"Texas in May" & "The Pond Song"

If you've been reading this blog for awhile (and have noticed the sidebar) you know that I've written and copyrighted more than a dozen garden songs and that Philo and I have made some of them into videos on YouTube. A few are parodies, but most of them fit together and tell a story - they're part of a musical play called Roots In Austin. This weekend two more of the songs went up on YouTube adding more pieces to the story.

When I wrote "I Don't Want to be in Texas When It's May" more than 4 years ago, it was an attempt at writing poetry. My comic, nerdy love poem to Lilac Time in Lombard seemed to be lyrics, so I asked my son Ted for help. Ted wrote music for the lyrics and our song became a favorite at family gatherings. Our song is now a video - it went up this weekend on Ted & Diane's YouTube station. (he and his wife Diane are professional musicians). You'll be blown away by Ted's amazing music.



While this musical surprise was cooking up in Chicagoland, Philo and I hung out in the air-conditioning, working on our latest music video here in Austin. We've had a love affair with ponds for decades ..... maybe it began when we were college students? We saw beautiful ponds while on cheap dates at the zoos, museums, parks and conservatories in Chicago and the surrounding area. Most of them were public ponds back then, but in the 1990's ponds popped up in gardens that we knew... Cher's garden in Lombard, Ellen's in Villa Park, Trudi Temple's in Hinsdale. They were wonderful but still rather rare. Pond construction and care is difficult in a place where the ground freezes deep and the water becomes a block of ice.

Then our move to Austin in 1999 revealed a great big world of man-made ponds and streams behind the fences and walls. There are cold days and freezes in Central Texas, but they're not so deep, and a pond is a year-round feature here. We started going on the annual tours hosted by The Austin Pond Society and I've written posts about them ever since this blog began.

Now it's time to share the love by using years of images of ponds from all over the Austin area to back music from the play - we put "The Pond Song" up last night on Annie and Philo's YouTube Station.
Please spend a soothing, cool three minutes with us in the middle of this long hot summer.



If you're interested in seeing how the songs fit together and reading about the various characters who would be singing these songs if it ever became a reality, please check out the new blog about the play, Roots In Austin.



Edited August 17...Austin blogger Michael Ziegler has taken some lovely photos of some stops on the 2008 pond tour. Actually he takes lovely photos of all sorts of things - thanks for leaving a comment at my 2007 pond post, Michael!

A Real Life Visit

Today was a good day - actually any day when I see MSS of Zanthan Gardens is a good day! She came over for a few hours this afternoon bearing Japanese sweets, ready for conversation and garden viewing - mostly through glass. I tried to impress her with a salad containing some of our homegrown tomatoes and basil as we sat at the kitchen table and looked out the window to the fountain, where a constantly changing cast of avian characters acted out small dramas and comedies on themes of status, dominance and impudence. MSS took a photo of the view and posted it on Twitter.




We talked about the upcoming Austin Pond Society Tour that we all look forward to each July.

It will be hot this weekend when we're on the tour, but since the waterlilies are happiest in sun and warmth, like the Mad Dogs and Englishmen in Noel Coward's song we'll go out in the midday sun, hoping to catch some mist from the waterfalls on our faces. Tickets are only $15 - and for that price you get two days full of wonderful water features - don't miss it!




A hummingbird visited the Salvia coccinea while we ate our international snack of tomatoes and basil and soba cookies and talked and talked... about birds and weddings, journeys and parents, movies and restaurants... we may have even mentioned a few flowers. Unfortunately the sun had already wilted the flower I'd most wanted her to see! This morning a young Bauhinia from my friend Ellen opened its first white flowers but they were merely withered petals by mid-afternoon. From our air-conditioned seats we could see the fountain, and the back border, and the magnolia flowers, and the two triangle beds but we had to go outside to look at some other just-opened flowers. I planted two Amarcrinum bulbs along the back wall of the house a few years ago. This border gets strong morning sun but is shaded in the hot afternoon. I was pretty sure this was a good spot when one bulb bloomed last summer. This year that bulb came up with two tufts of leaves, and each tuft has made a flower stalk. Today the other bulb joined in and bloomed for the first time. One stem of delicate pink trumpets would be very welcome this year - a trio of these fragrant lovely flowers was totally unexpected. There was another plant blooming for the first time - one that was impossible for MSS to overlook before she said goodbye. Former Garden blogger MarthaChick was responsible for this show - she'd shared some Crocosmia bulbs in spring of 2007. In the hot sunny border along the fence this flower looks perfect with a background of Setcresia/Purple Heart.

