Oh Please, Dear March, Don't Turn Into a Lion

In early March 2015 late deep freezes blasted the Texas Mountain Laurels and I wrote this lament.

This year March arrived sweetly, and everything has been pretty peachy so far - but crazy early.

The oldest Texas Mountain Laurel bloomed unfrozen for the first time in years. It's fading now but wonderful to see.



The fig, Forest Pansy redbud and dwarf pomegranate have leaves.


A few Bluebonnets have opened with Blackfoot daisies.

and the white-flowered, passalong Cemetery iris have started, too.

A bag of Leucojum/Snowflake bulbs were an impulse buy last fall - oh, how glad I am this spring that I gave in to temptation!

Closeup of the snowflakes - we can't have snowdrops and we can't have Lily of the Valley, but by gum we can have Leucojum 'Gravetye Giant'.

Yesterday the Lady Banks rose began to pop.

And the peach iris began to stretch their flower stalks up to the sun.

Tonight Austin is under a watch for thunderstorms with possible hail so as usual it's fingers crossed for no bad surprises.

Annie in Austin, writing at the Transplantable Rose blog

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, February 2015

When May Dreams Carol proposed her idea of bloggers everywhere posting photos of what was in bloom each month, I was up for it, and made a post for the first Garden Bloggers Bloom Day on February 15th, 2007. That was a long time ago by internet-standards... Carol's idea has staying power!

Sometimes I post for GBBD, sometimes not - but I wanted to be part of the 8th anniversary. This winter has been relatively normal, bringing some rain and multiple freezes, with the lowest temperature in my garden about 20F. That was cold enough  to knock off many tender plants. Then some recent warm days spurred plants into bloom - these daffodils began opening last week. The clump has increased - there were only 3 flowers in 2007.

Yesterday was mild with strong winds fluttering the leaves and petals as I tried to take photos. A cold front arrived this morning, dropping temperatures 30 degrees in an hour, with a good chance it will freeze tonight and tomorrow night.

As I formatted yesterday's photos and wrote about the weather, the feeling of déjà vu was so strong it made me dizzy. I reread that first GBBD post from 2007 and realized that most of the plants that bloomed eight years ago are blooming now. They've have some bad springs and some good springs, but they're still in the game.

Here's the Carolina Jessamine/Gelsemium sempervirens. Yes, those individual flowers may freeze, but the vine has thousands of buds in various stages of development, so reserved buds can still live to bloom later.

 

More of the yellow daffodils grow in front, with the clump increasing slowly. A light freeze won't ruin them - but they'll collapse if a February heat wave pops up and fries them.

These bulbs of Narcissus tazetta 'Grand Primo' were blooming for the first time in 2007. They look happy and quite pretty in this spot near the veranda steps. However, you may like them better in a photo than up close in real life. Some people call them fragrant, but I think they stink.

In Texas we buy pansies and violas in late autumn and enjoy their flowers until the heat gets them in late spring.

Texas Mountain Laurel is a beloved native shrub here in Austin, bearing clusters of fragrant, deep violet-blue flower. We eagerly await their bloom every year. In some parts of Austin they are trouble-free, but I've learned not to hope too hard for flowers in my far NW neighborhood, where a shrub covered in buds can lose every floret over one cold night.

That 'Fantasia Salmon' geranium blooming in the breakfast room in February 2007? Not blooming today, but it has buds, and May Dreams Carol says buds count! It's grown taller, too.

Just as in 2007, Rosemary is in bloom, along with the Sweet Olives outside. But now there are multiple varieties of Rosemary and double the number of Sweet Olives. Zoom in on the geranium photo and you can see buds, flowers and tiny lemons developing on the Meyers lemon, and a holiday cactus/Schlumbergia still in bloom.

Missing from 2007 is the Coral Honeysuckle, alive but not thriving in increasing shade with competition from  tree roots. Adding some gaudy to the list of blooms for February 2015 is the just-past-prime Pius X Camellia.

And with luck this old Cemetery Iris will still be able to open

and the buds of Four Nerve daisy will raise their bright faces to the sun

ready to shine for Garden Bloggers Bloom day in March. 

If your garden is under snow and winter seems endless take heart - it may be slow but it will come!

This post was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.

Absolutely April

This post about my garden in Austin, Texas was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.

Three weeks can make a big difference in the garden! Since that last post the garden plant spreadsheet shows fewer plants with question marks next to their names.
The Barbados Cherries appear to be alive. They also appear to be about 6" tall now. But you don't want to see that photo and I don't want to take it. Averted eyes is the way to carry on while the boxwoods decide exactly where they'll regrow - don't want to take that photo either.

This photo of the ice-and-freeze damaged Oleander was taken at the beginning of April. It grows near the steps from the house to the drive so it was very hard to not only avert my eyes but to refrain from picking up the lopping shears.

 


Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. Early last week tiny green leaves began to sprout along the oleander trunk and by Thursday it was clear which branches were doing well and where to make the cuts. I don't think there will be flowers this spring, but the Oleander should live and grow.

So let's ignore the battered shrubs and let them recover in private. As to the rest of the garden? Even though we're still in drought, something about the long cold rest seems to have benefited the roses - they're shouting that it is now Absolutely April.
'Julia Child' opens new flowers every morning, standing nearly 5-ft tall, with scores of buds still swelling, surrounded by self-sown poppies and larkspurs, by Four-nerve daisies and the last bluebonnets.
 

I've read that this rose was chosen by Julia Child herself to bear her name, because it looked like butter.




