer 2009. The cutting took, grew, and has turned into two medium-sized plants. One grows on the windowsill with the geranium and some blooming basil stalks that have rooted in water.

This is the first time the Kalanchoe made buds and I don't know what color the flowers will be - maybe red?

The Andean Silver Sage AKA Salvia discolor didn't do much all summer, but I liked it enough to bring it inside in late November. Since then there have been a few flushes of light bloom... such tiny flowers and quite sticky foliage, but what a wonderful sort of violet-navy color up close.

Mother of Thousands is another kind of Kalanchoe - it's viviparous or live-bearing, with tiny plants forming on the edges of some leaves, ready to drop & start more. The original plant came from my friend Carole about 10-years ago and although it's long gone, there are always a few new plants-in-progress. In places like Florida they can be invasive, but we seem to have enough cold weather to keep them from living too long. One plant growing in the ground outside had reached 7-feet tall at the beginning of December and was in bud, but a freeze hit just as it was ready to bloom. This one was in a clay pot so I could bring it inside to open. 


Well, it was still cold so I aimed the camera out the window at a basket of pansies that don't mind a few freezes.

I could see something red from the window and took the camera outside. Although this 'Pius IX' camellia had no flowers in winter 2010-11 or 2011-12, this winter it formed about 20 buds. A few are open now, and if the weather stays moderate, there are a dozen left. It was an inexpensive 1-gallon shrub in fall 2001, bought as an experiment, to see if it could grow in a deck container at the previous house. After it was planted in this yard in 2005, it hasn't thrived, but it didn't die, and sometimes it blooms.  

The white camellia had a lot of buds - here is one in bloom. Most of the buds fell off - probably not from cold but because worms had blocked up the drainage hole in the container. I don't know if the roots of this 'Morning Glow' can recover.





The shrimp plant is still blooming away in the Secret Garden- happy for the recent rains and standing straighter as the strong winter sun filters through the now-bare branches of the fig tree overhead.

Up close you can see frost damage to the blooms, but if I leave my glasses inside the flowers look pretty good. 

Maybe there are too many photos of Mexican honeysuckle on this blog, but if it's in flower, I can't resist posting them. The leaves are getting pale now - if it gets much colder the top of the plant will freeze off.

 Now for the Foliage Followup.. something started by Pam Penick of the Digging blog for the 16th of the month. 

My Divas of the Dirt friend Mindy has given me many starts of many plants in addition to the ready-to-bloom Kalanchoe above. The other day I photographed a group that had all come from Mindy. The Cuban Oregano was started from cuttings but the Mother of Thousands and yet another kind of Kalanchoe, Donkey Ears/Kalanchoe gastonis-bonnieri came to me as tiny plantlets attached to a leaf edge.
 

 Before the small hypertufa trough came outside for winter it had two of the tiny plantlets attached as you can see in this photo from early December.


Thanks, Mindy!


You can find a complete list of everything I could find with a flower on it, written with my best try at correct botanical names, over at Annie's Addendum, the companion blog to the Transplantable Rose.

If you want to see a camellia growing where it should grow (South Carolina) and looking fabulous, head over to the Tales from the Laboratory blog to see 'Mary Wheeler'.

Carol has a roundup of blog posts for GBBD at her May Dreams Blog - have fun seeing what happens in other gardens and on other windowsills in January.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day for December 2010

It's time for the December GBBD -our traditional monthly roundup of what's in flower, started by MayDreams Carol almost four years ago. I took time off from baking and shopping to take a few pictures because December has been pretty nice here in Austin! The photos may show you how different the light is now with most pecan leaves down in back, and with the leaves of the Arizona ash trees in front now turning from green to gold. (Many of the photos will expand if clicked.)

Repeated light freezes have killed off many of the October and November flowers - the Blackfoot daisies and cosmos, the peppers and basil, the mistflowers and moonflowers, the evolvolus and Mexican Mint marigolds, the Blue Butterfly clerodendron, the tips and leaves of 'Pam's Pink' turkscap and all but two species of salvia are done. Most of the view seems green, brown and straw-colored.
The larger showy flowers are gone, but if you go in closer there are small delights scattered over front and back and side gardens. 'Marilyn's Choice' Abutilon lost a few flowers to freezes, but the plant has new buds developing

The Camellia sasanqua 'Shishi Gashira' that was beginning to open a month ago is now reaching the end - but what a show it put on!