2007 Austin Pond Society Tour

A week before the Austin Pond Tour we went to Hill Country Water Gardens to buy tickets and get the brochure. Buying the tickets took only a minute, but we needed an hour to wander around this wonderful place, fantasizing about water features, [oh those disappearing fountains!] admiring the plants, fish and statuary. This year the paper tickets were replaced by wristbands - a fun idea that left our hands free to hold the camera.

We made it to 24 of the 30 locations featured on the weekend of July 14th & 15th, having a slight meltdown up in Pflugerville and Cedar Park where new tollways slash and divide the terrain but don't yet appear on our maps. An organized account of the tour may be posted soon at the Austin Pond Society Website - these are merely my impressions of a few of the delightful ponds and gardens, from small owner-built pools to lavish estates.

We loved the fabric sail over this Wells Branch pond - an artful way to add shade.

I'm not fond of garden bridges with no reason for their existence. This simple bridge lets you move across the ponds, from one side of the garden to the other, so it's not just decorative but functional.

A really cool arch made a gracious entry to this waterfall and pond. I liked the pond but also liked that large fig tree full of fruit. It was interesting to see how many of these pond folk grow Loquats, figs and cannas - some of my own favorites.

This Pflugerville garden was filled with whimsical decor. And I do mean filled.

This garden in the Lakeline Mall area incorporated the existing large trees into the design and truly felt like a retreat.

Many ponds attempt to look as if they're natural outcroppings - this pond, also near Lakeline Mall, made no such attempt, remaining spare and geometric. It's clean lines acted as a refreshing lemon sorbet, clearing the palate at this lavish pond banquet.

A beautiful waterfall and stream like this one would be thrilling in any garden, but it's just the entrance pond for one of the most spectacular gardens in Austin. Featured on Central Texas Gardener and open both Saturday night and Sunday, this Lost Creek wonderland is large and lovely and was very difficult to leave. A wide shot of just one part of the back is below.

In yet another area there was a wonderful stream full of lilies.

MSS of Zanthan Gardens also enjoyed this hillside garden and has posted another view in the Zanthan Pond Tour Post.

MSS also took photos at this huge and famous estate garden overlooking Town Lake for her post - and it was fun to see that we noticed some of the same things, both posting a photo of the Wall of Buddha Statues in the Lotus Garden.

But I don't think MSS went on hands and knees to capture the floor of the terrace in the Lotus Garden - the elongated pebbles appear to be set individually making a wonderful pattern. It had me crooning, and the texture felt good underfoot.

What a view!

We came down from the mountaintop and drove back to the real world, where pleasure can be found in a long relationship with one plot of land and the fruits of one's labor. That concrete bench in the background is handmade, decorated with impressed Caladium leaves.

Alone in an enclosed garden hearing the sounds of water and birds.

Ah, serenity.

There are no photos of some of my favorite views and pond gardens - it doesn't feel right to put innocent bystanders on my blog, and at many locations it was impossible to exclude recognizable persons when photographing the ponds. One of the impossible-to-photograph places was a delectable, dreamy garden off Barton Creek Road with one of the ponds running alongside the house, and a rock outcropping overlooking green woods. In a perfect blend of urban life and privacy, one could balance on a large rock seeing nothing but pond and garden while inhaling the odor of onion rings wafting up from the Shady Grove.

Edit June 2011- old link to APS doesn't work - linked to revamped website.

Ponds and Poetry

Uncontrolled water in the home garden can be a disaster - water confined and channeled through a water feature can be wonderful. If you're in the mood to see wonderful water features, you're in luck - it's almost time for the annual Austin Pond Society Tour, that special weekend when some of the members invite you into their gardens, demonstrating how Nature and Technology can work together to bring water, sound, plant life and animal life into your own back yard. That's our birdbath full of bluejays in the photo - if just a simple birdbath can get this much action, imagine what a pond could do!

For 2007, the event spans two days and features 30 locations - including a couple that will be open on Saturday night. Mark your calendars for Saturday and Sunday, July 14th and 15th, 2007. Wristbands are available at the Wildflower Center, Emerald Gardens and Hill Country Water Gardens, and can also be purchased online. You can also get them the day of the tour, but buying ahead can save you a couple of bucks.

Pond Tour Information on the APS website

The Pond Society kindly linked to my posts about last year's tour. We made it to almost all of the Saturday locations - mainly in-town ponds, loaded with ideas for urban and suburban gardeners - but I didn't have the camera with me that day. On Sunday I took photos at some unusual ponds in more rural settings out to the NW of Austin. If you're interested, here are links:

Liberty Hill 2006 One , Liberty Hill 2006 Two, Liberty Hill 2006 Three,

Leander 2006 and the Night Tour

The Pond Society site also has links to photo galleries from several previous tours.