I still don't have a positive ID on the pink climber that came with the house, but 'Climbing Pink Peace' seems to be a possibility. My husband Philo built a wooden trellis over the gate and the rose has stretched out and up to cover it.

 

A few big blossoms joined white 'Climbing Iceberg' in a bowl.



This apricot mini-rose finally looks established - last spring it had two flowers.

The frozen Rosa mutabilis quickly outgrew the damage and is reblooming in its patio container.

The color of the clematis next to the back door is hard to describe - it goes through so many changes from bud to blown blossom.



The Oakleaf Hydrangea flaunts something between a bud and a flower.



Up in front most of the native plants in the parkway strip are waking up and thinking about buds, but only the Damianita is in full bloom.



The Texas Mountain Laurel flowers froze in March 2014, but the shrubs are already making buds for Spring 2015.



Fingers crossed these new plants of Damianita, purple skullcap, creeping phlox and Blackfoot daisies can take hold in a new bed up front.



Tomorrow's forecast promises temperatures in the nineties so the individual flowers don't last too long, but April has been absolutely lovely for a while.



This post about my garden in Austin, Texas was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog. 

A Very Merry Un-Bloom Day for March 2011

The UN in Un-Bloom Day doesn't mean there are no flowers - it's just a little riff on the Unbirthday party in Alice in Wonderland - a way to remind myself that the flowers weren't around for 'Official' Garden Blogger Bloom Day on the 15th. If you're still interested, last week I made a GBBD list for Annie's Addendum, but this week it is Full-On Spring here in Austin - nights in mid-60's F and windy, dry days in the mid-eighties making bluebonnets and Texas Paintbrush pop.

The Divas of the Dirt have had a couple of projects; it's nursery-hopping season; with no rain many hours must be spent soaking, composting and mulching beds, and it's also the season for visiting friends' gardens in the real world. And since the Coral Honeysuckle and Ladybanks Rose are once again blooming together in that real world, it's way past time to make a post in the virtual world.

The parade of dead and damaged plants is still straggling past - the larger Bay Laurel still looks dead and so does one of the Southern Wax myrtles. And the Mediterranean Palm took a real hit. I cut off the dead fronds and used a dolly to wheel the remaining stump from the patio to a more obscure area with best wishes for recuperation.

This week has fried the blossoms but last week the Texas Whitebud was lovely!

The Texas Redbud came into bloom with the lance-leafed Bridal Wreath spiraea... next up will be a similar, shorter white spiraea with rounder, scalloped leaves.
I like 'Thalia' daffodil so much that it's planted in little clumps all over the garden, some in sun and some in part shade. The first to open are already done but the last ones opened yesterday.
White iris - an old passalong type tentatively identified as Iris albicans - is usually the first one of the bearded types to open.


The second triangle has a little bit of everything - bluebonnets from seeds that MSS of Zanthan Gardens gave me, a Texas Paintbrush, Blackfoot Daisies (one survivor and one new), annual white and purple phlox (the cultivar is humorously named 'Twentieth Century Phlox'), Salvia greggii not yet blooming, seedling cosmos with 'Amethyst Flame' iris from Pam/Digging in the background.

A few more bluebonnets grow in the sunny end of the Yaupon border - this time with a Four-Nerve Daisy/Tetraneuris scaposa and some very happy Phlox subulata/Creeping phlox in a lavender shade.


The center of that bed is sunny now, but once the pecan trees leaf out it will be shady. That's where I planted the sticklike 'Snow Queen' Oakleaf hydrangea about 1 year ago, with fingers crossed that it had survived January 2010 in a container. February 2011 was even worse for cold, but the Oakleaf hydrangea had settled in and breezed through.

Look at that developing flower head!

In the mixed sun-and-shade of the long fence bed a few Persian ranunculus survived February 2011, too - but just a few. Many more froze and dried up. I really like this white one

And this clump of yellow ranunculus is back for the 4th springAt the back of this bed we planted a 'Ramona' clematis on a metal trellis a little more than a year ago. I hope the flowers come slowly, because the 'Julia Child' rose is slow this spring, and the combination of 'Ramona' and 'Julia' was spectacular last year.

Near the birdbath fountain another Four-Nerve daisy has not only survived but increased... joined by a sweet little Blue-Eyed grass from Barton Springs Nursery.

Not all the native plants did so well - although all four of the Texas Mountain Laurel plants survived the freezes, only one tiny floret was left unfrozen from the buds set last year.

I couldn't resist a Blue Sky Vine on sale, also at Barton Springs Nursery. It may not be hardy here, but garden forums suggest growing it in a container until fall, chopping it down to 2-feet and bringing the pot into the garage for winter. I'm giving that a try - it's now in a container next to the white arch in the Secret Garden, looking quite at home.
We bought tomato plants at Natural Gardener and Shoal Creek Nursery a while ago, grew them on in larger pots for awhile and planted them last week. Some of the peppers are in, but some are still in the pots until April. That worked pretty well last year.

There are more plants in bloom but the one that said Spring to me today was this small-flowered member of the Magnolia family, bought in 2004 as a starter shrub at Red Barn Garden Center and now 7-feet tall. At various times it's been called Magnolia fuscata, Michelia fuscata, and Michelia figo, (Michelia always makes me think of May Dreams Carol), but it seems to be now called Magnolia figo... at least this week. I haven't been a very good Garden Blogger this month - more like the White Rabbit saying "I'm Late, I'm Late"- but I'm still trying to be a good Gardener!

Happy Spring, everyone!