The pink camellia was a 1-gallon starter plant in 2005. Next to it is another camellia - a japonica called 'Morning Glow'. It's been in this container just over a year, bought November 2009 all budded and ready to go. 'Morning Glow' is budded again - today opening the first flower of 2010.
Around the corner in the Secret Garden is the shrimp plant seen last month, with even more flowers. I tried to take a photo that would show you where the name came from:

Now back to the patio where the Loquat still blooms against a blue sky
And the Pineapple sage has somehow remained unharmed and in bloom after at least 5 nights with temperatures well below 32°F. The summer flowers are gone from the hanging basket on the patio, along with the coir liner - picked to pieces by birds. To plant these black pansies, I had to improvise with plastic screening and old pieces of artificial pine garland. The Rosemary Birdbath Fountain has two Rosemarys blooming around it.. the upright which blooms whiteAnd the prostrate rosemary which blooms blueOne of the nearby patio containers has a 'Mutabilis' rose - not exactly in bloom, but definitely in bud
In another nearby container a 'Provence' lavender defies the frosts with a few flowers, the tallest wand seen here with the triangle beds and long fence bed in the background. The long fence bed has a few blooms - one bud on the 'Julia Child' roseAnd a trio of colorful blossoms closer to the gate: yellow Salvia madrensis, orange flowers on the fresh green-leaved Mexican Honeysuckle, and more orange from the cuphea, its leaves turned bronze with coldA glance at the Tropical milkweed with blue plumbago at its feet and we're out the gate, walking over to the bright pink Gaura in full bloom and the pink skullcaps with a few flowers brightening the Pink Entrance Garden. The central butterfly bed in front is pretty quiet from the sidewalk side, right now - but from the house side it's very colorful Purple creeping lantana and a few unfrozen Blackfoot daisies combine well with the finally-in-bloom Lion's Tail plant. Here's a closer look at the flowers- it's only marginal in my far NW Austin area so each look may be the last! Let's go to the front door - a couple of plants have flowers inside, too. I've had four plants of Schlumbergera/Holiday cactus for quite awhile. This year the peachy pink one is already in bloom near the dining room window. Two more plants in other colors are budded but the fourth plant is having an off-year. This window gets some light... but no real sun.

Five florist Cyclamen look quite content in a brass planter on the tabletop.
The breakfast room window gets the strongest sun so it's jammed full of overwintering plants. The four-year-old 'Fantasia Salmon' geranium blooms next to a 'Black Pearl' pepper popped out of the triangle bed before the first frost a couple of weeks ago. Mother of Thousands, a plant in the Kalanchoe family, grows in pots on the patio for summer. The bigger plants often freeze and die but a few babies live over to keep the strain going. If a plant has buds it gets a space inside before the first frost Here's this year's winner of the Bay Window lottery.

Carol's post and links to many garden blogs is found here at the May Dreams garden Blog.

Better get back to baking... some day the complete list of what's in bloom (with botanical names) will appear on Annie's Addendum. Hope your December is going well!

Edited Dec 19 - List of all in bloom in December is up on Annie's Addendum.

Stubborn Irish People From Chicago

This post, "Stubborn Irish People From Chicago", was written for my blogspot blog called The Transplantable Rose by Annie in Austin.

As some of you may have guessed, we were away from Austin for a few weeks and I'm having trouble returning to everyday life. It will take a long time to get reordered and catch up with all your posts, but that's not the reason why my Christmas tree is still up and the outside lights are still lit... the reason is that my maternal ancestors were a bunch of stubborn Chicago Irish people who always kept their trees up until Epiphany, the 6th of January. And at this time of year, I'm proud to be one of them.

My brothers and sisters and I were raised in this tradition, calling the day "Little Christmas", a time for visiting with aunts, uncles and cousins. Sometimes we stayed at one location - other times finger food was served at one house and desserts at another, with mixed drinks for the adults and 'Kiddie cocktails' for the youngsters - would anyone dare serve them today? Most houses had a piano or one of the electric organs that were so popular in the fifties and sixties - a couple of the aunts could play and everyone could sing. The party may have been stressful for the hosts and hostesses but we kids thought it was all wonderful.

Although I'm far away from my family and many of those people are no longer around to celebrate Little Christmas, the lights will shine here for a few more nights, to puzzle the neighbors and add a little sparkle to the January darkness.

There were a couple of hard freezes while we were gone and we came back to a garden that had changed greatly from the one we left - MSS from Zanthan Gardens referred to her rosebuds as 'freeze-dried'... I like that phrase enough to swipe it to describe the iris buds as they look now. A 2006 birthday gift from my mother and sisters was a miniature rose bush... I divided it into 3 plants last spring and one of them was still blooming yesterday near the shelter of a brick wall.

The Sasanqua camellia 'Shishi Gashira' seems untroubled by the colder weather - with just a few more buds not yet opened.

Inside the house the barely budded Thanksgiving cactus from the previous Blooms Day post had opened in the hoped for peachy-apricot color, which I like very much in the breakfast room.

Peachy-apricot must be the in color this January - back in November I decided to bring the Mother-of Thousands inside rather than let it freeze - my reward was a few delicate flowers in that shade... but they didn't appear on the usual 3-foot stalk. The plant was already taller than usual when I brought it in and it kept elongating all of December. Now the flowers hang almost at eye level, 58 inches above the surface of the potting soil.

Happy New Year to all of you who have made the world of garden blogging such a warm and interesting place!

This post, "Stubborn Irish People From Chicago", was written for my blogspot blog called The Transplantable Rose by Annie in Austin.