Carolyn at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago is trying to get a garden muse day going on the first of each month, much as Carol of May Dreams has encouraged us to post flower photos for Garden Blogger Bloom Day on the 15th.

There's also a 'Green Thumb Sunday', a monthly 'Festival of the Trees', and even a 'Wordless Wednesday' going around. My first reaction was that things are getting awfully organized and scheduled in the garden blogging world. I'm starting to feel like an Austin Slacker version of Huckleberry Finn, suspicious that the Widow Douglas is trying to 'sivilize' me and think I'll slope off for the river.

But the idea kind of grew on me, so what the heck - here's a poem for Garden Muse Day. When one of the Muses whispers in my ear, it's seldom Calliope guiding me to epic poetry, or Melpomene leading me to write tragedy. No - the Muse that usually shows up is Thalia, inspiring comedy. Maybe she also inspired me to plant 'Thalia' narcissus, seen in this March photo.

The following rhyme is a few years old. A lot of my garden verse has been set to music with more than a dozen of the songs comprising an in-progress musical comedy copyrighted as Roots in Austin. I've made some of the songs into videos for YouTube - they're linked at left in the sidebar. More videos are in the works, but this little snippet of doggerel doesn't seem to have a musical future - it's slight, and cute, and nerdy in a horticultural way:

CALLA
A long time ago from a silvered movie screen
Came words made immortal by a cinematic queen:
“The calla lilies are in bloom,” said Hepburn in a trance;
At seventeen I knew that I must own these lovely plants.

In Northern lands I nurtured them, rejoicing at one flower.
My rhizomes cellar-dwellers were through winter’s chilling hours.
To Texans they’re less precious - here they’ll live with no protection,
Yet still are waxy, delicate, a chlorophyll confection.

The spathe emerges from the soil; the spadix is concealed.
Soon luminous white, or pearly pink, or yellow is revealed.
Some ask for Zantedeschia, preferring Latin words,

Too many calla flowers? Never! The concept is absurd.

Written by Annie at the Transplantable Rose

Garden Muse Day

Liberty Hill, where quirky rules

To see the scope of these ponds you really had to be there. While the quirky touches can be seen in the photographs, I can't capture the actual experience of being in the Texas countryside, walking around this engaging creation. All I can do is add one last picture of the miniature Hoover Dam.

My dad traveled to Las Vegas just to see that dam, and we're going to get there some day. Last Sunday the water and sun had me imagining things. I love the romantic comedy Fools Rush In, an admittedly goofy movie in which Hoover Dam plays a role. When I saw a small blue, truck-type vehicle placed on the road atop the model dam, I couldn’t help pretending that it was being driven by Salma Hayek.

Sunday at Liberty Hill

When we went up to Liberty Hill, we not only enjoyed the ponds, but also found a stand with the best peaches we'd had this year.

Ponds at night and a Leander RR

Over the hot, hot weekend we saw 25 of the 28 ponds on the Austin Pond Society Tour – if you drove fast and were efficient you might make them all, but for those of us who get into conversations, two days is too short! We took just a few photos - you’ll have to wait for more from the Austin Pond Society website.

Two of the locations were in Westlake, open on Saturday evening. Both featured impressive, beautiful ponds, streams and gardens, softly lit with lanterns. One even had violins sending classical music over the terraces. Many people loved the romantic ambience of the ponds at night, but it didn’t quite work for me. Climbing stone steps and feeling with one’s foot for an unknown path was rather awkward in the dark. For a plant person, it was very frustrating to see vague shapes and shadows of the leaves, and to not see the colors or flowers. But you did get an idea of how cool the parties must be at those homes!

These photos were taken in Leander, northwest of Austin, where the pond owner told me that a base for a miniature railroad track had come with the house, buried under the soil in a hilled-up area. Previous owners started it but never got very far. When the new owners recently built their pond, they decided to use the base and work the railroad into the design. This imaginative garden is still in progress – a viewing platform was built just the day before the tour folk arrived- soon the owners will use bonsai trees to complete the landscape and give a sense of proportion to the layout.

For the plant person there were huge stands of Pride of Barbados in the garden area, and the ponds were lovely, with waterlilies in bloom. In addition to the cute factor, there’s a historical factor: this miniature train is a replica of the one that once carried marble to Austin, to build the State Capitol.

Austin Pond Tour - still time

Today was the day for the first half of the Austin Pond Society's 2006 tour. DivaAnnie met us and we viewed 12 gardens with water features, generally located in the southern half of the Austin area. There is something new this year - two gardens will be open in Westlake this evening. Then tomorrow [Sunday] there will be 14 additional water gardens, spread out over the northern part of the greater Austin area. Even if you missed today's water gardens, it's worth the ten bucks to see the second half tomorrow.

Austin Pond Society Tour 2006